CEO Behind the Ad Network with 25 Million Users: "What I'm Doing Isn't About Making Lots of Money or Becoming Famous"

AWING is a tech startup founded in 2017 in Vietnam. It has developed a technology platform that delivers advertisements to users via free Wi-Fi login screens. The startup creatively applies a sharing economy model to create a large-scale media channel that meets the high demand for location-based marketing.

We had an appointment with Nguyễn Tiến Dũng, CEO of AWING, just a few days after the startup completed an investment deal with NTT (Japan), the world’s fourth-largest telecommunications and IT corporation. This deal provides a solid springboard for the tech company’s platform—ads shown on free Wi-Fi login screens—to go global.

"We partnered with a major Japanese corporation because we wanted to go global," said Nguyễn Tiến Dũng, referring to their first round of funding after eight years of bootstrapping.

How did your entrepreneurial journey begin?

After graduating from Hanoi University of Science and Technology, I had the opportunity to work at IBM Japan. Back then, I was working on what's all the rage now—semiconductors. It was a good job with a high salary, but for some reason, I wanted to quit. I kept thinking, “Can I bring this back to Vietnam?” That question guided my decisions. Later, I received a scholarship to study telecommunications in South Korea. I planned to pursue a PhD after graduating, but eventually decided to return to Vietnam and explore the local tech industry by joining a leading tech HR company.

At that time, I noticed that most domestic companies didn’t really talk about innovation culture, unlike the companies I had worked with abroad. So, I quit and started my own venture with some fellow Korean classmates. We tried developing a video content distribution platform—something like YouTube today—but we didn’t have the resources, technology, or market readiness. So, it failed. All the savings from years of work—gone. (laughs)

I went back to working for others, saved up again, and started over. That led to AWING—a Wi-Fi-based advertising business model.

Why did you decide to develop a platform for advertising via free Wi-Fi?

Back in 2012–2013, it was clear that smartphones would dominate, so I explored everything related. Wi-Fi caught my attention the most. People often underestimate it, but Wi-Fi is essential—it grows alongside 4G and 5G. So, I tried connecting Wi-Fi, smartphones, and real-life experiences. That’s when the idea of location-based marketing began to take shape.

I looked into many possibilities—games didn’t appeal to me, and fintech or e-commerce felt out of reach. But the more I researched, the more I saw a huge demand for location-specific advertising. Traditional forms like LCDs or standees were outdated. We needed something fresher and more human-centric.

Some companies did attempt location-based personalized advertising, but it wasn’t very effective.

Our idea was completely different: focus on building a software platform that aggregates fragmented Wi-Fi systems into a standardized, unified network. This would form a massive ad network, enabling brands to reach the right target customers at specific locations with clearly defined consumer behavior.

We don’t sell software solutions—instead, we’re building a new communication channel and, from that, generating revenue for existing Wi-Fi providers using a sharing economy model.

To be specific, we are a free Wi-Fi ad network, but we don’t own a single Wi-Fi device ourselves. Looking around, I don’t think this business model exists anywhere else.