Fleeing Vietnam and coming to the United States as a refugee instilled a strong work ethic and drive to succeed in Sonny Vu. As a serial tech entrepreneur, he has started companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars and created countless jobs. Listen to learn how he strives to create “positive, planet-level impact.” We have a full-length video interview from earlier in his career here.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: I’m Denzil Mohammed, and this is JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: Refugees enrich the U.S. People who’ve been through unimaginable tragedy and hardship often know how to be creative and inventive to survive, even in totally foreign lands with totally foreign cultures and languages. Often, as displaced people, they’ve done it at least once before. For Sonny Vu, embracing diversity, change and the unknowns of new knowledge was what his parents instilled in him. Their journey to the U.S., leaving under cover of darkness, sailing below deck to a camp in Malaysia, finally to be resettled in Oklahoma City, meant they were survivors and they embraced the transformational change of life in the U.S., as hard as it was at first. Transformational change is what Sonny is all about today. As a serial entrepreneur and investor, he works across continents to develop new technologies, processes and products that have what he calls positive, planet-level impact. This is impact that makes lives and environments safer and better, which Sonny considers at the core of his faith. And all of this from a guy who studied linguistics, as you’ll discover in this week’s JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: Sonny Vu, welcome to JobMakers!
Sonny Vu: Great to be here, thanks for having me.
Denzil Mohammed: So tell us a little bit about your current company.
Sonny Vu: I’m working with Arevo. We’re an advanced manufacturing technology company based in California and Vietnam, and what we do is we automate the design and manufacturing of carbon fiber composite parts. If you’re not familiar with what composite materials are, they’re materials that are composed of more than one material. And carbon fiber reinforced polymer, so what we do is a mouthful. Carbon fibers are very strong fibers, super strong. It’s an amazingly strong material with polymer, or plastic, coating, like a matrix that it’s in. That’s what makes it solid, otherwise it’s a fiber. So you can make quite a few things from this material. Typically it’s associated with high-end bikes or military aircraft or fancy cars, so it’s typically a premium material. But using software and robotics and automation, we’re able to make it a lot more affordable, and we can make it a lot faster as well.
Denzil Mohammed: But by training you’re not an engineer, you have a degree in Hebrew Linguistics, you worked under Noam Chomksy.
Sonny Vu: Right, right. I’m actually a mathematician by training, and I just happen to like languages, so I worked on a PhD in Linguistics. But yeah, I like science, I like math and anything technology. I do believe a lot of human progress can be made through the vertical progress of technology. As long as we use it well, I think we can be in a good place.
Denzil Mohammed: So how did you make that transition from mathematician, lover of languages, to your first company was a software company, and then you went to medical devices and Misfit Wearables. Tell me about that transition. How is that even humanly possible?
Sonny Vu: Well I’ve always loved studying and I miss academia to be honest, I’d love to go back someday. But I left my PhD program to start my first company where I was doing software to get computers to understand languages, natural language processing software technology. We sold that to a search engine, this was back in, gosh that was a long time ago, 2001. Then did a medical device company serving the diabetes community. We had invented a way to measure blood sugar much faster and more affordably, and so we did that for a number of years. And then we did a wearable technology company, that was Misfit. That was my last company and sold that to Fossil Group. The whole in all of these companies was based on some sort of technological or scientific breakthrough, some invention that we made, whether it was getting computers to understand languages, or making a diagnostic test more accurate and faster and cheaper, or shrinking a technology so that you could wear it on your body. And then for Arevo, this time it’s making something that’s normally very expensive, very valuable because it’s super light and strong, but making it a lot faster and cheaper. And so I’ve always really enjoyed deep tech, technology that has some deep scientific basis to it, and so it’s always been associated with, I guess my curiosity to learn things. So in academics you get to do it all day long, and in the startup world, you have to balance running a business as well as learning new things.
Denzil Mohammed: Guide us through that process of your first company. You said a technological breakthrough is the common thread among your companies, but I imagine it must have been really difficult not having the business savvy.
Sonny Vu: Oh yeah, that was hard. That was hard. I mean, I’d never done business before, I was a PhD student. But I saw a bunch of people do it. I was kind of roped into the MIT $50K, well it’s $100K now I believe, which is an entrepreneurship competition, and we didn’t win, but during that process it taught me how to write a business plan, how to prepare, how to sell things, how to pitch ideas. So I learned a lot doing that, it was a lot of fun. I watched other people do it ’cause they asked me to be the subject matter expert for a few of these projects, and then I said, “well I could do that, doesn’t seem so hard,” and so I gave it a shot and we didn’t win, but we did get funded and started a company and sold the company, so I think it was okay.
Denzil Mohammed: Take us back to your immigrant story. You moved to the U.S. when you were six years old from Vietnam, and you moved to the Midwest. Tell our viewers your story. What prompted that move? I know that your father was incarcerated, right?
Sonny Vu: That’s right. So I was born in Vietnam, my father was at a labor camp for a few years in Vietnam, and after he left we were able to leave the country. So we came to the United States, I guess as refugees in 1979, and I grew up in the U.S., and had very fond memories of Vietnam as a kid, and had always wanted to go back. But I actually grew up here, grew up in the midwest in Oklahoma City, so we made our life here. And then over the years I just fell in love with math and science, and so went to school and just never lost that interest. But I’ve always had a love for my country back in Vietnam and so we actually moved back to Vietnam about six years ago and have been living there for a while. We’re back in the United States now just because it’s a pretty safe place for COVID reasons, but we kind of have a bicontinental existence between Vietnam and the United States.
Denzil Mohammed: Guide me through two things. One, I know you were six years old and obviously you took to schooling here really well, but what was that experience like when you first moved here for you and your family?
Sonny Vu: You know, I was a kid so I had a great time. I didn’t have to go to school and Dad took me swimming all the time, so life was pretty good. But it was pretty tough for my parents obviously, ’cause we had to leave in the cover of darkness and go into a ship down under the deck, and then go to a refugee camp in Malaysia. It’s a pretty typical kind of story from the late 70s, there were a lot of us from Vietnam who came to the United States that way, and other countries in the West. And so we’re not an exception, we’re a part of that era. So my parents definitely struggled. We didn’t have any money and started with nothing, so I’m just grateful, one that we survived, two that we had an incredible host country. You know, we love America. What a great place to be. And Mom worked at Kmart, whatever job she could find, Dad had to redo his board certification. Fortunately, he was able to get his medical degree to be recognized by the U.S. government, and so he didn’t have to redo medical school. He’d been a practicing physician for a couple decades, and fortunately he knew some English, so that helped as well. So he was able to pass his boards, do residency again. So in the early years, I think there’s definitely some struggle for the family. My brother and I, we were just kids, we didn’t know any better, they always provided for us. I mean, we lived modestly for a number of years, but we never lacked anything.
Denzil Mohammed: And I remember you telling me that your father taught you to embrace diversity. Tell me some of the lessons that your parents taught you and how that influenced where you are today. Did they ever engender in you an entrepreneurial spirit of any kind?
Sonny Vu: No, but I would say what they engendered was a spirit of curiosity more than anything. My dad read voraciously and he’s a doctor, but it’s funny, he actually discouraged my brother and I to go into medicine, he didn’t really think it was a very interesting field, at least academically. I mean that’s his opinion, obviously. But the question at home was never, “what kind of grades did you get?” I don’t ever recall my parents asking what kind of grades we got, but my dad always asking, “Hey, did you learn about this yet or did you learn about that yet? Why didn’t they teach you this in school? What do they teach you in school these days, and why haven’t you learned about blah blah blah?” And I told him, “Well, Dad, I’m in third grade, I’m pretty sure you don’t learn that in third grade.” I remember one time I was in a world history class, and it was basically European history. I mean God bless the teacher’s heart, she was an amazing teacher, but the focus really was on European history. It was European history, with a little bit of American history. And then India, China and Africa, we just read it over the holidays, those chapters. I was like, “I’m pretty sure those are pretty important regions of the world.” And I remember my dad asking, “Why don’t you learn more about that? It’s supposed to be called world history, isn’t it?” And so he’s always giving me books to read to supplement, “Okay, you should be reading this. I can’t believe they haven’t yet made you read this yet.” So there was a lot of that. So the biggest sin in our family was not getting bad grades or blowing things up or whatever, they gave us lots of freedom. The biggest thing was not knowing stuff, just like, “Why didn’t you learn this?”
Denzil Mohammed: I find that almost atypical of an immigrant family.
Sonny Vu: Yeah, it’s not typical at all, in fact. And so he actually took me to Hebrew school and he said, “Hey, how about this?” And I said, “That sounds pretty interesting, I’ve never heard of Hebrew or these people, the Jews.” Gave me a book called Exodus by Leon Uris to read about the founding of the state of Israel. I’m like, “This is an amazing book, wow, okay, so let’s do it.” So he actually took me to synagogue as a kid, and we learned Hebrew together, that’s where it all got started.
Denzil Mohammed: So again, atypical that an immigrant family would want to go out of their comfort zone so much.
Sonny Vu: Oh yeah, there was no comfort in the house, that’s for sure [laughs].
Denzil Mohammed: I want to bring it into today with this pandemic and vis-à-vis your company. You’ve previously pointed out that robotics and automation are a key category seeing increased potential, acceleration. How has the pandemic impacted your vision for your business moving forward when it comes to robotics and animation, the fact that robots probably can’t, you know, sneeze on each other?
Sonny Vu: That’s a good point. Well, certainly automation has, I don’t know if it’s gotten a boost, but it’s definitely gotten a second look now that we don’t really want to be in the same buildings with each other unless we have to be, more and more. Although in a post-vaccinated world, things are also changing somewhat back as well. But I’ll just say that the pandemic has only accelerated some of these trends, but we’re drifting towards a multipolar world, a less globalized vision than it used to be, where local manufacturing is not just important economically, but it’s important strategically, where supply security is an issue. Not everyone wants to have their stuff made in China anymore. People want to have stuff made in America, people want to have stuff made in Germany, or wherever you happen to live. Because face it, it’s pretty inefficient to ship things across huge oceans just because labor is cheaper in different parts of the world, right? And so we can eliminate that from the consideration and have local manufacturing. How amazing is that? That’s part of the dream of what’s called additive manufacturing, or using 3D printing techniques as one of the techniques of additive manufacturing, to make things just in times when you need something, you just hit print and you get your thing. And that trend has been started 35 plus years ago and now it’s finally becoming a thing, it’s finally starting to be able to supplant traditional manufacturing techniques. It has a great place in the world, especially moving forward, especially in this multipolar world where trade is more considered, and I wouldn’t say it’s less free flowing, trade will continue to flow, but you can make stuff in America and people kind of prefer that.
Denzil Mohammed: Tell us a little bit about Alabaster, and what is your version of positive, planet-level impact?
Sonny Vu: Yeah, so after our last major exit (it was a great exit, we started the company and sold it in a little less than four years), we wanted to invest in things that could really have a positive, planet-level impact as we say, meaning really affect a lot of people. Misfit was fun, you know, but I felt like I was basically trying to help rich people lose weight. It’s like you know what? We have other problems in this world that we should probably work on, like the environment or poverty or energy. I mean, there’s a lot of really pressing things to work on, so let’s work on those. And so Alabaster was founded, it’s really just our small family office, but we work in conjunction with other venture capitalists and venture firms to invest in what I’ve called deep tech, so technology based in some sort of scientific breakthrough, or some engineering breakthrough that has a needle-changing potential for positive impact. So about 70 percent, a large majority of it was climate change reversal related, so energy, food, new materials, that kind of stuff. So that was a lot of fun, I got to learn a lot about a lot of different areas. And for the last five years, did about 35 investments in these different fields in conjunction with a number of venture firms that were supportive of our mission.
Denzil Mohammed: This is a question that I don’t get to ask a lot of entrepreneurs, but you’ve been very vocal about your Christian faith, and I was wondering what impact does faith have in you as an entrepreneur?
Sonny Vu: We have to ask ourselves why we do things. At the end of the day, why should we care about the environment? Why should we care about our fellow man? Why not look out for number one? And I have to say that for me, the Bible kind of gives a pretty clear outline on how to do what I think is one of the most important things we can do, and that is to love, to do things with great love. If we can succeed in doing that, and I think we’re pretty far ahead, and I feel like this is a world that often lacks in that in a lot of ways. So for me, faith is the nexus of meaning for why I do things, and that’s to glorify God in all I do. If you dug to the core, that’s why. But then again, faith without work is dead, right? So if you do things and you just talk about it, it’s not so interesting. But if you can actually serve your fellow man and make food more plentiful and energy cheaper and clean up the environment, you know, technologies that make a lot of money and make a cleaner, more sustainable world, I mean, how awesome is that? That’s living out your faith, man. That’s exciting. I’d sign up for that. The name Alabaster comes from my favorite story in the Bible where a poor and sinful woman breaks an alabaster jar of perfume over Jesus’ head and basically bathes him in this very expensive perfume that she saved up as an act of worship to him. I just thought it was a beautiful story and I kind of feel like that’s what we do at Alabaster, and that is to pour ourselves out.
Denzil Mohammed: Arguably you’ve been doing God’s work throughout the years by creating meaningful work and jobs for people, improving livelihoods, creating new technologies and products. So really, on behalf of America, I want to thank you for the work that you’ve done. You’ve really added value, and I hope that this idea of immigrants and their entrepreneurial spirit, their job creation, their innovation, really spreads. JobMakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurs produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and The Immigrant Learning Center, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this week’s inspiring story of another immigrant entrepreneur. If you know someone we should talk to, email denzil@jobmakerspodcast.org. Leave us a review on your favorite streaming service, too. I’m Denzil Mohammed. Join us next Thursday at noon for another JobMakers podcast.