Vietnam · Southeast Asia · Partnerships
Doing business in Vietnam as a foreigner: seven lessons from Ho Chi Minh City
I moved from Helsinki to Ho Chi Minh City to run Finest Future's revenue because our customers were here, not in Finland. In under five years the Vietnam company grew from its first 15 students to more than 1,000 across Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar. These are the seven lessons I would give any foreign founder starting a business in Vietnam.
Short answer
- Be where your customers are. We set up in Vietnam with one intern and one founder on the ground.
- Expect partnerships to take time. In Vietnam they are built on trust between the people at the top, CEO to CEO, not between companies. In Finland you can get a partnership on the first call.
- Start every partnership with a pilot, and write the goals and deliverables into the agreement. Then make sure the agreement is followed.
- Hire for care and local knowledge, not for English fluency.
- You don't have to be the expert in the room. Your process can travel to other markets; local knowledge can't.
1. Go where your customers are
Our first revenue came from Finnish cities, but those were one-time payments. The revenue that could arrive month after month, from families sending their children to study in Finland, was in Asia. So we hired an intern in Vietnam to get the process started and sent me to run revenue operations. My background is in sales, so I went where the sales were.
From Ho Chi Minh City we built a network of study abroad agencies, private companies and public schools in Vietnam and other countries. The full story is in how we bootstrapped Finest Future.
2. Trust comes first, and it is personal
If you come to Vietnam as a new company with no reputation and look for partners, understand that it will take a lot of time. The culture is that you build trust first. Business partnerships here are less about two companies and more about the CEOs of those companies. If you go to Finland, it is much more straightforward: you might get a partnership in your first call.
The patience pays. What you get for the time spent researching and building trust is a free sales resource, with far more people behind it than you have.
3. Pilot first, and put everything in writing
Once a company falls in love with your product, it will tell you it is going to sell a lot and you have nothing to worry about. Reality can be completely different. So before a partnership becomes permanent, agree a pilot: how long it runs, what the goals are, what each side delivers, and what success looks like for both of you. Put all of it in the agreement, and make sure the agreement is followed, especially when you are doing business in Asia.
4. Don't wait for partners to call you
Once a partnership is running, it is your job to make sure the partner gets all the help they need. Be proactive, not reactive. Ask how you can help, what customers are saying, what could be better, and why sales might not be coming. Everything they tell you is data for improving your product. How we found and ran those partners is in the partnership playbook.
5. Hire for care and local knowledge, not English
Our customers are Vietnamese parents, so we stopped using English fluency and CVs as the filter. We hire people who stay calm with anxious parents, ask about the actual work, know the local context and are coachable. We can teach Finnish education; we can't teach someone to care. The details are in hiring in Vietnam.
6. You don't have to be the expert in the room
I run a company in a country whose language I don't speak well, and it made me a better leader. Missing part of every conversation taught me to read behaviour and how decisions really get made. It made me comfortable letting my team decide things I am not qualified to decide, and it made my own instructions clearer. In Ho Chi Minh City, I'm not the expert in the room.
7. Your process travels. Local knowledge doesn't.
We built our model in Vietnam, and the hard question was whether it could exist anywhere else. We franchised it to operators in Indonesia and the Philippines. What transferred was the process: the sequence of steps and how student groups are organised. What did not transfer was knowing how to engage families in each country. That had to come from the local operators. You can't scale depth by hiring more of yourself.
What about marketing in Vietnam?
Do what others don't. We ran an event with local celebrities and influencers at a five-star hotel that cost us almost nothing, because we paid in value instead of money. That story is in how to get event sponsors with no budget.
What about company setup, licences and tax?
This is about running the business, not registering it. Company structure, licences, tax and labour rules in Vietnam depend on your sector and change often, so use a local lawyer or accountant for those. The lessons above are the part they cannot do for you.
Questions
How long does it take to build business partnerships in Vietnam?
Longer than in Finland. Partnerships in Vietnam rest on trust between the leaders of both companies, so expect it to take time before anything is signed. In Finland, a partnership can come out of the first call.
How is Vietnamese business culture different from Finnish business culture?
In my experience the biggest difference is where trust sits. In Finland, companies trust a clear proposal and a contract. In Vietnam, partnerships are made between people, usually the CEOs, and that trust takes time to build. Written agreements matter in both, and following them matters most.
Can you run a company in Vietnam without speaking Vietnamese?
Yes, if you hire people with local knowledge and let them lead where they know more. I don't speak Vietnamese well, and the Vietnam company won the Asia Pacific Enterprise Awards' Inspirational Brand Award in 2024 and Fast Enterprise Award in 2025.
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