2025 was tough for Stag, but also the year we turned things around.
Stag Vietnam - a Vietnamese fintech & education platform that provides automated, safe, and sustainable investment solutions as well as financial education to empower young investors in Vietnam
Early in the year, we cut our team in half, both business and tech sides. This forced us to rethink everything: our product, our business model, our entire strategy. We pivoted from pure fintech to the education side of wealth management in Vietnam.
We kept going with just seven people, Alex, Bang, and me as founders, plus four others. Despite the small team, we shipped two major integrations: NHSV (offering all ETF products and select mutual funds) and Fmarket (providing access to all mutual funds in Vietnam). We became one of the first fintech companies in Vietnam to offer both ETFs and mutual funds in one platform.
The last few months brought real traction on social media, TikTok, YouTube. Thanks largely to Alex Huynh and his 100k+ fanbase. We also closed a small funding round to fuel our fin/edu tech plans for the new year.
Personally, hitting my late 30s feels different. For the first time, I felt my age. I'm trying to stay healthy with small daily habits: exercise, eating well, sleeping better. Running a startup while being the sole tech founder meant the workload kept growing. I had to keep our platform running on minimal resources, minimal cost, minimal team while staying reliable and bug-free. It's challenging when we don't control the entire flow; transactions depend on brokerages, fund distributors, banks, and government systems like VSD and SSC. By mid-year, we'd stabilized the platform. Not perfect, but solid enough with fewer bugs.
The second half felt better. The platform ran smoother, giving me breathing room. My health improved, and I completed two sports events: an Ironman 70.3 and a full marathon.
I finally had time for other things like my family, side projects. I launched the blogging.dev, a simple, independent blogging platform for my own use and projects I'm building.
Most importantly, I had time to think about what I want for the next few years of my life.