In a first-of-its-kind conference at Palo Alto, California last week, hundreds of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and technologists came together to discuss the rapidly growing technology market in Vietnam, a country labeled by some as Asia's new "Roaring Tiger." Participants ranged from Google representatives to Ho Chi Minh City start-up executives to even officials from Vietnam's Communist government, who flew in to pitch their country - and throw a few elbows at their big next-door rival, China. Vietnam, with a population of 84 million, is currently the second-fastest growing economy in Asia (China being the first, naturally) and expects economic growth of 9% this year.
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People need to understand there is an investment alternative in Asia, and it's Vietnam," said Huy Do, chairman and president of the relatively new Vietnamese Strategic Ventures Network, which organized the conference. The conference, expected to become an annual event, highlights the growing reconnection between Silicon Valley's Vietnamese community and the Communist country: many of the Bay Area's Vietnamese inhabitants fled their native land after Saigon fell to Communist forces in 1975. However, younger Vietnamese-Americans are now hoping to cash in on the new Vietnam the way Indians, Chinese and Taiwanese have done in their respective homelands. Now there are so many Vietnamese-Americans and others heading to Vietnam, "
it almost feels like a gold rush," said Ross Meador, a Berkeley-based attorney who specializes in international law and Vietnam.
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