About XOI
XOI is a creativity outlet created in 2013, in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.
You might get confused of who we are and what we do. The truth is, half of the time, I don’t even know.
Hi, my name is Cuong, formally, the founder, really, the only one who cares.
At first, I registered the legal entity in order to intern for myself and get the compulsory credits required by my university's curriculum. Having had worked in web development as a freelancer for a few years, I believed that an internship for a company, no matter how large, would only slow me down. After three months, I signed my own intern certificate, rated myself “technically good but lacks discipline”.
On the artistic side, in the same year, my rock band since high school was splitting up. We sucked, but because I didn’t want to waste the knowledge and skills acquired during the six years of musical activities, I started a new journey, moved from drummer position, I picked up the guitar, wrote my own songs, started having vocal lessons and initiated a new music project.
In 2015, XOI started to have more people who were crazy enough to join in.
In 2016, after 3 times of moving the 8-track studio around, due to noise complaints, XOI finally settled down in a small room in Nha Be, a suburb area just outside of Ho Chi Minh city. Later, in 2020, I was able to built another home studio in a slightly larger room in District 7, determined to work toward becoming our own record label.
Always more focused on lyrics than melodies when writing the songs, in 2017, as words were overflowing, I realised that XOI needs another medium to contain the thirst for creativity and started my venture into literature, with help, writing short stories and novels.
In the meantime, I kept working as a software engineer. In 2020, after years of experience with start-ups all around HCMC, XOI started working on its own products of web and mobile applications.
And that’s basically it. That’s XOI, trying to create out of anything that it can.
I hope to keep learning in the years to come and to be able to meet and work with more crazy people who have the same enthusiasm for new values.