By Anh-Minh Do, Tech In Asia
Last April, Vietnamworks, Vietnam’s top recruitment site, was acquired by En-Japan for a rumored $22 million. That made it one of the top acquisitions last year. It showed that indeed, Vietnamese companies can exit. But how exactly did this headhunting and online recruitment site rise to the top?
Home page of Vietnamworks (Tech In Asia)
Vietnamworks was started twelve years ago by Jonah Levey. Just before coming to Vietnam, Jonas was running a successful head hunting business in New York. But it was just after 9/11 and Levey had just broken up with his girlfriend. He went to Vietnam for vacation and was struck by the opportunity and culture he encountered. Vietnam was still developing, and it was a wide open field for innovation. Recruitment was clearly a problem: good talent was scarce and the number of new businesses rose steadily. Six months later, Levey launched the website. He was an expert in HR and recruitment and was intent on bringing that expertise to Vietnam.
The early days: 2002
But for Levey and his cofounder, Sean MacDonald, it wasn’t easy. The team found a great investor in Chris Freund, who was profoundly supportive. Freund is also a key investor in MobileWorld, which just IPO’ed in Vietnam at a valuation of over $250 million.
“Back then, we ran out of money several times. One year in, and we were already very tired. We were using used computers. We had no traction. Customers didn’t believe the internet would work. And we couldn’t generate enough revenue to survive. So we wanted to call it quits. We were really tired.”
Levey says both he and MacDonald wanted to go back to New York and get real jobs. They fell sick. But they didn’t tell Freund that they wanted to quit yet.
“We set up the dinner. Sean was vomiting and sick and sad. And we sat there and told Chris all the reasons why we wanted to quit. And he was very understanding. He started talking about the trends and he pointed out that we were actually growing. We had six weeks worth of money left”, says Levey.
Back then, Levey was most worried about the cost of closing. In fact, that might cost more than running the business. But Freund reassured him that he could cover the closing, in case that happened, and said: “You can keep going. It’s not time yet.”
“After that dinner, Sean left. He couldn’t afford to live with no salary. But we turned a corner, we squeezed our costs and we were able to break even on a cash flow basis. We just needed a little bit of emotional encouragement. And it was just so physically hard on us. But that dinner was the turning point. It’s a vivid moment for the Vietnamworks story.”
Getting a new CEO and the path to profits
Persistence and focus led to the eventual success of Vietnamworks. Levey spotted a perfect moment. Other businesses, like Ernst&Young, were pulling out of online recruitment while the market was still open. After the initial road bumps, Jonah met Chris Harvey, who eventually ran the Vietnamworks division in 2006. Chris Harvey had experience from the Silicon Valley, working at AOL and Yahoo. And Harvey wanted to work in Vietnam in an internet company.
In those early days, Vietnamworks was just one of eleven product lines that the team was testing on the market. Eventually, Vietnamworks, the online recruitment portal, and Navigos group, the head hunting portal, won out. It was under Harvey’s leadership that they decided to cut a significant number of products. Nine other products were closed down or were split off. Among the products that split off included HR2B, a human resources management service, and Anphabe, a LinkedIn for Vietnamese professionals. Harvey describes this focus as crucial to the later success of the company.
During Harvey’s tenure, he focused on four key areas. First was culture. “So I focused a lot on making it a special and fun place to work. We had Halloween and Christmas. We played a game where I learned all the names of everyone in the company. We had an all hands meeting once a month. And to give people’s work meaning I started talking about how we helped people achieve their dreams and what meaningful work that was”, says Harvey.
Next came sales, product, and marketing:
“I borrowed a marketing idea from Singapore Airlines. They have the “Singapore Airlines girl” brand image. So I created the “Vietnamworks girl”. Our sales team were all women. We tailored suits and Vietnamworks-style blue neckerchiefs for our girls. We gave them a unique and professional brand image. We even gave them modeling training. How to walk, how to stand, and how to shake hands. We gave the girls framed certificates after they passed a sales practical test. They were so proud of that, of being Vietnamworks girls, and it really created an amazing team spirit. The third thing was product, make it simpler and clearer. And the fourth thing was marketing: project a fun and friendly image. We had to become an image of friend and advisor before we could project it. So we did.”
Harvey assumed the CEO position in 2010 and stepped down in 2012 to work on his own projects, having caught the startup bug, like Levey. Harvey now leads his own recruitment startup, ITviec, focused on online recruitment in the IT space. Basically, it competes with Vietnamworks in the IT category. But during his tenure, Harvey was able to pull Vietnamworks into profitability and grow it considerably. In 2012, Levey returned to the company and led it to its acquisition in 2013 by en-Japan.
Read the full article by Anh-Minh Do from Tech In Asia.
