On the Table: Building a Startup Community in Vientiane’s First Co-Working Space

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Toh-Lao-Co-Working-Space

The life of a freelancer and startup can be a lonely and tough one, especially when you don’t even have an office to work from each day. A co-working space to work in – a desk, a chair, and internet connection – is as much about fostering a community as it is about amenities.

Souphaphone ‘Nana’ Souannavong discovered this pretty quickly when she returned to her hometown of Vientiane after years of studying overseas. Having completed a Masters in Finance in Rochester, New York, she set herself up as a freelancer, to get back into the swing of life in Vientiane. But during her seven months as a freelance consultant, one thing bothered her – she didn’t have an office.

Coffee shops or the house she shared with her big family had to do, and neither was satisfactory. This was back in 2009, and by then, Nana had already started to ponder the possibility of setting up a co-working space in Vientiane – the kind of shared office community that has taken the world by storm over the past decade. But while many of the world’s major cities have large and profitable co-work hubs, Nana didn’t believe Laos was ready yet.

In the ensuing years, she read about co-working spaces popping up all over the region – Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia. But it wasn’t until she read about a space opening in Myanmar that she really began to take notice.

It’s now four years down the track, and Nana is speaking inside what is now an established work hub – Toh-Lao, just off the main riverside road in the centre of Vientiane. The name translates literally as “Lao Table”, a concept that speaks to the simplicity of the idea of a co-work space – a place that gives you the basics to work productively. It has already attracted all kinds of tenants – expats on short-term consultancies, foreign freelancers doing visa runs, local businesses needing a registered office space while they get their enterprise off the ground. But it has also become something of an incubator for start-up talent in the tech sector. The space offers both individual desk spaces and private offices, and one of the larger offices upstairs is full to bursting with young programmers, tapping away intensely at computers.

Bizgital, a technology start-up, moved in just 10 months ago with three people. Now, it has 15 staff and counting, and has outgrown its temporary home at Toh-Lao. It’s a dilemma Nana is only too happy to be able to solve, with a new space set to open nearby. The company is also a perfect example of why she wanted to set up the space in the first place.

Apart from her personal need for an office and a focused working community, she says she wanted to test a personal theory she had about Laos.

“I wanted to prove something, because Lao people, especially young people, we always have this belief that we don’t have entrepreneurs – real minds,” she says.

“For example, when you’re in college life, you might have some idea of wanting to start your own business, but then when you actually graduate, your parents will say, ‘Don’t do a business, it’s too risky. Do something else, work for the government, work for a big organisation’. So that’s why I wanted to check it out, whether this country has hope for start-ups or not.”

She also wanted to expand her own career as a financial advisor, and explore what she had been noticing more and more in Laos – the number of investors who were ready to take risks. The country was ready, in other words, for a start-up community, and it was time to, well, start one up. It was a challenge, at first, to get many locals to use the space, much less up-and-coming businesses.

“Lao people probably thought, what is a co-working space, why come to this office with just a chair and a table? What are we going to do here? They don’t realise the value of the community here,” she says.

She began running free workshops and seminars to spread the word about the possibilities of working in a shared space, without the pressures of renting an exclusive office.

startup-weekend-Toh-Lao Co-working Space

She also organised the first Lao chapter of the international event Start-Up Weekend, a kind of intensive pop-up event that’s an opportunity to pitch ideas for a start-up and get feedback from a community of mentors and successful businesspeople. This was back in 2014, and more than 50 people signed up, more than half of whom actually took to the stage to pitch their ideas.

Nana’s theory was proven, at least in the world of tech start-ups. While she still tries to keep a range of tenants in the original space – foreigners, consultants, local freelancers – her new space will have a more concentrated focus.  And while she sees Toh-Lao as a type of incubator – “we make a little idea happen to make a business, but it takes longer because we let them grow organically” – the new space will be an accelerator.

“It’s where, when you have an idea, and you have a team of people, you bring them in, you give them a lot of mentors, you put mentors to work with them, to make sure that they can actually go to market and launch their business within three to six months,” she says.

Bizgital is the perfect example of a potential tenant for the new – as yet unnamed space – initially a group of “hardcore programmers” unaccustomed to doing business, who have since been matched with an established investor, and have now shifted their model to digital marketing and IT consulting.

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Toh-Lao is now part of the wider co-work space ecosystem, partnering with other such spaces in neighbouring countries so that members can access the same space and benefits when moving between countries.

What Nana wants most of all is to find a start-up champion – a person or business committed to growing small businesses and helping ideas flourish.

“That’s our immediate goal, and we really hope that with the acceleration program, we can make it happen faster,” she says.

But she is realistic about the comparatively slow pace of the market in Laos.

“If we look into the whole eco-system itself, the problem is still with the skills and education, so we hope that in the future we can play some role to have some courses dedicated for start-ups and entrepreneurs, not like subjects they learn in universities and college,” she says.

“The way that start-ups think, you have to disrupt the industry, basically you have to be creative and think out of the box. So that’s very important, to set the right mindset for them, and I believe it comes from education, it comes from younger age, and we hope to be able to contribute in the long run.”

 

Champa Meuanglao
Written by:
Sally Pryor
Originally Published in: Champa Meuanglao,  official Lao Airlines in-flight magazine, 2017 May-June Edition

4 COMMENTS

  1. Dear Souphaphone ‘Nana’ Souannavong,
    Happy New Year 2019!
    First, congratulations for your idea of creating “Toh Lao” and “Toh-X”.
    At 70 years old with no money, I have a very big dream to create a “4.0-Skill Training Center” in my own land of 0.5 hectare (with a pond of 15x50m at one corner) in Luang Prabang City (at km 3 from the Center of the Town).
    My 4.0-Skill Training Center project will be an ambitious place with Free Parking on Premises, Conference Room with equipment, Co-working Spaces, Free Wireless Internet Access, Restaurant and Coffee Salon, Dormitory Available, Individual Lockers and Padlocks, Automated Laundry System, 24 Hours Recorded Surveillance, Digital TV and BBQ Terrace.
    You can come and see my current works. I tried my best to build up two English handbooks and use them to teach with my very modest capacity: – The first is “Daily Conversations” (a 1 month English intensive course for helping those who want to be able to speak and use Daily English); – The second is “English for Business and Investment” (an another “a 1 month English intensive course” for helping those who desire to be able with a short time to upgrade their English and Accounting and Investment knowledge).
    For the first level, they have to pay 400,000 kip, for the second level 600,000 kip per person and they will get 3 handbooks (2 in English, 1 in Lao) and 2 certificates.
    But the Vision and Aim of this “4.0-Skill Training Center” is not only improving English knowledge, but “skilling up and encouraging creative thinking”. So we will have to do many courses “Training of Trainers” and teach a lot of things in this place of “4.0-Skill Training Center”. Unfortunately the only thing, it’s out of my capacity to build it up alone.
    So why, I want you and … to help me to realize my fabulous dream for the best of our lowest rank population. And I thank you very much in advance for your kind attention.

  2. A Lao proverb said: “The teeth from below work harder than the teeth from the top”. I have a high believe that our lowest rank population needs more direct training for upgrading their living than the other part. It’s why I can’t let my project down.

  3. For having more people to participate to the project, I think I better begin by selling together my 3 handbooks by post with a price of 250,000 kip (including mail cost – in Lao PDR).
    The 3 handbooks (2 in English and 1 in Lao) which I use for teaching at my “SuanOy English Classroom” in the Center of LP City are:
    1. “Daily Conversations” (built up for a 1 month English intensive course)
    2. “English for Business and Investment” (built up for an another “a 1 month English intensive course”)
    3. “ວິທີດີທີ່ສຸດ ສຳລັບການລົງທຶນແລະໃຊ້ຊີວິດ¨ (“Best Ways to Invest and Living” – built up for completing the contents of a 1 month English intensive course on “English for Business and Investment”)
    Who want to buy these 3 handbooks, please send money to my bank account n. 0300600410000689 at Lao Development Bank (Luang Prabang Branch) – then
    contact Houmphanh Phimphisane – Tel: (030) 5244635 or (020) 55770072 – and you will receive them in 1 package by registered mail.