Is Vietnam the New Russia?

I just returned from my friends' wedding in Vietnam. It was a multi-cultural extravaganza. The bride is Bulgarian, the groom American and they both live and work in Moscow. That's where I met them in the mid-90's when I was involved in helping to start up VimpelCom, one of the first cellular operators in Russia. I left Russia in the late '90's to come back to New York, but many of the wedding guests were entrepreneurs who stayed and have done extremely well over the last 15 years in Russia. Now here we were in a beautiful beach resort on the coast of Vietnam, toasting the bride and groom and talking about how Vietnam is the "next big place."

We've all read about the "oligarchs" (and recently, one their high school age daughters who just started her own fashion retail shops!). But there are literally countless others whose lives were dramatically changed for the better as they helped to grow Russia's economy. Many of them were "accidental entrepreneurs". When they arrived in Moscow, they were recent college grads--maybe they had studied Russian in college, or were just looking for adventure. Then there were the young Russians. Still living between two worlds--the world they knew as citizens of the Soviet Union and the "new world" where opportunities were jumping out at them from all directions. One wedding guest was a Russian who started out working as an assistant for a Western company right after the Soviet Union dissolved. She was telling me that in the mid'90's she was a single mother with one change of business clothes that she would wear every day. She's now a major real estate broker working in Moscow, London and New York. Another guest was a Russian emigre whose family had fled the Soviet Union. In the '90's, he was living in the South where he met an American businessman. Together, they moved back to Moscow, camped out in a cramped Soviet-style 2 bedroom apartment and started renting commercial real estate. Today, they are both hugely successful with businesses around the world. There were also many American business men (yes, I say business MEN because most of them were men) who went to Moscow on a whim in the mid 90's and are still there today, almost 15 years later, running major companies.

What was the key to their success? Certainly perseverance--learning how to get things done in
the face of never-ending bureaucracy. Over a decade later, despite so much progress, it seems that the bureaucracy and some of the day to day challenges have not gone away. It still takes days or months to get the simplest thing done. You still need to "know someone" to get things accomplished. Another key to success: finding "the hole". What was missing? In the early days, the answer was "everything"! There were successful entrepreneurs who started a bottled water business, a dental clinic, even an American-style diner imported from the U.S. Today, Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Despite the political news, business is good. Real estate is strong. Restaurants, while expensive, are world-class. Major fashion designers have opened shops--even Paris Hilton was there recently promoting something. Even though it's become so cosmopolitan, I got the sense that the incredible energy that I experienced when I was living there is still there. There's still an attitude of "anything is possible". You can still be a big fish in a little pond (even though the pond is not so little anymore) if you're willing to put up with some frustrations and have that "never give up" attitude. It's still so exciting to do business there that many of the Westerners don't think they can leave. Where would they go to find that kind of energy, excitement and potential for success?

Maybe Vietnam! Vietnam reminded me of how Russia was 15 years ago. There's energy in the country that is palpable. I spent most of my time near Da Nang in a town called Hoi An. It's near China Beach. Tourism is booming. There's construction all along the beach. They're even building a major golf course. Cel phones are ubiquitous. Cars are still scarce there--most people get around on mopeds. I saw quite a few men on the phone while riding the moped with 2 children and their wife holding on. Foreigners and Vietnamese alike are investing and developing new businesses around the country. I'll be curious to see where they are 15 years from now. Probably drinking margaritas on the beach in the "next big place", wherever that will be.