Hien said VTS is a plan he nurtured for many years. Leaving Vietnam for the US at the end of the 11th grade, Hien spent two years of study at Everett Community College and then studied business at the University of Washington (Seattle).

After that, Hien spent his internship at Vietnam Airlines, Russell Investments and Amazon.

Recalling the internship, Hien said the nine months of probation at Amazon was the most memorable time for him and sparked his interest in technology.

“At Amazon, people work very fast and the requirements for work quality are high,” he said, explaining why he worked at Amazon after graduation for five years.

During that time, Hien had a plan on building a community of Vietnamese people who help each other. This started by having lunch together every two weeks at Amazon Spheres.

At first, Hien emailed predecessors at Amazon whom he knew and invited them to lunch. 

“It was just an opportunity for Vietnamese in the US to hear other people speaking Vietnamese, see other people eating Vietnamese food and talk with Vietnamese people who also have the ‘American dream’,” Hien said. “The greatest thing left after every lunch was that our hearts become warm amid the cold life in the US.”

After leaving Amazon in 2019, Hien decided to establish VTS in June 2020 which aims to connect and develop the Vietnamese community in the field of technology.

“VTS operates as a technology startup. In the first three months, VTS met students and workers to find out the difficulties they face in the process of studying and working in the US,” Hien said.

“Everyone understands the importance of networking and mentoring, but they hesitate to practice these things as they thought it would be time consuming and ineffective,” he said.

VTS therefore spent nine months to develop TechSphere “on-demand mentorship with a teacher or leader”.

TechSphere made debut in April 2022 which supports students and workers to find jobs in the field of technology. Mentees can create accounts, choose the mentors and book meetings within several minutes.

“I want to be sure that when using the platform, mentors would feel that their time is respected by mentees and they could see the influences from their contribution,” Hien said.

The product is developed by VTS for free. However, if mentees don’t appear at mentorship meetings, they would see their accounts being blocked for one month for the first time. If they repeat, their accounts would be blocked forever.

After five trial months and two months of official operation, TechSphere has attracted 600 registrants, 30 mentors, 300 calls and 10,000 minutes of talks. Ten individuals have got invitations for full-time jobs and internship from many technology firms in the US.

“I am a dreamer. I always ask myself: Why do clients have such problems? why don’t we do something to help their lives become better?” Hien said.

During five years working at Amazon, he could not define his passion until he ‘did something’, for example, running VTS. Hien has realized that his passion is to turn ideas into reality.

“If you just dream and do nothing, you will never find your passions. Let's get to work, do anything, big or small. During the process, you'll discover your passion," he said.

Phuc Hai