Q: What’s your advice for members of minority groups who want to start their own businesses?
A: First, you have to have a passion for your business, and you have to know it well, and have a business plan and a vision. You have to establish relationships, build up your networks, join the chambers of commerce and then find a niche. Minority business can get support from the U.S. Small Business Administration. They give you direction and monitor your business for growth.
Q: What does your company do?
A: We manage networks and databases, and do network security and hosting.
Q: How did you get interested in technology?
A: When I was in Vietnam, my parents tried to prepare us to leave. From 1976 to 1979 (in school), all we did was really focus on technical courses, math, physics, chemistry. When I came to the U.S. in my sophomore year of high school, I took a basic computer course and I just loved it. I thought that is the career I should go into. I still enjoy it 20 years later.
Q: You were among more than 650,000 Vietnamese who fled that country between 1975, when Saigon fell, and the mid-1980s. Why did you leave?
A: When the Communists took over, my parents and most of my uncles and aunts on both sides were working directly with the old government or with the Americans. They considered my father an enemy to the government. Our parents saw we had no opportunity to advance in Vietnam, so they arranged for my sister and I to escape. It took us four years and five tries to get out of Vietnam.
Q: How did you make it out?
A: We stayed at a small town on the ocean and then we got on a boat with 300 other people. When we got out to the ocean, we got picked up by a commercial ship. They picked up about 3,100 people. We went to Hong Kong. Hong Kong said, “We don’t accept refugees,” so we stayed 3 miles offshore in international water for six months. They would bring food out for us. Every two days, we would have two pieces of bread. Four people would share a can of beans, and four people would share a can of ham, a quarter of an orange and a bowl of rice. That was the routine. At the end of six months, they punctured the ship so it would sink, and we swam in. They put us in prison for four months. Then the United Nations came and got us out and put us in a refugee camp for two months.
Q: You arrived here in 1980 at age 16, with a younger sister who was 14. How did you get to Colorado?
A: Back then, the U.S. was the only country that would accept minors without their parents. The Catholic Church sponsored us, and social services got us a foster family in Fort Collins. My parents came to Fort Collins in 1992 … through the U.S. State Department.
Q: How difficult was it to fit into American society?
A: It was very hard in the first six months because we didn’t know any English at all. It took two or three hours to read one page of a book. But we got a lot of help from the community. And they gave us more time to do tests because we just couldn’t read. After six months, we were able to catch up and begin a normal life.
Q: How did you form ITX?
A: I was a programmer, network analyst and managed the systems group at the Western Area Power Administration in Loveland. My co-worker, Bruce Hottman, and I saw the information technology needs of small businesses. They didn’t have the resources to hire a full time IT professional. We saw that one IT person can provide IT support for multiple small businesses. Bruce and I formed ITX in 1996, and since then, our company has grown every year.
Q: Was it expensive to start your business?
A: We started our company with savings of $4,000 in my basement. We didn’t have computers for the first six months.
Edited for space and clarity from an interview by staff writer Tom McGhee.
