Hi from a bus traveling from Hanoi, Vietnam to Ha Long Bay —
When I travel, I want to reset. I want to forget what I think “normal” is. I want to come back with better questions and reconsider everything.
You need to be fully pulled out of your surroundings to get there. I’m glad my coworkers force me to take breaks like this from building. I can get so into building that it’s the only thing in the world that matters to me.
The world is full of people in cities and countries that have been shaped by centuries of defining moments: war, civil unrest, technological breakthroughs, stratosphere-impacting wins, and monumental losses. These events are inevitable.
In Vietnam, you’re surrounded by the incredible clash between traditional and modern.
I shot this in Hanoi walking to a med spa where little to no English was spoken & beauty was the only universal language needed for an awesome experience
It’s visible on every street corner, where buildings piled on each other are modest family homes with no furniture, and the women of the household are preparing traditional Vietnamese noodles.
This is right next door to a trendy matcha shop (think: cha cha matcha vibes but actually cool + reasonably priced).
Men gather every night until the early hours of the morning outside local spots perched on mini stools; laughing loudly, yapping away and tasting every traditional bite in sight.
Example: The first company I ever built was a B2B2C beauty software startup. Years later, I still test med spas in every country I visit. In Hanoi, our original product thesis is thriving: as estheticians increasingly specialize by service, salons become more fragmented (a stark contrast to tradition).
Traditional salons: Three staffers can do everything: brows, nails, massage, lashes. Skills are passed down, and it feels familial, improvisational, and looks deeply local
Modern salons: Each specialist is hyper-focused; microblading, mink lash extensions, lymphatic drainage, etc.
Here’s what to consider as you build: When is “innovation” just imported B.S., shiny, shallow, and marketing? When is “tradition” an excuse for stagnation and risk aversion? The line between the two is rarely as clear as we think.
So how do you root your product in something familiar that builds trust without getting stuck in the past? How do you use tradition to earn the right to innovate?
As someone who’s usually allergic to tradition in startups (rules = no thanks), this newsletter is a very untraditional POV for me. But it’s stuck with me and I think there’s something powerful here.
Most of you reading are CEOs, CMOs, VCs, and builders, so reply and lmk your take.
Part 1: Why You Should Care About Anchoring in Tradition
The Hanoi business marketplace holds tradition as an anchoring source of pride, starkly balanced with innovation as a survival skillset.
Radical innovation that ignores tradition will fail here.
The most successful businesses here, especially in tech, consumer goods, and beauty, are those that clearly root themselves in the familiar, even as they disrupt the norm. Winners understand:
Humans crave familiarity
Anchoring a product in tradition = feeling of safety and legitimacy
Social proof is everything
Business is tight-knit, relationship-driven = products that feel too unrelatable can trigger rejection = loss of social proof
Making your product appear as an evolution of something traditional = can more easily create a snowball effect of acceptance (because what’s trad has already been accepted)
Emotional resonance is king
Making your product culturally meaningful = massive growth accelerator (word of mouth, virality, loyalty, etc.)
Example of anchoring in tradition as a launchpad for innovation: My friend, Cassie, whom I’m traveling with throughout Vietnam, is a Chief Nursing Officer. It’s a huge job that oversees 3K+ nurses across hospital systems.
During the COVID shortage of nurses, she pivoted back to a 1980s playbook and brought back LPNs — Licensed Practical Nurses, who have a lower skillset than other Registered Nurses, and are there phasing out as tech increases in medicine.
To increase bandwidth for higher-skilled nurses, they had to bring back what was old (LPNs), reshape it to fit the existing, new hospital system, and integrate it into a workforce that had never worked under this structure.
This impacted millions of people, from those receiving care to workers in all areas of the medical field, to suppliers providing equipment and tools (e.g., more people = more scrubs needed).
By leaning on tradition, Cassie unlocked creative, resilient solutions for future healthcare crises:
Talent pool expansion
Flexible staffing structures
Dynamic, faster responses
Efficient resource allocation
When used correctly, tradition is a strategic lever for quick implementation and real change in new operating methods. This doesn’t mean it’s a permanent fixation, but a strong lever when used correctly.
For B2B customers, anchoring in tradition can also make selling into legacy industries (e.g. lots of family owned businesses, etc) easier.
Part 2: How You Can Use Tradition-First Innovation to Drive Faster Adoption
Walk through any Vietnamese city and you’ll notice shops often look alike, from coffee stands to beauty salons. Everyone here is recycling similar businesses with small tweaks, whether it's a better recipe or a more compelling one-liner to sell.
The result is a marketplace where competition is cutthroat (aka a reason why you can barter), but the barrier to entry is low, encouraging constant iteration and crafty hustle.
On one hand:
Isn’t this what we’re also seeing with businesses that wrap themselves around Chat GPT? Are they just wrapping existing cultural patterns/behaviors in new UX?
We can also look at it from the POV of all the other inputs being the differentiator to innovation (e.g., marketing, positioning, UIUX)
Contrary to the stereotype of risk-averse tradition, Vietnam’s entrepreneurial scene is surprisingly very tolerant of risk, especially when it’s grounded in something familiar. The willingness to experiment, fail, and try again is baked into the culture, supported by:
Tight family safety nets
Community networks
A cultural bias towards trial and error
How Tradition Launches and Shapes Vietnamese Innovation
Tradition-Rooted Practice | Modern Innovation Outcome | What It Breeds in Vietnam |
Family business succession | Side hustles, new business models | High rates of entrepreneurship, flexibility for risk |
Copycat shop formats | Incremental product improvements | Fierce competition, rapid iteration |
Community trade networks | Tech enabled commerce (e.g. Apple Pay) | Fast adoption, viral growth |
Risk-tolerant culture (within bounds) | Experimentation, resilience, social bonding | Strong pipeline of constant reinvention follow an acceptance of failure |
As you build, you can use tradition-first innovation to drive faster adoption.
Example: I have a friend who started a fintech company Baselayer that helps businesses avoid fraud by automating KYB checks (“know your business” = verifying a business is legit before working w/ them). It assigns businesses a real-time risk score, essentially a “trustworthiness ranking” based on live data.
Everyone intuitively understands ranking systems: scores, green/yellow/red, voting on Love Island, hot or not
This product merges the universal language of rankings with a faster, automated approach to the traditionally slow and manual KYB process. E.g., instead of waiting weeks for paperwork to be reviewed, banks and entrepreneurs get immediate trust signals, making it easier for even risk-averse institutions to adopt.
Well, How’d I Do?
Great products can accelerate adoption and dominate markets by anchoring in traditional structures, themes and concepts in a way that increases innovation. Familarity lowers friction, tradition builds trust, and anchoring in something known/accepted gives you a constant baseline.
We always talk about breaking things in the startup world, but, because of the above, when you anchor in tradition, it actually makes what you’re breaking and looking to disrupt even more compelling.
Anchoring in tradition allows you to take risk in other areas. Go do it!!! Take an epic swing because you’ve built a foundation people understand.
In other news, I have some exciting, cool updates that I’m finally ready to spill over the next few weeks.
I can’t believe we are already halfway through July. My laptop is slippery from the humidity as I finish this at 5:30AM in the middle of the Gulf of Tonkin, the northwestern part of the South China Sea (@Tyler I wonder if I’m the first person to use Beehiiv here??)
Me rn, shoutout hotspots and Beehiiv for working out here bc I’d never leave you hanging on a Sunday
I hope you are having an incredible, fulfilling end to your summer. Thanks for letting me be part of it.
Julia
