See you in Court (SAND - Part 15)

The next court date is set for 31.07.2025, at 2pm VNT.

Tech In Asia published a story covering a part of the saga today (I won't spoil the article for you). The most important date mentioned in the article is the coming court date, in just less than a week's time.

Let's explore what's new since my last discoveries.

The manufactured pretext in Labour Regulation dossier

After failing to appear in court on 15th April 2025 Alterno team has submitted a written letter to VN Court with their supporting evidence on 15th May 2025 (a full month later). Among the supporting documents, there is this updated Labour Regulation that was signed on 1st August 2024. In which management team subtly changed the definition of "remote work" and communication protocols via Slack. This seemingly innocuous change would later be weaponized against me, becoming the manufactured pretext for my eventual termination.

The 'old' Labour Regulation

On 7th June 2024, I signed a copy of Labour Regulation document, as legal representative of Alterno Vietnam JSC then, ready to be submitted as part of a typical Labour Union process. This document was drafted by Ms Tuyen, adapted from a typical template, the terms are even a bit relaxed to many extent. (The kind of team culture that I built, don't involve exact time tracking, in my past 15 startups or so, this has been the norm).

This copy of the Labour Regulation never made it to the destination of course. Later I found out that nothing was submitted and that puzzled me and my legal team.

The 'hidden' revised Labour Regulation

Imagine this, I had my wedding on 22nd July, drive back from Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh which takes 2 days straight, yet I was called to sign paperwork on 26th July 2024 physically at the labs in D9.

And then a few days after, on 1st August 2024, Hai Ho signed a revised Labour Regulation (above), which legally he is able to do so, and probably also submitted to a different government body.

Why hidden?

On 8th August 2024, I was at the labs in D9 for the AGM meeting. In this meeting the updated Labour Regulation was not discussed. (Yes, technically not in the scope of Singapore Board).

I was not notified of this new details during interaction with Hai Ho, Nam Nguyen, nor Kim Tuyen, nor any of the investors... during August and September. If such requirement is critical, then why wouldn't investors know about.

After all, that was exactly the purpose of the whole foul play, keeping me in the dark, and using manufactured evidence.

Why legal team could not find it?

The version I signed was supposed to be submitted to "Sở Lao động Thương binh và Xã hội" but the updated one was submitted to "Phòng Nội Vụ", a different government body and offices. Hence, when we were looking for it, we were looking at the wrong place. Vietnam legal system is complicated for sure.

On top of that the restructuring of VN administrative territory does not help, it basically froze the entire legal admin for months. Getting any kind of answer was and is still very slow.

The Termination Excuses

The situation escalated rapidly. On September 10, 2024, I received an official notice from Alterno Vietnam, claiming the company had been unable to contact me since 1st August, 2024. Now we know why that specific date.

Just a week later, on September 17, 2024, Alterno issued a termination decision, effective immediately. The reasons? Alleged prolonged unavailability and lack of communication via Slack, supposedly violating labour regulations. They claimed I 'left work for 5 consecutive working days or more without a legitimate reason'.

Maybe they should have contacted the investors and ask if I was still alive ;)

What was Nam Nguyen thinking?

The above paragraphs are the entirety of Nam's perspective from 9th July to 1st August 2024 submitted to the court. It says that the company has repeatedly invited me to the office to sign the new paperwork but could not contact me in anyway. Ignoring my personal matters surrounding 22nd July completely.

Well, I began my road trip from Saigon on 13/07/2024 and was physically back in the lab to sign paperwork on 26/07/2024. Notably, on this date, nothing was mentioned about the new Labour Regulation and the must to receive communication via Slack.

That means despite knowing that I was on the road, knowing that I was busy preparing for my wedding, the team continued to make funny claims. I did not obviously invite the Alterno team to my wedding. Some of the team members could have turned angry and envious, in my opinion this is the very seed of hatred.

Tham . Sân . Si

My thoughts

Throughout my career building software teams, mostly hybrid and remote, it usually involved unlimited holidays, no fixed working hours, free lunch, no micro-management among other things... People has come to know the SSS way, and my relaxed working style. The entire 500+ SSS mafia and many others would able to testify for this.

The twist in this saga is that the only person who has not worked with me day-to-day frequently, and is supposed to be the most technically adept of the team, yet is also the one that hold the most negative views against me, is CTO Nam Nguyen. He accused me of not contributing a single line of code to the Sand Battery. Well, seems like he was greatly misinformed about my skillsets, ... this opinion of Nam only further enforces my point. In fact, Nam Nguyen was not good with software development, and I thought it was okay since I could cover software and a lot more...

The pandemic left many of us leaders/managers with critical lessons on what not to do in remote team management. I thought it was even clearer in IoT/Hardware Development industry where tacit knowledge could sometimes only be passed by hands-on trainings. I don't think Nam was having the right mindset and experience in making an accurate judgement, given what has happened.

Would you trust the person to be able to advance R&D rapidly this way? Could you expect someone working remotely for 2 years to understand the subtle conflicts between people, and their needs in daily working culture?

I didn't.

That led to my 'attempt' to scope my work as CSO, for the betterment of the team.

Several Failed mediations, Delayed court appearance

We sought mediation, which failed, and the Vietnamese court officially accepted my wrongful termination case on March 20, 2025 and set the court date. (Alterno team refused to signed on the first mediation session despite their attendance).

Knowing the court date has been set for 15th April 2025 way in advance. Alterno team waited until 10th April 2025 to submit a letter asking to delay the court date, with no suggested next schedule dates. Hence, Alterno failed to appear at the first court date on 15th April 2025 without valid reasons as mention in Part 11. (These last-minute stonewalling behaviors are consistent with what I observed during my time working with the management team).

15th May 2025 Alterno submitted the follow up written explanations; my legal team only got hold of the copy on 24th July 2025.

The reason why there has been significant delay preventing my legal team in getting these documents is that the entire Vietnam administrative territory was restructured and hence court system came to a standstill for months. We could not get copies from the judges quick enough.

Moreover, my legal team and myself repeatedly tried to contact Alterno HR and Finance department to settle my previous HR & Tax matters; and requesting for further documentation. We were not able to contact anyone since January 2025 until now. My attorney's email and text were unanswered. My emails were blocked by [email protected], hai@, nam@, phong@, trinh@, hung@, (except that [email protected] went through, weird!).

The investors (must have) knew

Given that these event happened even earlier than my previous timeline revealed. The orchestration of my removal, I believed, has started on 10th July 2024 with Antler Vietnam heavily involved in this.

There has been clear signs: since that day, from Antler, there has been no questions, no emails, no letter of concern, no text, no phone call, no effort to reach out, nothing until 12 September 2024 when I proactively scheduled to meet, even then the Antler Vietnam team said they didn't know much. Then later Antler, continued promoting Alterno even until recently.

What made it even more worrying was the complete silence from the investors who were witnessing the events as they unfolded and chose to remain passive observers rather than intervene. These includes all of the Venture Capitalists: Touchstone, Antler Vietnam, Impact Square, Glocalinks, UntroD, ABD Ventures, Schneider Electrics....

Touchstone was present on 8th August 2024. Touchstone and Antler kept quiet about what happened on 1st August 2024, whether they knew it then or later, lead to a big unanswered question:

What are the investors roles in this saga? Should they be held accountable too? The support comes with funding is questionable or rather lackluster.

The court date is set

Despite knowing these matters will be taken to courts, Hai Ho and Nam Nguyen continue to collude, even with the help of the board members/VCs..., so I guess there is only one last option:

See you all in court!

31.07 happen to be my birthday as well 🙃