“I want to tell everyone it is NOT EASY. For all the folks in the restaurant/food business, I respect you and take my hat off to you.”

Tony’s current passion projects include helping to bring popularity to Vietnamese coffee in the United States and guiding the next generation of young, ambitious entrepreneurs to realize their full potential. 

He is married to his lovely wife Van Lam and has two sons named Damon and Andy. His son Andy is on the spectrum (ASD), “Raising an autistic child has many challenges and requires a lot of patience. These kids have a special place in my heart.” Because of this, he is currently working closely with Linda Nguyen, founder Laugh Out Loud with Autism Foundation (LOLA) whom he got connected through the Asian Hustle Network (AHN), “Much respect for this beautiful human being for having a BIG heart. We need more compassionate leaders like her in this world.” he said. 

Known for being a successful serial entrepreneur, Tony shared his successes and his humble beginnings and challenges that made him the hustler he is today. 

Escaping Vietnam

My story began 45 years ago from today. During the Fall of Saigon (April 30th, 1975), I was only 3 months old when my family fled on a tiny boat to the US. My father was one of the Naval captains of the South Vietnam government. 

My mother had just given birth to me and they had to make the difficult decision: Should they stay, or should they go with a 3-month-old baby and risk death by the communist government? They made the decision to drop everything they had and took a chance on a better life into the unknown. 

My grandma, aunts, uncles, and cousins left everything behind and boarded the boat. My father to this day still has nightmares of the harrowing escape.

A Fresh Start

My family was refugees in the Philippines for about 6 months. Not knowing what would happen, my family prayed hard and God answered our prayers. We were sponsored by an American family through Catholic Charities.

This American family took in a total of 6 of us, gave us a roof over our heads, put food on the table, and gave my family support for a couple of years to survive. My “sponsored grandparents” are now angels in heaven, but their kids whom I called Aunt Kim and Uncle John still live in southern California and we still communicate every so often. My family is grateful to their parents’ kindness and open heart to take in complete strangers into their homes.

My family would move to the Bay Area a few years later for a fresh start. My brother and sister were born, and we quickly became a family of 5. My father got his AA degree from San Jose City College and his trade was being a technician fixing medical devices for hospitals while my mother worked as an assembly worker.

Building Blocks That Lead To Success

I remember growing up in a poor neighborhood, teased by classmates for being Asian. Racism did exist at an early age for me but I did not let it bother me.

I remember my parents giving me a $100 allowance to buy enough clothes every year during my middle and high school years. So no, I did not grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, but I was grateful for what I had. I got decent grades but was not smart by all means in high school.

I attended California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) where I got my business degree. My dream was to open a business one day but I didn’t know at the time what it would be. My first job out of college was at Cisco Systems (’97). I worked for corporate for way too long (14 years). I was a workaholic working 60-70 hr. weeks to save up money to start a family one day.

I should mention that this all would not have been possible without the love and support of my wife. I met my beautiful wife Van Lam through a college friend. We chatted for 3 months via Yahoo Messenger, fell in love, and married her one year later in Vietnam. We have two boys (Damon – 10 yrs. old and Andy – 7 yrs. old)

While I was working at Cisco, I discovered my first hustle (Wingstop) and the many more that would follow after leaving the company.

The Serial Entrepreneur

Wingstop Franchisee — for 5 Locations (San Jose, Milpitas, Fremont, Union City) in the Bay Area for over 3 decades.

COOP Marketing President — for 50 Wingstop in the Bay Area instrumental in inking the deal with the GS Warriors and becoming “The Official Wings of the Golden State Warriors” since 2015

Omni Bev Co-founder — the first company to have an RTD (Ready to Drink) Vietnamese cold brew with condensed milk on the market with a shelf life of over 6 months. Its coffee beans are imported directly from Da Lat. They also serve nitro cold brew!

Mavens Creamery Shark Tank Winner — a macaron ice cream place that started in a 400 sq. ft. garage, expanded to 300 venues, and 4 years later struck a Shark Tank deal on TV with Barbara Corcoran. 

alaMar Kitchen & Bar Co-Owner — voted the Best Seafood Restaurant in Oakland by Oakland Magazine in 2020, was also featured in the Michelin Guide for 3 years, and on KQED

Okashi Fusion Co-Owner — with a 4.8/5 star rating on Yelp reviewed by 710 customers, is the  “BEST POKE in town with the BEST desserts” as Tony describes.

VitaBowl Board Advisor & Investor — a premium on-demand delivery brand that serves locally sourced, vegetarian, superfood meals and beverages. Tony teamed up with Charles Michael Yim through Asian Hustle Network, who also struck a deal on Shark Tank. Charles has assembled an A-team of talent, “I am honored to be working with these guys. Together, we have started a new company VitaBowl.” he expressed.

Enterprise Purchasing Group Co-Owner — a group purchasing organization that leverages the combined volume of many e-commerce businesses to secure exclusive programs with major shipping carriers (USPS, UPS, DHL, FEDEX) for both domestic and international destinations. “Our team has saved 10’s of millions for many customers spending in the range of $10K to $70M+ to date,” Tony added, “If you ship at least 50 orders a day domestically, we can surely help you with saving with our program.”

A Few Hurdles That Turned Into Bigger Opportunities

When IOS apps were just coming out in 2011, my partner and I created a booking app called Chimpped, which allows users to book with all your service providers (e.g. your dentist, doctor, kid’s activities, restaurant, etc.). One and a half years later, we closed down our business because we ran out of money and did not get enough traction. The “high tuition” I had to pay through this failure allowed me to consult with other app companies.

The apps KEA, Nextforce, and WorkStream have gone through Series-A funding and 1 Seed round. The seeds have been planted, just waiting on fruits to grow.

What Is Next For Tony Lam? 

Tony wants to dedicate his time to the special needs / autistic community and provide resources such as jobs and career-building services.

He is also planning on launching Andy’s cafe where a large portion of the staff hires will be from the special needs community. The plan is to launch this in 2023 in California. If successful, he would like to open 100 of these in the next 5 years to give the special needs community a safe place to work and be able to socialize with people

Lastly, Tony is planning on starting up a PE fund to invest in startup CPG companies.

Advice To Aspiring Entrepreneurs

• Surround yourself with mentors and successful entrepreneurs. Join a support network of folks that bring positive energy
• Write up a business plan so that you have done the research before venturing out
• Have 18 months of the runway of savings to cover your expenses while you launch your company

You can reach Tony at tony@launchyourfirst.com

Some business owners spend years building a company only to see it fail before it even takes off. How are you going to survive and cope? Will you just give up that dream business?

We all know that life as an entrepreneur is complex, but once you hit it, everything falls into place. Following the example of 27-year-old Thai entrepreneur Vanessa Techapichetvanich as she trusted the process and waited for the right moment to reap the benefits of her efforts.

Read through as Vanessa shares her story with the AHN community about building her passion-driven business Jamulogy, a 100% plant-based Indonesian herbal tonic. She discusses her struggles that almost made her give up, and what kept her going in order to reach her successes today.

Hitting Rock Bottom At The Very Start

2 years ago, I poured all my life’s savings into building Jamulogy. I raised quite a significant amount of funding through families and angel investors, built my first factory from scratch, and lost over $1M, due to the pandemic and an over-prioritization of FoodTech R&D.

I was devastated. This tremendous loss was beyond tragic. I was at the point where I wondered whether it was stupid for me to leave my high pay corporate job only to lose all my savings along with a sum of money from my investors.

What am I going to feed myself tomorrow? What will my employees do when they lose their job? How will I regain all the money I’ve lost? How will it affect women founders’ reputation in the startup ecosystem?

These questions and my desperation kept me wide awake at night for months. I was distressed, depressed, and hopeless. It was one of the lowest moments of my life.  

It also made me realize that when someone says “life as an entrepreneur is tough”, it is very much an understatement. You’re pretty much living on the edge 24/7, giving your 10000% best while success isn’t guaranteed.

Shedding Some Light On Untapped Opportunities

I almost gave up. I would have.. had I not coincidentally connected with someone from AHN who is in the import and export business. One really good thing about this group is you have people from everywhere around the globe, and they are able to share insightful expertise on some stuff you’re not familiar with. 

I joined AHN more than a year ago when Facebook suggested the group to me. One day, I saw some people posted about expanding their food products to big retailers like Walmart, Wholefoods, and Costco, and from there, I got to connect with someone from San Francisco who works for a national distributor company in the US, and that’s how Jamulogy’s products entered the US market. 

This encounter shed some light on untapped opportunities and calls for a pivot in our business model. And I have been rebuilding since January. Despite the adversity I have been put through, this journey has been my greatest teacher yet.

I’m proud to share that Jamulogy is now available in 5 countries worldwide, including the US, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Jamulogy has also recently “graduated” from Southeast Asia’s biggest FoodTech accelerator program. 

Transforming Traditional And Holistic Drinks Into Recipes Of Yummy 

Jamulogy was born out of my passion for a healthy lifestyle and my dream to bring Asian pride to the global stage. My mother is Indonesian, and I was introduced to Jamu when I was 5. The word “Jamu” itself means herbs in Indonesian. Sadly, our generation in Asia has overlooked these Indonesian herbal drinks that have over 1,300 years of history as they often associate herbal blends with older people.

Using modern food tech and all-natural non-GMO ingredients, we aim to recreate traditional Indonesian Jamu as a way to restore health to modern consumers. We are also committed to debunking the myth that healthy food tastes terrible.

Our concept is “From farm to bottle,” and we take every opportunity to support local farmers & growers around Asia. Each bottle contains only 40-80 calories without cane sugar or highly processed ingredients.

Going forward, we are also diverging our product offerings into herbal powder mix to cater to different consumer lifestyles across the world. 

Inspiration To Keep Going and Work Harder

What inspires me the most are our customers. I received all sorts of feedback from customers, both positive and negative. Whenever I hear our customers telling us how our products have created a value-adding impact on their health and life, I can’t help but smile to myself. 

But of course, we also received negative feedback and complaints, which I got a lot of value from as those have helped us improve, adjust, and create even better products for our customers. Truth be told, we have experimented with over 150 recipes. It was a struggle at the start, but “fall seven times, get up eight.” 

It’s the joy of being able to create a positive impact in society that keeps me going. 

Advice To Aspiring Entrepreneurs

1. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. 
2. Do not let your failures define who you are, but do learn from them. Every successful person I know has gone through several major failures before they get to where they are today.
3. Surround yourself with like-minded people. I can’t stress enough the importance of this. 

For me, the most important traits of being an entrepreneur are a growth mindset and adaptability. It’s not about who has the most brilliant ideas or who has the highest IQ, but more so who adapts the quickest to fit the market’s needs and customers’ expectations. 

Connect With Vanessa

You may check out our IG/FB at @drinkjamulogy.

If you’re just starting an F&B business or planning on exporting to Asia and want some advice, feel free to reach out as well. I’ll try my best to answer

Laxman Narasimhan, a seasoned executive with extensive experience in the consumer products industry, will succeed Howard Schultz as CEO of Starbucks.

Over the course of over 30 years, Narasimhan has led and advised several international consumer-facing companies. 

When he joined the consumer goods company Reckitt, it dealt with a cyber attack, a botched product launch, production problems, and a lackluster performance from its core brands. The company’s shareholders were very appreciative of Narasimhan’s three years as CEO, during which the company’s performance returned to levels that were considered to be sustainable.

Mellody Hobson, who chairs the board at Starbucks, also lauded Narasimhan as an “inspiring leader” who will contribute to the company’s expansion. Schultz also said that Narasimhan’s ideas would be fundamental to Starbucks as it builds on its past in this new era of greater well-being.

In the past, Narasimhan has also held executive positions at PepsiCo and McKinsey, in addition to his current role as a trustee at the Brookings Institute in Washington, District of Columbia. 

Narasimhan spent her younger years in India, but he came to the United States to earn a master’s degree and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania (MBA). He is also proficient in three Indian languages English, Spanish, and German. The Indian languages of Hindi, Tamil, and Malayalam.

He will now be fully immersed in Starbucks over the next few months as he works and learns the plan that former CEO Schultz put in place during his brief third tenure at Starbucks. During this transitional period, Narasimhan will travel to various stores and factories to monitor the expansion and performance.

In a statement, Narasimhan remarked on how the company’s recent “reinvention” and investments in its partner and customer experiences had positioned it to meet the shifting demands of the present and prepare it for an even brighter future.

“Everyone has tried to tell our stories on film and television, but they are inaccurate because the producers, directors, and storytellers haven’t lived it.”  — Thuc Doan Nguyen described the other filmmakers who wanted to finance her upcoming film but were never satisfied with what they could do for her story.

Nguyen was eager to continue working on her script “Scent of the Delta,” a semifinalist at the 2020 film festival that will shortly be filmed. Carrie, a multiracial lady in New Orleans, is caught between two cultures. The narrative discusses anti-Asian prejudice, Asian sex workers’ misery, human trafficking victims, and Vietnamese patriarchal standards.

This gave Nguyen focus and purpose, and she became a screenwriter. Her first assignment in New Orleans showed her how misunderstood the Vietnamese population was. She cited her family’s terrifying refugee experiences and which fueled her desire and determination to do more.

Nguyen’s initial career path never involved writing. As a 3-year-old, she was entrusted to churchwomen, whom she refers to as her American grandmothers, because her family did not speak English when they immigrated to the United States. Her family relocated to southern Maryland with new employment opportunities awaiting her parents.

Since Nguyen had already made it to the semi-finals of the 2022 festival and Sundance Film Institute had expressed interest in the script, she decided to push forward with the project. She anticipated additional difficulties and major setbacks while adapting the screenplay into a film. Vietnamese-American producers had expressed interest in funding the film, but she knew they were missing the mark. 

She believes that the production team and actors cast by the producers will not complement her story. Because of this, she has made a life-changing choice. She declined a $5 million sponsorship offer for her film and decided to make it herself. As a result of her discernment, she was able to meticulously plan out the production of the film version of the story that she envisioned. 

Her film will be developed and directed by her team and a well-known production. She chose Le Ly Haslip, who wrote Oliver Stone’s “Heaven and Earth,” and Maria Judice, a science-fiction film producer. 

Nguyen wants the audience to comprehend the genuine narrative behind her writing, as shared by people who experienced it. The film’s shooting is set to get underway in Louisiana in 2023.

This upcoming fall, she was also nominated for the 2022 Gold Fellowship Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences due to her continued perseverance and incredible creative work.