Thirteen Years of Building in Cambodia

In 2011, we started smallworld with more enthusiasm than experience. Thirteen years later, the team builds KOOMPI, Selendra, and VitaminAir, and KOOMPI has set up computer labs in 63 Cambodian schools.

For the first years, we tried to help other people's startups. We connected founders, held meetings, and looked for investors. Few of those companies lasted. Money without skills, patience, and knowledge of the market is an expensive lesson.

I wish someone had told me then to build a business first. You learn to help founders by being one.

We also copied what worked in Silicon Valley. It did not fit. "Move fast and break things" breaks trust, and business in Cambodia runs on trust. Here, patience is not only a virtue. It is the strategy.

What worked was slower. A place to meet came before any investment: first the coffee shop meetings, then a space of our own, where people could work together and feel part of something. KOOMPI began by selling laptops. When most students could not afford one, it moved to mini PCs and Linux labs in schools, because access to a computer mattered more than owning one.

Three lessons came hard.

You cannot force an ecosystem into existence. You can make the conditions, the spaces, the meetings, the connections, and then wait. What gets built shows quick results and rarely lasts. What grows takes time and lasts.

Cambodians can do world-class work. What is missing is not skill but confidence and access to markets. The work is to remove barriers, not to import answers.

Silicon Valley optimizes for fast growth and an exit. We optimize for businesses that stay alive, employ people, and solve real problems. Different goals need different strategies.

Cambodia's tech future is not becoming the next Singapore or Vietnam. It is becoming the first Cambodia, built on what we already have.

The students in those 63 labs will build the next companies. Give them the tools, then get out of their way.

Plant trees you may never sit under. We are still planting.