Chapter 22 — My Nameless Occupation

The first round of funding for Jian Zhu Tech arrived much sooner than expected. Ha Duy took the initiative to become our angel investor, injecting three million into the company. His exact words were: "Director To, I have seen the efficiency of your operational toolkit with my own eyes. Thien Vu Media used it for three months, and their administrative productivity soared by 55 percent, exceeding even your initial promises. If you turn this into a SaaS model, you won't be lacking for clients; what you lack are product development resources and time. Three million is enough to get you through the MVP phase." On the day I signed the contract, I sat in the meeting room for a long time. I was forty-three years old. I had been laid off for four months. Now, I was the founder of a tech company. I did not know what the future held, but I knew one thing: I would never again be that person who "does everything but is known by no one."

Chapter 24

The product development team at Jian Zhu Tech was very small; including myself, there were only seven of us. Two developers, one product manager, one UI designer, Vu Tieu Man, who had transferred from Thuy Hoa to handle operations, Tieu Ly on sales, and myself acting as both CEO and Product Director. We rented an office in the western start-up district of the city, a sixty-square-meter space where opening the window revealed a lone ginkgo tree.

Developing the MVP version took two months. The core features were distilled from my twelve years of experience at Hang Vien: a library of process templates, cross-departmental coordination trackers, intelligent scheduling tools, and an automated standard operating procedure generator. It was not a massive, monolithic system, but rather a collection of compact, precise instruments designed to solve the twenty most common operational pain points for businesses with fifty to three hundred employees.

During the first week of the product's launch, Ha Duy introduced us to five potential clients. I personally conducted three of the presentations. The first client, after watching the demo, remarked, "Why does this seem to understand our company so well? It is ten times easier to use than the office automation software we have been struggling with for two years."

It felt that way because I had lived those weaknesses myself for twelve long years at Hang Vien. Every feature, every tiny detail, had been polished by my own real-world struggles. The second client asked directly, "Do you have an annual plan? I want to lock in the price for two years." The third client was even more decisive; he stopped me halfway through the demonstration and said, "No need to show more. I trust Ha Duy’s recommendation. Where do I sign?"

Vu Tieu Man stood by, taking notes on the entire process. On the way back, she said, "Sister To, I have followed you on three projects now, and I have never seen clients close deals as quickly as this."

"That is because the product solves real problems, not just the imaginary ones usually found in slide decks," I replied.

In the first month, the product secured twelve clients, generating a monthly revenue of one hundred and eighty thousand. It was not a massive sum, but for a seven-person startup, it was enough to survive. Tham Dich, in his role as co-founder, was primarily responsible for strategy and fundraising. During an internal assessment meeting, he remarked, "To Van, do you know the biggest difference between Jian Zhu and other operational SaaS software?"

"What is it?"

"Other products are composed of features imagined by engineers. Your product was built by a seasoned operational expert who spent twelve years falling into every single pitfall possible, then distilling those lessons into a system."

"And so?"

"And so, your core moat is not the technology; it is the experience. That is something that cannot be copied."

I nodded. It could not be copied. Those four words alone made my twelve years at Hang Vien worth every second. That evening, To Niem cooked dinner for me. She was in her final year of high school, and her studies were incredibly intense, yet she insisted on cooking once every weekend.

"Mom, how many people are in your company now?"

"Seven."