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Essay B: What are your career aspirations? How will your education at Stanford help you achieve them? (Recommended length is 2-3 pages, double-spaced)

I want to be an entrepreneur in Vietnam to have the ability to create a better future for new generations of Vietnamese. My parents left Vietnam in the late 1970s knowing that they would be unable to utilize their potential under the newly-formed socialist government. With Vietnam making an attempt to catch up to the rest of the world economically and technologically, I am driven to even out the playing field for young ambitious Vietnamese so that they can fully utilize their potential in competing on an international level.

Based on my passion for and experience in the video game industry, I believe I can achieve this by starting a video game company in Vietnam. With the video game industry there just emerging, the window of opportunity is open right now, and I feel it is the perfect time for me to make an impact. To do so and create a company that will have a long-lasting effect on the landscape of the industry, I will supplement the skills I have learned through working at [former company] and [FORMER COMPANY] with an education at Stanford GSB.

I arrived in Hanoi this past September with the intention of spending the year before going to business school working on my language skills and doing research on the video game industry. Soon after my arrival, however, I was offered a six month contract to work on a project for [FORMER COMPANY] in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. [FORMER COMPANY] emphasizes teamwork above everything, and its employees embrace this to the point that they are willing to sacrifice larger paychecks in order to work among friends in a family atmosphere. I decided to join [FORMER COMPANY] to experience this corporate structure and learn how I could install its values into my future company. Also, I knew that the lessons learned in joining Vietnam’s [] and working internationally with multiple ethnic groups would be invaluable.

The story of parents’ sacrifice to facilitate a better future for their children is a common one throughout the world. Similarly, the team at [FORMER COMPANY] is making sacrifices to provide a better future for Vietnam. The mission here is to legitimize not only the company, but Vietnam as a nation, as an international partner in Information Technology (IT). The project I am currently on is the first major international project that the company has landed. As the team works to meet deadlines, our struggles will help determine the future of Vietnam. If our work quality suffers, [FORMER COMPANY]’s failures will make another company less likely to choose [FORMER COMPANY], and by extension, Vietnam in the future. Therefore, the pressure is on us to make sure the project succeeds so that Vietnam can continue winning other projects. This is the same challenge that countries like China and India have faced, and subsequently passed, in order to continue sustained economic development.

The opportunity to work with [FORMER COMPANY] thus falls in line with my goal of working to benefit Vietnam and has also provided a venue in which to immerse myself in Vietnamese work culture with my Vietnamese coworkers. I am learning what their motivations and hopes are and gaining an understanding of how Vietnamese culture has shaped their lives. This knowledge will be invaluable when I start to hire and manage Vietnamese teams.
My work with [former company] ran the gamut of the company’s life span from its start when it struggled to pay for its employees’ drinking water to its acquisition for [x] six years later. My experience working for the company during this transformation period left a lasting effect on my career aspirations. I developed an understanding of the startup culture and the difficulties that are caused by growth and the changing of business models, as well as how a company can develop from grassroots marketing and small budgets into a mainstream success. With these lessons came the confidence that I could start my own business, install a specific type of company culture, and know the kind of sacrifices that can and often must be made without affecting the overall success of the company.

My work experiences have helped to develop my vision for the company as well as shown me models to follow in terms of organizational behavior, resiliency in the face of crises, and understanding how to motivate people during hardship. However, as much as my experiences at [former company] and [FORMER COMPANY] have helped me understand how to develop my career aspirations and prepared me for those next steps, I believe that the Stanford MBA program will facilitate my abilities to refine my vision, build networking, develop a functional business framework, and provide me with a more complete understanding of the full spectrum of the business world, all of which are vital to my long term success.

My former boss at [former company] told me that the key to the success of a startup is being able to keep it alive, no matter how bad things become. This advice may seem obvious, but the point he was trying to make was that even if you have to cut the company down to a bare existence for a year or two, this is preferable to making one last do-or-die gamble. If one has the patience to wait out a lull and continue looking for opportunities in that time, one would eventually find the right one from which to pull the company out of trouble. This is exactly what happened to [former company] as it stayed slim but afloat during the Silicon Valley crash, eventually seizing opportunities that led to its eventual success. I have taken this lesson to heart and it is this wisdom that keeps me grounded in wanting to enter the highly dynamic but fluctuating Vietnamese market.

This is one reason why I would like to go Stanford for my MBA. I would like to work closely with Professor Charles Halloway because I greatly admire his expertise and experience in entrepreneurial operations, especially as I learn about understanding opportunities and being able to deal with rapidly changing market conditions. I must be prepared and realistic towards the possibility of change in an industry where long term can sometimes be considered as short as two years. This is even more relevant in Vietnam, where emerging industries leave the door open for competition. The more I am able to cope with change, the better I will be able to deal with varying conditions as a leader.

During my time at Stanford, I will focus my curriculum around global management, general management, and entrepreneurial courses. Each of these programs at the GSB is highly regarded worldwide, and this is why the GSB compliments my existing skills.

With my goals based around video gaming/technology, entrepreneurship, and Vietnam, remaining in the Bay Area for school makes perfect sense as it will keep me in close proximity to Silicon Valley, investment firms, and a large local community of Vietnamese-Americans. Developing connections within the Vietnamese-American community will give me access to other businessmen who have experience in Vietnam as well as potential investors. Utilizing these assets will be imperative in order to learn how to be successful in a country whose government is still struggling to meet Western standards of business transparency.

When I evaluate my success, I look first to understand what impact I have had on those around me, whether professionally or personally. Empowering my teammates/coworkers in order to succeed on a larger scale was my overarching goal at [former company], and I will continue this in my future ventures. To get a more intimate feel of Stanford GSB, I read every student blog I could find to acquire a sense of the impact that the GSB had on students’ lives. For some students, I even got to read about their application process and see why they eventually decided on Stanford. The overriding theme that I extracted was that the students at GSB felt united in their mission to develop cooperatively. The people I was reading about were hopeful, energetic, modest, and caring about other students. In this way, I am attracted to the GSB because the students I will meet there are the type of people that I will want to start a company with and from whom I will most enjoy learning.

At GSB, the rhetoric implies that we’re on a mission to Change the World. Ideas are powerful execution: key. And I believe the rhetoric.

Like the GSB student who wrote the above snippet in her blog, I believe I can change the world in helping to create a better Vietnam. My company will emphasize teamwork and camaraderie among its employees, pushing them to believe they can have a positive affect on the company as well as their country. Each success for the company will be a success for Vietnam. We will lead the company together. My experience at [former company] and [FORMER COMPANY] has taught me fundamental lessons on how I can do this, but my education at Stanford GSB will complement my existing knowledge with the skills and wisdom I need to execute my vision.

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