Are you joining meetups for entrepreneurs in Saigon?
Since Saturday 14th of November 2020, I started to organize a series of meetups for entrepreneurs in Saigon. This article is the opportunity for me to share more details about my intentions with these past events, what people thought about it!
Small group, like-minded people and insighful conversations for entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs from different horizons can learn from each other by shifting their own perspectives:
- Because someone in IT can give great advise to another entrepreneur in retail and vice-versa.
- Because a young 6 month old entrepreneur can bring fresh inputs and useful value to a serial entrepreneur who has 10 years of experiences.
The goal was to open some general topics, see if anyone was interested in sharing some issues they are facing and what others had to say about it. I had prepared some ice-breakers and some questions to facilitate this meet-up between entrepreneurs.
My only expectation was to gather a small group of people to have a discussion about our entrepreneur’s journey and daily challenges. I wasn’t targetting a specific kind of entrepreneurs nor any specific field.
One last thing about the preparation of this event: I organized it in 1920 Prohibition Bar. It was the opportunity for us to have a quiet space upstairs, with comfortable chairs and sofas in order to discuss. And then, after our conversations, we could move at the bar downstairs and enjoy their large selection of drinks and food and talk in smaller groups, more like in any networking events happening in HCMC at the moment.
Program and details of this meetup for entrepreneurs in Saigon:
This first meetup, 15 people showed up. Not just my friends, but a lot of people I’ve never met before who heard about my event. What a great news! I am also grateful that a mix of local entrepreneurs and foreigners came, with different activities and experiences.
We discussed during one hour and a half. From introducing ourselves to the group, to opening conversations about which book we recommend and entrepreneurs problems, we had a great conversation that everybody could be interested in and follow.
Some of the topics we covered:
- How to set up your prices when you are just starting,
- How to present your products or services better,
- We also discussed branding, value proposition, product development and sales.
What are the feedback I received?
The main thing was about benefits and results. While some entrepreneurs actually liked to have conversations with other like-minded people, some other would have prefer to even go deeper into some topics and learn even more.
Some entrepreneurs questionned the benefits someone could get from such type of events. For example, having a group conversation is alright with 15 people, but the day 40 people come, it’s going to be harder to listen to everyone and have a clear conversation.
So my focus for meetups for entrepreneurs in Saigon is to keep the group small and the conversation generic so the topic can be useful for the largest number of participants.