Reflections and Lessons from My 10-Week Antler Vietnam Residency
It’s a surreal feeling when a good thing comes to an end.
For the past 10 weeks, I was back in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and worked day-in-day-out at the Antler Vietnam office.
That’s right. I took part of Antler Vietnam’s sixth residency (VN6, as they call it).
It was our first step into fully committing to building LFG, along with my co-founder Foo Shi Hong.
LFG is on a mission to bring personalized travel recommendations for your next trip, enabling you to explore curated travel content, organize ideas, book trips, and craft itineraries - all in one place.
We made it to the very end as the Top 10 teams - getting through two pre-elimination rounds (somewhat like Shark Tank) before presenting to the regional investment committee (IC).
Though we didn’t get the final “yes” [for pre-seed funding] from the regional team, it’s certainly not the end of the world… at least not for us at LFG.
Regardless, it was an amazing journey. And I’d love to share some of my thoughts out loud here. Feel free to dive into this if you yourself were an Antler founder and feel like reminiscing the good (or so to say.. intense) days; or, if you are curious about joining the residency yourself if you have an idea, and/or are looking for a co-founder to make a dent in the universe with.
Everything you do or don’t do matters
They told us this on the very first day, and honestly, I think most of us didn’t really get it at the time. Some even mocked it. But as we went through the program, it became clear that what we didn’t do mattered just as much.
Time is limited. At first, a 10-week residency sounds like a solid period. Initially, we got excited to socialize, meet new people, and test ideas in the bootcamp pitches. However, we eventually realized mid-program that we were just distracting ourselves.
To be honest, we were a bit stuck with LFG’s direction at that time. We had gathered some traction and insights from our beta launch but weren’t entirely clear on the next steps. So, we called off the distractions and spent about two weeks just talking to users, both existing and new, and crystallizing our direction. We shared our findings with the Antler partners, our advisors, got feedback, and quickly went back to work for the final elimination weeks.
This was when things got real and when we felt we were truly working on something incredible. Maybe we should have focused on this from the beginning. At the same time, we didn’t regret the chance to work with others, as we were scouting for additional founding members who aligned with our vision.
A founding relationship is like marriage
You’ll hear this countless times.
Although Shi Hong and I have known each other since 2022 and worked together since then, this was the first time we spent almost 3 months working directly in person, seeing each other nearly 24 hours a day—breakfast, lunch, dinners, late-night discussions, and DOTA2 sessions (for de-stressing, of course).
The Antler program was a blessing as it brought us to truly understand how we can work together in the long run. We observed and understood each other's working styles in internal product meetings, strategic alignment conversations, and discussions with external parties. We now have a stronger bond and can essentially call each other brothers beyond working colleagues.
Founders only have 2 tasks in the early stage
Founders have 2 tasks in the early stage:
Proof with revenue or customers that their idea could likely workout
Don’t let the company die before that
We learnt very quickly in the program that focusing on optimizing, improving, double checking, reconfirming, debating about un-launched products is almost never the most productive use of time.
And so, during our 2 weeks of pure user engagement, launching something as quick as possible (for our case it was Figma demo of our next iteration) and then talking personally to our users as much as possible to learn brought us the most value to then go home and improve your product. And yes, we are still alive.
The trough of sorrow is REAL
I’m sure most of us in the startup space have seen this diagram before…
If you haven’t, most startup founders can tell you how real it is. It’s almost inevitable, like Thanos (here’s to the Marvel fans out there).
For the most part of Antler, we definitely went through the loop of thinking, “Aw hell, not looking so good,” to “Maybe…? Finally??”.
I started to realize how tough and lonely the founder journey actually is. Being in a residency with people in the same boat brought a sense of comfort. We went through this challenging but rewarding journey together, learned from each other’s experiences, bounced ideas off one another, and built a sense of camaraderie.
Just keep building
When we got to the end of the Antler journey, many in the residency either dropped out or got eliminated. Of course, we start to question ourselves: “What happens if we get cut? Or we don’t make it to the end?”
Upon self-reflection, and seeing others around me, I’ve realized that if you truly believe in your idea and your founding team, you just continue building regardless of any outcome. Antler or no Antler. Funding or no funding.
And that’s exactly what we are doing at LFG.
No, we didn’t get the fund. Not because we’re incapable. While we had the backing of the Antler Vietnam team, the overall regional partners didn’t see the potential at the time.
And that’s fine.
It doesn’t matter to us. What’s important is that Shi Hong and I, as founders of LFG, both see the enormous opportunities to adapt to this new age of consumerism and transform how travel decisions and purchases are made with the next generation of travelers.
And so we beat on, boats against the current, continuing to say: “Let’s f*ing go.”
Thanks for reading,
D. Han
It's been a RIDE! Still rooting for you and LFG. Keep on building 🔥