The Story of FABA Technology

It was a nonchalant question raised at a party in 2016. We were all pursuing our different careers back then, but it wasn't fulfilling. Tried as we might, we just could not see ourselves sticking with our current jobs for the next years.

And that's settled. We're opening our company. But what's next?

We all share a common passion for technology, then why not start from there?

A lot of people were curious about the name FABA Technology, asking 'What does FABA mean?" To be very honest, we could not remember who came up with the name during the brainstorming session that day. It was a pure coincidence that the search result coming up for the word "FABA" is "a bean" in Latin.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence at all when FABA Technology is something that sprouts from our shared passion, and our dream of making a change to society through technology.

At first, we started by helping those around us with software development, just to get our name to be known through words of mouth. As words got around, the projects started to pour in steadier.

Those projects landed us our very first office in 2017.

The only employees were the three of us, but we all have to start from somewhere, right? A whole office to ourselves was still better than to cram in some random café. We weren't alone for long, as the first employee came in August.

We still remembered him. He's an interesting guy. Honest and humble. He considered himself a slow learner, so he always tried harder and worked more. I think those turn out to be some of his greatest talents: patience and diligence.

He didn't talk much at first, but he soon knew how to catch up with fun stories and jokes, especially when our company starts to get more crowded. A fun fact is that the reason we hired him back then is mostly because we love his dead-on honesty.

Running a start-up means that you start first, and then you mess up later.

And mess it up we did, and we messed up a lot, too.

One that came vividly to mind is the one that happened during one of our first projects.  Back then, we were trying to meet a super tight deadline while also making room for the client's request changes. It was a short-time project, but not a small one, and the client was in a rush.

As a result, our team had to work overtime almost every single day. To say, we burnt all the midnight oil. This horrendous situation lasted for nearly 3 months, and luckily we could finally complete the project in time. Our client got the product they need, we earned our money.

It's fun and memorable to push yourself to the hardest, however, it's not healthy. Lesson learned, always consider the project duration, make sure all of the members can finish it without spending (too much) OT. We still keep that striving working spirit but we try not to repeat such a project plan.

After that lesson, we kicked off 2019 with a bang - our very first international client.

They were a tech company in Australia. They needed to expand their team and aimed to organize an offshore team in Vietnam. The technical stack of the project is PHP and React, which is right up our alley. Since then, the project has grown gradually, and so has the team.

Briefly, after the first project, we received yet another two. One was from a client in Singapore, and one was from the US. As more projects started to trickle in, our team steadily grew in size as well. For the first time ever, we welcomed a total of 25 employees in 2020.

As of November 2021, we have had hundreds of clients and projects across various fields.

We have also earned several awards from agency listing sites, one of them being one of the Top Software Developers in Vietnam from Clutch. It's our team effort, and as rewarding as it is, it's only the beginning for us, and we are still striving forward.

What awaits us in the path ahead?

5 years is not a long nor short journey, it has given us many experiences yet there is still much we have to learn and improve as we strive forward to our goal of becoming the Top Offshore Company in the area.

As our team is growing rapidly in size and skill sets, more opportunities and, of course, challenges await ahead. Aside from strengthening our Offshore Development pillar, FABA Technology also aims to expand our DevOps and Cloud Services.