Back from Vietnam!

After open Hack Day Jakarta – I went straight over to Vietnam for another week on the road. HCMC (Saigon) for a few days and then Hanoi to close it off. Met a bunch of startup and some of the local VC players. Thanks to the IDG guys for showing me around a bit.

Given freedom of speech issues news type sites are not the order of the day in Vietnam – unlike places in Indonesia where news, community and user generated content are huge.

However there is some cool stuff going on.

For a local map player trying to go the Yelp model check: http://diadiem.com/

For more of a review based site check: http://www.thodia.vn/hcm

Then there is the Moore group building some community stuff and infratructure for other online players: http://moore.vn/en/

For financial stuff there is: Vietstock.com.vn

Football betting: http://www.yeuthethao.com/

Popular women’s site: http://www.webtretho.com/

Leading jobs site: http://www.vietnamworks.com/

Online dictionary: http://vdict.com/

Music and entertainment: http://yeuamnhac.com/cbeta/index_new.php

Also, given the VN FB mess, this local social network site is growing: http://www.zing.vn/

Also – can’t leave out the big kahuna in the online game space: http://www.vinagames.com/

I am sure there are more – was a busy week.

The internet is in pure growth mode but the sites seem to be very locally focused with mostly no English interfaces. I have yet to meet any players who profess to wanting to grow their sites/companies outside of Vietnam. Not sure this is smart or not – it could be the move for now but I think big ideas will need to target the SEA region – not just Vietnam.

In Manila this week, then Thailand and then back to Vietnam.

Location stuff a topic everywhere I go.

carry on!