Despite having strong passion and great ideas for startup activities, young startupers are still in need of active support from business incubators.

In addition to good ideas, startup projects are in need of active support from business incubators to gain success.

In the entrepreneurial network, business incubators are institutions that help entrepreneurs to develop their business, especially in the initial stages of their operation, by providing them with advisory and administrative support services. Thereby, startupers’ great ideas will be turned into finished products.

Da Nang’s Songhan Incubator is a typical example. The business incubator is contributing in building up a solid network infrastructure to support startups and entrepreneurs, not only in Da Nang, but also in the central region, as well as in creating a wide startup ecosystem in the whole nation.

Since its operation in early 2017, the Songhan Incubator has nurtured and helped many startups do their business successfully. Most notable of them is the ‘Liberzy’ start-up project.

Developed by 31-year-old Truong Duc Thang, a social networking site named ‘Liberzy’ at https://www.facebook.com/liberzy/ offers travel lovers smart tools to help them create and share their own travel schedules, maps, and experience.

Mr Thang said the idea of developing this useful social networking site came from his strong passion for travel. However, he did not know how to turn his idea into reality until he met with Mr Ly Dinh Quan, the CEO of the Songhan Incubator who gave him useful advice and active support.

After that, Mr Thang brought his project to compete in a municipal-level startup contest, and it received much attention from some investors. However, the investors hesitated to invest in a completely-new project.

Thanks to active support from the Songhan Incubator, Mr Thang then contacted a domestic angle investor to implement the project.

Since it was put into operation in June 2017, ‘Liberzy’ has drawn a huge attention of the youth because Liberzy has provided useful information for those who love travelling and discovering new destinations and untouched places in Viet Nam, especially in Da Nang.

Also being a successful startup project at the Songhan Incubator, ‘Ucom’ is a mobile app which connects home cooks with their customers.

The Ucom project, which is literally translated as ‘mom’s meals’ was developed by Truong Huu Phu after he found that he missed home cooking when he was away from his hometown in Quang Nam Province to study at a university in Da Nang.  

Phu said he was very lucky at meeting with the Songhan Incubator’s CEO Quan and some startup experts who supported him to develop his ideas, seek his customers, and learn about customers’ needs.

To date, Ucom has served more than 500 meals in total to customers. The project was introduced to more than 20 investors at the national innovation and start-up festival Techfest 2018 in Da Nang in a bid to appeal for even more investment, thus expanding the project’s scale.

CEO Quan remarked startupers, especially young people, are very eager to do startup activities as they have great ideas. However, as they start to do their business, they face many difficulties and they are lack of cooperation skills and creative thinking. Therefore, it was easy to talk themselves into giving up.

He added, therefore, the Songhan Incubator was founded with the aim of promoting the development of Viet Nam’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and incubating entrepreneurial talents nationwide.