Hien Nguyen

I've been an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember.

Even as a kid, when I saw an opportunity, my instinct was usually: could I make something out of this? I started with small businesses and projects before I had any language for entrepreneurship. I just liked making things happen.

Then, in high school, I discovered the internet.

That changed everything.

I grew up in Vietnam, and suddenly I could see people building things for audiences I'd never met, in places I'd never been. I became fascinated by the idea that geography didn't have to determine who you could reach.

One of my first experiments was a fashion blog. I curated people whose work I admired and eventually grew it to around 13,000 followers. Looking back, I think I was already circling the thing I really wanted: not just curating other people's work, but becoming a creator myself.

I didn't quite get there then.

At university, I decided I should learn how to run a business properly. I studied business administration and spent the next few years learning the things I knew I was missing: how people behave, what motivates them, how brands find their position, how businesses grow, and how to turn an idea into something people actually want.

After university, I kept building.

In 2022, I started Screate Agency, helping brands, communities, and products grow across borders. Over two years, we worked across Vietnam, Australia, and the US, eventually carving out a niche around community-led growth and becoming a partner to overseas Vietnamese communities.

I closed the agency at the end of 2024.

For a while, I tried to figure out what came next with the muscle I already had. I started a deeply researched newsletter about community-led growth, covering case studies and ideas from around the world. It grew an audience of business leaders across 20 countries and 6 US states.

But I was still mostly working with what I already knew how to do: research, curate, write, advise, and distribute. I didn't yet have the muscle to make the things I wanted to make.

Then, in March 2025, a friend started sending me things he was building.

The first time, I was like, bro, what is that?

The second time, I mostly ignored him.

Then he sent me something again, and I finally asked, wait, how are you doing this?

He showed me.

I tried it myself.

And suddenly, a whole new world opened up.

I realized I could go from an idea in my head to something people could actually interact with — without waiting for someone else to build it for me.

I got hooked.

From there, I started experimenting like crazy. Small products, ideas, prototypes, weird projects, things that failed, things that almost worked. More than ten experiments followed.

The important part wasn't that every experiment worked. It was that I could finally make things.

Instead of asking whether an idea was good, I could build a version, put it in front of someone, and find out.

That's when Screate became a lab.

One of those experiments became Sidekick Log. It started almost randomly in a café: we pitched the idea to a stranger, and he wired us money on the spot. That was enough signal to keep going.

So I taught myself to code with AI, shipped an MVP by late 2025, and got the first usable end-to-end version out in January 2026. By June, we'd gone through more than ten versions. We were seeing organic traction, particularly from the US and Germany, but growth was still the hard part.

Then came another experiment.

After a trip that reminded me how much I missed being around interesting people, I wanted to bring that energy back into my work. On July 27, 2026, I started building Friends of Screate Labs around something simple: get people offline, walk 5K+, have better conversations, and give people a reason to actually meet.

Six weeks later, it had grown from me and a few friends into a global network of 500+ people, with walks running across HCMC, Singapore, and Bengaluru, and more cities coming online.

Now I'm experimenting with something new again: can the network start growing itself?

That's what Screate is becoming.

Not just a software company. Not just an agency. Not just a community.

A lab for building things that make modern work and human connection better — through products, experiments, culture, and the people who gather around them.

The mediums will keep changing.

The questions will keep evolving.

But the instinct is still the same as when I was a kid:

See something interesting. Make something. Put it into the world. See what happens.

If you made it this far, you should probably say hi.

Become a Friend of Screate Labs. Come walk with us. Try something we're building. Or partner with us on the next experiment.

We're just getting started.

— Hien

I share new experiments on Instagram, where I'm most active. For work or partnerships, email me. You can also find me on LinkedIn.