OUR STORY

3 years. I set out to build a convenient, tasty, better-for-you Vietnamese beverage brand. We had the media partners, the investors, the advisors. Real momentum. All the signals pointed to launch.

Then all hell broke loose. Supply chain breakdowns, manufacturer issues, distribution contracts falling apart. Even with tens of thousands of dollars in pre-orders, it didn't save my first company from imminent collapse.

Defeated, I sat at my childhood home for weeks reverse engineering what happened. I had to go to the roots of why I wanted to start this venture. I began to realize what I wanted was to find the intersection of flavor, health, culture and convenience. Something that was so undeniably good it needed to exist.

I sat in the kitchen, complaining about my frustrations with my mom and dad. My dad sat down next to me, looked me dead in the eye, and said:

"GET UP. YOU ARE NOT DONE."

Those words echoed in my ears. The same words he used to yell at me when I was a kid training Muay Thai. The same energy. The same fire.

He declared to me forcefully: "I didn't struggle my whole life to raise a son who quits."

I retorted back to him: "Dad I want to win but I don't even know where to start."

He calmly said to me "You'll figure it out." Right when he said that, he bit into a Chomps stick while my mother placed down a plate of Vietnamese Papaya salad and a bowl of Pho on the table. She looked at him and said, "I don't know why you eat those Chomps — the Vietnamese jerky we make is so much better."

My dad exclaimed: "Honey it's easier to eat a meat stick and drink beer. It doesn't get all over your hands and it's convenient."

Then it hit me, like Bradley Cooper in Limitless. What if I could make a better version of the already better-for-you meat sticks? Something that doesn't need refrigeration and uses real Vietnamese seasoning? Seasoning that my family has been cooking with for generations?

That spurred the next 2 years of iteration, failure, USDA denials, reprints, false starts, tears, broken dreams and shattered expectations. But we figured it out.

These are the flavors from my parents' culture. From their homeland. From where they grew up. From our dinner table. Just packaged so you can take them anywhere.

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"Dad — I figured it out."

The name Saigone is personal. It is a nod to Saigon — the city my parents left behind when they came to America. It is the flavors they carried with them. And it is the identity I am carrying forward.

This is bigger than a snack.

Saigone is proof that you can lose everything and still come back. That your culture is your superpower. That health does not have to taste boring. And that the best brands are built by people who have been through something.

I am not backed by a fund. I am not running playbooks from a CPG playbook. I am building this the way I know how — with my hands, my story, and my community behind me.

"THIS IS SAIGONE."