Vietnam does not appear often in global startup coverage. It should. The country has 100 million people, a median age of 31, and a technology education system that consistently produces world-class engineers. Its government, watching China's tech rise with a mixture of competition and admiration, has made digital transformation a central pillar of its development strategy. The results are beginning to show.
The Engineering Advantage
Vietnamese engineers are in high demand globally — and an increasing number of them are staying home. Companies like VNG (gaming and cloud services), MoMo (mobile payments), and Sky Mavis (blockchain gaming, creators of Axie Infinity) have demonstrated that world-class products can be built from Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Sky Mavis, in particular, created a global phenomenon from a team that had never worked outside Vietnam.
The software outsourcing industry that Vietnam built over the past two decades — serving clients from Japan, South Korea, and the US — has had an unintended benefit: it has trained hundreds of thousands of engineers in modern development practices and international business standards. Many of these engineers are now applying those skills to their own ventures.
