In January 2000, we established our first branch in San Jose, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. The director of that branch was a patriotic diasporic Vietnamese. But the American Dream did not come true for us. After merely one year of operations, FPT USA had to temporarily stop operating due to a lack of customers. We tried everything, with different people attempting to take the reigns of business development. From a Vietnamese expat to a graduate from prestigious MBA programs. What we received were critics, portraying our managers as "delusional about our corporate capability" and our programmers "weak in both expertise and language skills." It was a total failure. No one cared about a nameless company from Vietnam, a country only known then for the prolonged war. One of our then-potential customers was surprised to learn that it only took one hour to fly from Hanoi to Bangkok. He could not imagine the locations were so close, despite his own flying to Bangkok quite … [Read more...] about Working with American business partners requires understanding their way of thinking