👋 Hi, I’m Andy — PhD in AI, founder, and builder across Vietnam, Japan, and beyond. I’ve spent years building AI products that do real work for real people: 🧠 https://t.co/7qv05WxOA2 – AI that translates & transforms your docs, slides, and videos. 📈 GrowthSwarm – AI agents

What’s the best problem a startup can have? Crashing your own server from a viral marketing campaign. We celebrated the traffic spike for 5 minutes, then spent the next 5 hours in an emergency 'war room' to get the system back online. It felt like a failure and a massive win at

Our most successful marketing campaign wasn't a campaign at all. It was a stupid meme, born from an inside joke, that I almost deleted for being 'unprofessional'. It went viral. More organic reach in 48 hours than our last paid campaign got in a month. The honest, slightly

I see founders obsessing over growth funnels and CAC before they even have 10 users. My first user acquisition strategy? Standing outside a university with a stack of cheap flyers. It was awkward. It was inefficient. It was humbling. But the raw, unfiltered feedback I got from

I'm going to say something that might sting: Your total number of registered users is mostly a vanity metric. A sign-up is just an email in your database. It's potential, not proof. It's a ghost in your system until they actually *do* something. An 'activated' user is someone

I'm firing my social media manager. It's me. For months, I've been chasing the algorithm, optimizing for likes, and celebrating follower counts. The vanity metrics looked great, but the business reality was different. I was building an audience, not a community. An audience

Woke up this morning to a link from a friend. It was a podcast episode, and the topic was a deep-dive review of my product. A podcast I had never heard of, and they certainly didn't tell me they were doing it. My first gut reaction wasn't excitement. It was a knot in my

I used to dread customer complaints. Now, they're my secret weapon for content marketing. Every angry email, every feature request born from frustration, I turn it into a public post. A case study. A 'how-to' guide. Or a brutally honest 'we messed up, and here's how we're fixing

Let's be honest. Buying users feels great. Your sign-up chart goes up, investors get excited, and for a moment, you feel like you're winning. But this is the most dangerous trap in the startup world. It’s growth on paper, not in reality. It's like pouring water into a leaky

Saw a competitor running ads on our brand keyword. First reaction: Annoyance. Second reaction: It's a compliment. They're literally paying money to acknowledge our brand has value. It's an aggressive play, no doubt. But is it a dirty one? I'm not so sure. The SERP is a

Time for a little startup honesty. The 'expert' who wrote my first successful blog… didn't exist. I created a fictional persona to build credibility when I had zero. It was a classic 'fake it 'til you make it' move to get my foot in the door and attract our first users. Was it

We had the perfect name. The one that felt like destiny. And then we typed it into the domain checker. ` https://t.co/4j6GoKFVfM is taken.` For a week, we were obsessed. Should we add a prefix? A suffix? Pay the squatter a ridiculous amount? It all felt like a compromise, like

Some might call it spam. I call it getting my first 1,000 users. The source? A single Zalo group. There's a fine line between adding value and getting kicked out. I walked that line for 30 days straight. The result was 1,000+ signups. The cost was my sanity and a few angry

It sounds crazy, but one of the best early decisions I made was to 'fire' our first 20% of users. They weren't bad people. They just weren't the right fit. Their feedback, while well-intentioned, was pulling our product in a dozen different directions. Our small team was

We spent $2,000 (50M VND) on a PR campaign and got 0 new customers. Zero. We got the press mentions, saw our name in a few articles, and felt like we'd 'made it'. The reality? Our user dashboard didn't move an inch. The hard lesson: For an early-stage startup, 'brand awareness'

Resumes can be polished. Interview answers can be rehearsed. But how a person *actually* works, thinks, and collaborates? You can't fake that over a full day. For a recent critical role, I ditched the traditional interview loop. Instead, I invited the final candidate to work

One of your star employees resigns. A week later, your biggest client follows them out the door. Your first instinct is anger. A sense of betrayal. You might even think about lawyers. But let's be brutally honest. Was the client ever truly *your* client, or were they just loyal

How to delegate without losing control? Wrong question. The real question is: How do I control the *outcome* without controlling the *people*? Many founders think it's a choice between micromanagement and total freedom. It's not. One kills morale, the other kills the company.

Unpopular opinion: For the first few years of your career, your learning rate *is* your real salary. A lower paycheck might feel like a step back, but it's often the price of admission for an 'expensive' experience. Think about it: Are you a small cog in a giant machine, or are

Call me crazy, but on Day 1 of my startup, I did something unconventional: I created a 'playbook' for every single role. Yes, even for roles that didn't exist yet. The future Head of Sales, the first marketing hire, the intern. Most founders told me to focus only on the

Founder or full-time mediator? Some days, it feels like the same job. My slightly controversial opinion: It's not my job to solve every interpersonal issue between adults on my team. Constantly playing referee doesn't build a strong culture; it builds dependency. My role is to