The Story Behind “Young Bizfest”

I was co-founding “Young BizFest” with only an ambition: to give students something I had long wished for, a place where ideas could meet reality. At my school, business was often discussed in theory: presentations, slides, and case studies. But I wanted to know what it felt like to stand in a market space, to pitch a product not to teachers but to strangers, and to see curiosity or doubt in their eyes.

We began with a simple question: What if students could build their own startup fair? Over the summer, I led a 20 member team, dividing departments and navigating the messy, exhilarating process of turning plans into logistics. I pitched our proposal to the Carnaby Walking Street Board, negotiated sponsorship with Golden Link Real Estate JSC, and helped raise 30,000,000 VND from five student-led startups in Hanoi. But numbers aside, the hardest part wasn’t securing funds, it was earning trust. We were teenagers asking to be taken seriously in a professional world.

On the day of the fair, as 600 visitors filled the venue, I watched students, once shy in classrooms, stand tall behind their booths, introducing prototypes with voices that trembled not from fear but excitement. For the first time, I saw entrepreneurship not as competition, but as connection, a way for young people to prove not just what they know, but what they can create together.