Sun* Startups "shook hands" with special partners, making the dream of young Vietnamese startups come true

On the morning of April 2nd, Sun* Startups and partners ThinkZone, Songhan Incubator, VINASA officially signed a cooperation agreement and started Batch 2 and Batch 3 in a startup-promoting program in Vietnam.

In 2020, the startup-promoting program was tested for the first time at Sun* Startups with the name Batch 1: Initializing Startup. The program has the participation of partner Songhan Incubator. After the program, 06 startups at the ideation period joined the program, with 05 startups continuing to develop, successfully launching a minimum viable product (MVP) and entering the market testing stage.

With such positive results, in 2021, Sun* Startups have officially expanded the scale, implementing Batch 2 and Batch 3 at the same time, in which, Batch 2 is for startups in the concept stage (without MVP) and Batch 3 is for startups in the MVP stage (in development or with MVP already).

The Batch 2 and Batch 3 initialization program is completed with the combination of Sun * Startups - ThinkZone - Songhan Incubator and VINASA (Vietnam Software and Information Technology Services Association).

Specifically, Sun* Startups builds its own start-up promoting program for each Batch, providing offices, a team of real-time advisors on technology, product development, marketing and start-up science. These experts will work directly with startups every day in 3 consecutive months and periodically for 3 decentralized months. In that period, ThinkZone assists in sending experts and startups to share experiences from ThinkZone's incubation programs; VINASA supports to connect with early investors in VINASA's Network of Tech Investor Clubs (VDI) who are also founders or executives at large information technology enterprises in Vietnam today. At the same time, Songhan Incubator - the first private incubator in Vietnam with more than 5 years of experience will provide consultancy on market testing for MVP-ready startups.

Another advantage of this promoting model is that the program developer will join the startup as a co-founder, whereby, in these six months, all members will work as a team in each step of development of the "future company". Instead of having to find a co-founder in different expertise, there will be a "team" of co-founders with experts from many different fields working at the same time.

With this promoting model, startup will be considered all issues of Market, Customer, Business Model, Solution, Product, Sales, Marketing, etc. with real-time expert to go from version A to version A' with more reliable data for the next development phase.

Talking to reporters, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Tuan, Head of Sun* Startups, Sun Asterisk Vietnam, shared: “Sun Asterisk is a technology corporation, the biggest strength we have is the source information technology force. Realizing that the innovative startup sector in Vietnam is lacking this resource, from 2018 we have decided to focus on complementing that resource ecosystem by combining that resource with the strengths of our partners. on Market, Investment, Incubation, etc., forming a model of "Technology startup" with a program built specifically according to the characteristics of this startup group. On April 2nd, 2021, we together with partners ThinkZone, Songhan Incubator, VINASA officially signed the cooperation and started Batch 2, Batch 3. We hope more and more partners will participate in the model. This is to contribute to promoting the improvement of Vietnam's innovative startup ecosystem as well as creating more opportunities for technology startups to continue."

At the event, Mr. An Ngoc Thao - Director of Vietnam Digital Investor Club (VDI), under VINASA - said: “When participating in this program, In addition to accessing support services in VINASA's IT business support ecosystem, potential startups will have the opportunity to be selected to participate in VINASA's Startup Accelerator Program (Vinasa Digital Accelerator), and especially the opportunity to invest in: Finance, Market, and Technology from the leaders of Vietnam's leading technology enterprises - the investors in the VDI Club ".

In the current "normal" context, the startup promoting models mentioned above are a bright spot for the technology startup picture in Vietnam recently, which has witnessed many difficulties and failures and is showing signs of saturation when following traditional way.

Below are some pictures of the program:

The upcoming activities of this program will be updated by Sun* News!