A group of enterprising youths have made the tough decision to quit university in foreign countries and at home to take a chance and dedicate all their time and energy to a food website project, which is now a success.

This is the story behind the co-founders of lozi.vn, a food-related website which now draws around 150,000 views each day.

LOZI stands out from several other cuisine websites in that it allows users to save the many images of their chosen delicacies or restaurants so that they can refer to them later.

The website is not geographically restricted, so all users are welcome to share and save the images from anywhere.

LOZI, which is now available in Vietnam, Singapore and Japan, also boasts self-navigation functions, allowing users to pinpoint the restaurants or eateries offering their desired delicacies near their current location.   

The current success of the website did not come easy, however.

In February 2012, Nguyen Hoang Trung, Tran Minh Son, and Nguyen Thanh Trung, now 22 and 23, were studying at universities in South Korea, the U.S. and in Vietnam and reached a collective decision to quit school.

“The decision met with vehement objections from our families. Some could only go home at night when their family was fast asleep. Neighbors even thought I had gotten involved in vices and thus dropped out of school. My heart ached when I could not fully explain my reason to my parents,” Hoang Trung recalled. 

LOZI’s members put aside their sadness and were set on launching the website to prove their success to their families and neighbors.

However, technical difficulties mounted and they had to create a total of nine versions within one and a half years before launching their perfect product.

“Though we were all resolute on making LOZI a success, some members still had to perform their day job to earn their living, as we did not receive any pay from the project during the initial phase. There were times when our group was on the brink of breaking apart,” one member recalled.

Thanh Trung, who had pocketed several national and international prizes in information technology, was offered high-paying jobs at that time.

  “During that time, I was so busy with my job outside, which took a heavy toll on my work at LOZI. Some other members were also in the same dilemma and things did not improve until we had a heart-to-heart in mid 2013,” Trung said.

The website founders also met immense difficulty in calling for investment.

“We received countless rejections, as most investors either thought our model of ‘sharing dishes instead of restaurants’ was new and unpredictable, or failed to spell out the difference between our website and similar ones,” Son shared.

“We did not allow ourselves to give up, as LOZI is a cool way to say ‘no worry’ in Vietnamese,” another member stressed.

Their efforts finally paid off. The group earned second place at a local startup business competition last year.

Their company was recently selected as one of the nine startup businesses to each receive an investment of US$10,000 from Vietnam Silicon Valley - a project patronized by the Ministry of Science and Technology - this year. The website has grown into a companion of youngsters in Hanoi, and its daily visits have reached almost 150,000.

Their company now earns stable income and has offices in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

LOZI has also received several partnership offers from investors.

Thanh Trung shared he has never regretted his decision to quit school two years ago.

“Though knowledge acquired at school is valuable to some extent, I think good opportunities do not come several times,” he shared.

“We quit university but never quit learning,” Hoang Trung said briefly.

Aaron Everhart, an American co-founder of   Hatch!Program - a startup business incubating organization - said though the role school plays is undeniable, golden opportunities should never be missed.

He believes the LOZI members will make further strides, even though they’re still young and many of them don’t have a university degree.