A successful startup usually needs to have three key factors:

- Operate with the fewest people but with the highest efficiency.

- A team of individuals with deep expertise, who have known and worked together for a long time, creating trust and coordination.

- Ability to see or guarantee the output (consumer market) from the beginning.

However, most startups in Vietnam go in the opposite direction:

- Bulky human resources, high operating costs.

- A patchwork team, without cohesion or experience working together.

- Lack of cooperation and sharing ability, weak management skills and expertise.

- Wrong market assessment, not knowing how to identify the real needs of users.

As a result, most startups “die young” from the beginning - the failure rate can be up to 90–99%.

In addition to internal problems, there are many other objective factors affecting the survival of startups in Vietnam:

- Business environment: policies are still unstable, legal procedures are complicated.

- Human resource quality: many but lack depth, limited practical skills.

- Management skills and startup thinking: not properly trained, lack of global thinking.

- Support from the government and ecosystem: support programs are not really synchronous and effective.

- Culture of cooperation and social trust: many barriers, short-term mentality, little sharing.

From that, it can be seen that Vietnam is not an easy environment to start a business, unless the startup meets strict conditions from the beginning.

Of all factors, people are still the key factor. A healthy startup environment must nurture people with the ability to innovate, long-term thinking, deep professional skills and a high spirit of cooperation. In fact, the current environment in Vietnam is not really an "incubator" to produce such entrepreneurs.