A few days ago, in the quiet reflection that follows Vietnam’s National Day, I did what many in tech do when they’re curious: I asked an AI about myself. I prompted ChatGPT about “Quan Nguyen - Skill-Wanderer” to see how it perceived my work. The conversation went back and forth until it landed on a single, powerful word to describe my approach: unconventional.
That word echoed. It was more than just a label for a tech project; it felt like an echo from history, a piece of a story that is deeply, fundamentally Vietnamese. It connected my command-line terminal in Hanoi today with the battlefields of the 20th century.
This is that story.
The AI’s Diagnosis: What “Unconventional” Means in Tech Today
According to ChatGPT, my path with Skill-Wanderer deviates from the standard startup playbook. It wasn’t a criticism, but an observation. It pointed out that I was unconventional because I:
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Run on a Home Lab, Not the Cloud: In an era where founders spin up AWS or Google Cloud instances before they even have a logo, my entire platform runs on a repurposed ThinkPad T480 and an Orange Pi in my home. It’s fronted by Cloudflare, but its heart beats in a corner of my room. It’s a choice born of resourcefulness and a desire for true ownership.
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Reject Typical Monetization: The well-trodden path for edtech is paved with affiliate links, intrusive ads, and aggressive SaaS subscription models. I’ve explicitly rejected this. Skill-Wanderer has no sponsorships or hidden monetization. Every resource is reinvested back into the mission.
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Build in Public, Warts and All: Instead of a polished corporate facade, I share everything: the triumphs, the bugs, the infrastructure struggles, even the downtime notices. This raw transparency is more akin to open-source culture than the “always-on” perfection demanded by modern business.
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Serve a Mission, Not a Product: My starting question was never “How can I scale users?” but “How can learners trust this and grow?” This learner-centric, non-profit ethos stands apart from both traditional institutions and commercial platforms chasing growth at all costs.
The AI’s summary was blunt and accurate: my path is “lean, raw, ethical, but riskier.” And it’s this final word, “riskier,” that made me look to the past for a map to the future.
From a Single Word to a Nation’s Story
To be unconventional is to choose the path of greatest resistance. It is to accept disproportionate risk in the pursuit of a profound goal. In Vietnam, this is not just a business strategy; it is our national epic.
This reflection is not a political analysis of war, nor is it about right or wrong. The past is gone, and former enemies are now partners and friends. This is an exploration of a mindset—a spirit of unconventional brilliance forged in the crucible of history and personified by one man: General Võ Nguyên Giáp.
The Ultimate Unconventional Strategist
General Giáp was a history teacher, not a West Point graduate. He never attended a formal military academy. He was a self-taught strategist who rose to become one of the most formidable military minds of the 20th century. His entire doctrine was built on a single, powerful truth: you cannot win by playing your opponent’s game when your opponent writes the rules.
His genius was in embracing his limitations and turning them into strengths. He mastered unconventional, or asymmetric, warfare. He fused peasant-farmer guerrilla tactics with disciplined conventional strategy, always guided by a long-term vision. He would willingly trade short-term failures for a long-term victory, ceding territory to preserve his forces, and fighting battles only when the terms were overwhelmingly his.
He understood that for a smaller force to defeat a larger one, it must be more adaptable, more resilient, and more deeply connected to its core mission—the people.
The Inescapable Parallel
As I stood back and looked at the AI’s analysis of my project and the history of my nation, the parallel was as clear as day.
A tiny nation, armed with little more than passion and patriotism, could not fight a global superpower on its own conventional terms and expect to win. It had to create its own terms.
Likewise, a small, self-taught developer with a shoestring budget cannot build a mission-driven educational platform by following the venture-capital-fueled playbook of Silicon Valley. To do so would be a loss before the battle even begins.
The decision to run on a home lab isn’t just about saving money; it’s about independence. The decision to reject ads isn’t just about ethics; it’s about building trust, our most valuable asset. The decision to build in public isn’t just a trend; it’s our version of a “people’s war,” relying on community and shared belief to survive and grow.
A Mission Forged in History’s Echoes
My grandfather was a guerrilla fighter during the French Indochina War. I never thought much about how that heritage might manifest in me, a man who fights with code instead of a rifle. But now I see it. It’s the instinct to find another way, to believe that a powerful mission can overcome a lack of resources, and to have the audacity to challenge giants.
ChatGPT was right. The risk is high, perhaps higher than I care to admit. But the stories of our elders, and the recent tears shed by my generation watching films like “Mưa đỏ” (Red Rain), remind us that the generations before us faced impossible odds for a cause they believed in. I hope my children and their children only know peace. But I also hope that I can bring even a fraction of that same burning passion and unconventional spirit to my life’s work.
Rest peacefully, heroes on all sides. Your legacy is not one of war, but of the incredible power of the unconventional human spirit.
