# Entity Plan: TS People

The merger of three originally-separate planned entities (CoreHR + ViecHomNay + TS HR) into a single Vietnamese talent-stack platform with three integrated product lines. One brand, one customer base, one data layer. Y1 launch with founder-shareholder cap-table variant to attract a true founder-CEO (talent stack is a hard-to-recruit operator role).

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## Identity

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Entity name | TS People Pte Ltd + TS People Vietnam Co. Ltd |
| Working name(s) | Brand may differ — "TS People" for portfolio narrative; consumer/recruiting brand could differ for ViecHomNay-line consumer surface |
| Group | TS Ventures (sub-cluster: Vertical SaaS) |
| Target launch | Year 1, Q2 |
| Mechanism | Greenfield (with day-one merger of three planned-entity concepts) |
| Tier (D17) | Tier 2 (provisional — depends on SOE customer mix at Y1) |
| Legal structure | Singapore HoldCo + Vietnam OpCo per D1 |
| Vietnamese majority required | No |

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## Mission and Wedge

**Mission:** Become the operating system for Vietnamese mid-market talent — from hiring to onboarding to HR operations to compensation to learning — with three integrated product lines sharing one customer and data layer.

**Three product lines (single entity, single brand):**

1. **HRIS** (former "CoreHR") — full HR system: employee records, payroll, leave, performance, learning. Subscription SaaS.
2. **Hiring Marketplace** (former "ViecHomNay") — AI-powered job board + candidate matching for the same companies' open roles. Consumer-facing for candidates, B2B for employers. Transaction + subscription hybrid.
3. **Recruiting Services** (former "TS HR") — agency-style placement for senior/specialized roles the marketplace can't fill. Commission per placement.

**Specific customer wedge:** Vietnamese companies with 50–500 employees who currently stitch together MISA payroll + KiotViet timesheets + TopCV/VietnamWorks for hiring + an external recruiter for senior roles — pay 4 vendors, get 4 disconnected systems. Single TS People subscription replaces the stack and provides a unified data view across hire → onboard → retain.

**Why now:**
- Vietnamese mid-market HR-tech is fragmented (10+ point solutions) and demand for consolidation is rising
- 25–35% annual turnover in Vietnamese tech and services workforces creates relentless hiring + retention pressure
- AI-powered candidate matching genuinely better than legacy job boards (TopCV, VietnamWorks)
- PDPD compliance creates HR-data operational obligations that small companies cannot meet alone
- Salary transparency and compensation benchmarking demand growing post-COVID

**Why us:**
- Three planned entities merged into one creates 2–3x the wallet share per customer
- TS Holdings reputation + Vietnamese tech-leader network opens early customer doors
- TS Block / TS Pay integration possible for payroll disbursement (Y3+)
- Cross-sell to entire TS portfolio (every TS entity is itself a potential TS People customer for HRIS)

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## Market and Competition

**Total addressable market (Vietnam):**
- HRIS for SME/mid-market: ~$80–120M (2025), growing 22% per year
- Hiring marketplaces (B2B + transaction revenue): ~$60–100M
- Recruiting agency services: ~$200–300M (large, fragmented, low-tech)
- Total combined TAM: ~$340–520M, ~25% growth

**Serviceable obtainable market (5-year):** $15–25M ARR realistic

**Named competitors:**

| Competitor | Stage | Strength | Weakness | Differentiation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Base.vn** | Vietnamese mid-market HRIS leader | Strong product, growing fast, FPT investment | Single product line; weak hiring side | Three integrated lines; better candidate marketplace |
| **MISA HRM, FastWork, Tanca** | Vietnamese SME HR tools | Cheap, broad reach | Lighter feature set, weak integrations | Mid-market focus + integrated talent stack |
| **TopCV** | Vietnamese job marketplace dominant | Massive candidate database, brand | No HRIS integration; legacy job-board UX | AI matching + integrated with hiring company's HRIS |
| **VietnamWorks (Navigos)** | Long-established job board | Brand recognition, recruiter relationships | Older tech stack, no SaaS integration | Modern SaaS + AI |
| **Robert Walters, HR2B, ManpowerGroup Vietnam** | International recruiting agencies | Senior placement expertise | Expensive, transactional only | Tech-augmented placement + ongoing customer relationship via HRIS |
| **Globee, Talentnet** | Vietnamese specialist agencies | Local expertise | No tech platform | Tech + service combination |

**Macro trends supporting:**
- Vietnamese tech mid-market growing 20%+ → more HR tooling buyers
- AI-driven candidate matching reaching usable quality (LLM-based screening)
- PDPD pushing legacy spreadsheet-HR companies toward proper systems
- Compensation transparency trend (salary bands, pay equity) drives benchmarking demand
- Hybrid/remote work formalization creates onboarding-and-engagement tooling demand

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## Customer Strategy

**Ideal Customer Profile (ICP):**
- 50–500 employees (sweet spot 100–300)
- Vietnamese-headquartered, English-or-Vietnamese internal language acceptable
- Industries: tech, services, F&B chains, retail chains, financial services, manufacturing
- Has fragmented HR stack today
- Hiring 5+ roles per quarter

**First 10 customer targets (Q2–Q3 Y1):**

Customers come from three sources: TS Holdings portfolio entities themselves (anchor), TS Technology Consulting transformation customers (cross-sell), and direct prospecting.

1. **TS Technology Consulting itself** — internal first reference customer
2. **TS Shared Services** — internal HRIS deployment
3. **CMC University** — academic institution + research labs, ~200 staff
4. **Sun Group Resort Operations** — service-industry HRIS need
5. **Hoan My Hospital Group** — healthcare HRIS need
6. **FPT University** — academic HRIS
7. **VNG Game Studios** — gaming/tech mid-market
8. **Topica, Funix** — EdTech mid-market peers
9. **Tiki / Sendo mid-tier** — e-commerce ops teams
10. **Several mid-tier F&B chains** — Highlands Coffee, The Coffee House, Phuc Long (talent-intensive operations)

**Customer acquisition motion:**
- **Q2–Q3 Y1**: founder + operator-CEO direct outreach; reference selling using TS Holdings internal deployments
- **Q4 Y1**: first AE hire; webinars + content marketing through TS Media; conferences (VINASA HR Tech, Vietnam HR Summit)
- **Y2+**: ABM motion; product-led growth from hiring-marketplace free tier into HRIS upsell

**Pricing model:**
- **HRIS**: $5–15 per employee per month, tiered by feature set
- **Hiring Marketplace** (employer side): $300–1,500 per posted role + 5–10% take rate on premium placements; free tier for first 2 jobs/month
- **Recruiting Services**: 20–30% of first-year compensation per placement (industry standard)
- **Bundled subscription** (all three): 15–20% discount

**Customer wedge gate (D18):** ≥5 paying HRIS customers OR $20K MRR contracted before launch.

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## Capital and Cap Table

**Founder injection at incorporation:** $300K USD (per Y1 plan)

**External round at incorporation:** $1–1.5M pre-seed from a Vietnamese VC (Do Ventures, Mekong Capital, Touchstone, Ascend Vietnam) at ~$5–6M post-money

**Strategic anchor (if applicable):** Optional later — could pursue strategic investment from a Vietnamese HR services player (Talentnet, HR2B) at Series A for distribution boost.

**Cap table at launch (post pre-seed):**

| Stakeholder | Allocation | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| TS Holdings Pte Ltd | 50% | Founder-shareholder variant per [operator-ceo-recruiting.md](../operator-ceo-recruiting.md) — operator-CEO gets larger slice because HR/talent operators have many alternatives |
| Operator-CEO + founding team | 25% | Includes operator-CEO at 18–22% + founding tech/product leader at 3–7% |
| ESOP pool | 15% | Per D3 |
| External pre-seed investors | 10% | At ~$5–6M post-money valuation |

**Performance milestones tied to capital:**
- **6 months**: $20K MRR; HRIS GA; 30+ paying customers
- **12 months**: $100K MRR; hiring-marketplace GA; recruiting-services first 5 placements
- **18 months**: $300K MRR; Series A motion begins
- **24 months**: Series A raised ($5–8M); $500K+ MRR

**Capital gate (D18):** Pre-seed term sheet signed before incorporation. Founder $300K committed.

---

## Operator-CEO Profile

**Required experience:**
- 8+ years in HR-tech, talent marketplaces, or recruiting; ideally has built or operated a multi-product talent platform
- Has shipped consumer + B2B (the hiring marketplace has both surfaces)
- Vietnamese national or long-experience Việt Kiều with Vietnamese-market depth
- Has hired 5+ direct reports including PMs and tech leads
- Comfortable with both subscription SaaS economics AND transaction/marketplace economics

**Likely sourcing channels:**
- Former Base.vn senior team (highest-probability source — they understand Vietnamese HR SaaS)
- VP / Director at TopCV, VietnamWorks, JobStreet (marketplace operators)
- Founders of Vietnamese HR-tech startups that didn't scale (post-mortem founders make excellent operators)
- Diaspora: former PMs at LinkedIn, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Workday with Vietnamese background

**Compensation model:** Founder-shareholder variant — 18–22% operator-CEO equity is essential. Standard model would fail to recruit at this caliber. Cash: $90–130K base + 30–50% bonus.

**Reports to:** Founder directly (no Group MD for TS Ventures planned until Y3+).

**CEO gate (D18):** Named candidate identified by end of Y1 Q1; CIR engagement Y1 Q1 (paid retainer while refining merger thesis, building pipeline, recruiting founding tech lead). Offer signed Y1 Q1 close. No launch without signed offer.

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## Founding Team

**First 8 hires (Y1 Q2–Y2 Q1):**

| Role | When | Comp (USD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operator-CEO | Y1 Q1 close | $90–130K + 18–22% | Hired before incorporation |
| CTO / Head of Product | Y1 Q2 | $60–100K + 3–7% | Critical — three product lines |
| Senior Engineer × 2 (HRIS focus) | Y1 Q2 | $35–55K each + ESOP | HRIS GA priority |
| Engineer (Marketplace, AI matching) | Y1 Q3 | $35–55K + ESOP | Hiring marketplace ramp |
| Sales / BD Lead | Y1 Q3 | $30–50K + commission + ESOP | Direct outreach |
| Customer Success / Onboarding | Y1 Q4 | $25–40K + ESOP | Critical for SaaS retention |
| Recruiter (services arm operations) | Y1 Q4 | $25–40K + per-placement commission | TS HR-line operations |

**Headcount trajectory:** Y1 end: 8–10 · Y2: 25–35 · Y3: 50–80 · Y5: 150–250

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## Product / Tech Strategy

**MVP scope (6 months post-launch):**
- HRIS: employee records, leave management, basic payroll (Vietnamese tax-compliant), org chart, document storage
- Marketplace: job posting (employer side), candidate profile + AI matching (candidate side), application workflow
- Recruiting services: CRM for active placements, contract tooling (initially manual + automation later)

**Core IP we build:**
- AI candidate-matching engine (built on top of LLM APIs, fine-tuned on Vietnamese resume + job-description corpus)
- Vietnamese payroll engine (taxes, social insurance, 13th-month, region-specific minimums)
- Unified employee + candidate data model (the integration differentiator)

**Build vs buy:**
- Auth, billing: vendor (Stripe / Vietnamese equivalent)
- Email/notifications: vendor (SendGrid, Twilio)
- AI/LLM: OpenAI / Anthropic via API initially; potential TS Intel migration in Y2+
- Payroll calculations: build (Vietnamese specifics demand custom)

**TS Intel dependency:**
- AI candidate-matching can migrate from OpenAI to TS Intel models in Y2+ as TS Intel matures, lowering unit economics

**TS Block dependency:**
- Payroll disbursement integration with TS Pay (Y3+) — significant cost saving for customers and revenue capture

**Technical risks:**
- **AI matching quality below TopCV** — AI matching must be demonstrably better than TopCV's algorithmic ranking from launch; below-par matching = no candidate-side traction
- **Payroll compliance bugs** — Vietnamese payroll has many edge cases; bugs are very visible and reputation-damaging

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## Go-to-Market

**Sales motion:**
- Y1: Direct sales by operator-CEO and BD lead; reference selling using TS Holdings internal customers; webinars + content
- Y2: AE team for outbound; PLG motion from free hiring-marketplace tier into HRIS upsell
- Y3+: Channel partnerships with payroll service bureaus (cross-referral); strategic alliance with TS Block for payroll disbursement bundle

**Channel strategy:**
- Year 2: partnerships with Vietnamese accounting firms (payroll feeder)
- Year 2–3: integration partnerships with KiotViet (POS data → employee scheduling) and Sapo
- Year 3+: TS Block payroll disbursement integration

**Anchor customer strategy:**
- TS Holdings portfolio as anchor reference book (50+ employees across portfolio entities = real revenue + reference)
- One named conglomerate as social-proof anchor (target: a TS Tech Consulting customer with HR pain)

**Marketing approach:**
- Content: Vietnamese compensation benchmarking reports (annual, becomes industry reference)
- TS Media collaboration: HR thought leadership
- Conferences: Vietnam HR Summit, VINASA HR Tech, regional events
- Product-led growth on candidate side: free profile, AI job matching, salary insights — funnel into employer-side paid

**Cross-sell within TS portfolio:**
- TS People → all TS entities (HRIS internal customer)
- TS Technology Consulting → TS People referrals from HR-modernization projects
- TS Block / TS Pay (Y3) → payroll disbursement integration (mutual referral)
- TS Education → talent-development cross-sell

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## Milestones

| Horizon | Target |
|---|---|
| 90 days | HRIS MVP shipped; 10 paying customers (mostly internal TS portfolio); operator-CEO + CTO + 4 engineers onboarded |
| 6 months | $20K MRR; 30+ paying HRIS customers; hiring-marketplace beta |
| 12 months | $100K MRR; hiring-marketplace GA; recruiting-services first placements; 1,000+ candidate profiles |
| 18 months | $300K MRR; Series A motion; cross-product attach rate >40% |
| 24 months | Series A raised ($5–8M); $500K MRR; 500+ paying customers |
| 36 months | $1.5M MRR; payroll integration with TS Pay; consideration of regional (Indonesia, Thailand) expansion |

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## Risks (Top 3)

1. **Three-product complexity at startup stage** — most startups can barely ship one product; we're trying to ship three integrated ones. Risk of doing all three poorly.
   - **Mitigation:** Sequenced rollout — HRIS first (Q1–Q2), Marketplace second (Q3–Q4), Recruiting services third (Y2 Q1). Don't pretend to launch all three simultaneously.

2. **TopCV / VietnamWorks competitive response on marketplace side** — once we threaten their core, they'll respond with price + product investment. We're a 10x smaller team competing on their home turf.
   - **Mitigation:** Focus marketplace differentiation on integration with HRIS (which they can't easily match without HRIS); avoid head-on commodity-job-posting price wars; target mid-market segments TopCV undersells.

3. **Operator-CEO recruitment difficulty** — talent-stack operators with experience across SaaS + marketplace + recruiting services are rare. Standard model won't attract them.
   - **Mitigation:** Founder-shareholder cap table (18–22% to operator); active CIR program from Year 1 Q0; pipeline 5+ named candidates.

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## Cross-portfolio synergies

**Customer flow (TS People → other TS entities):**
- Mira referral when HRIS reveals ERP pain
- TS Block / TS Pay referral for payroll disbursement
- TS Education referral for learning content

**Customer flow (other TS entities → TS People):**
- TS Technology Consulting (HR-modernization handoffs) — significant feeder
- TS Health customers needing healthcare-specific HRIS
- TS Education customers needing campus HR
- Every TS portfolio entity is itself a customer

**Shared infrastructure consumed:**
- Shared Services cost-plus 8%
- TS Brand & IP license
- TS Intel (AI matching, Y2+)
- TS Pay (payroll disbursement, Y3+)

**Shared infrastructure provided:**
- Pipeline of vetted talent for entire TS portfolio (internal hiring channel via recruiting services arm)
- Compensation benchmarking data (anonymized, useful for other entities' offers)

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## Tier-specific requirements (Tier 2 provisional)

- [ ] Vietnamese-citizen Người đại diện theo pháp luật — operator-CEO
- [ ] D&O insurance Vietnamese carrier
- [ ] Independent Compliance Officer (PDPD compliance is intensive for HR data)
- [ ] Office space — independent from TS Tech Consulting (consumer-side hiring brand needs own identity)
- [ ] Banking — Tier 2 (Techcombank or VPBank)
- [ ] PDPD compliance is the major operational item — HR data is sensitive personal data; data localization (Decree 53) applies
- [ ] Anti-corruption training if SOE customers emerge

Provisional Tier 2: reassessed Y1 end based on actual customer mix.

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## Exit / outcome scenarios

| Scenario | Probability | Outcome | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| **IPO success** (Vietnamese listing or Singapore listing) | 5–10% | $200–500M valuation as integrated talent platform | Y6–Y8 |
| **Strategic sale to international HR-tech** (Workday, Rippling, Deel regional expansion) | 15–25% | $80–200M at $5M+ MRR | Y4–Y6 |
| **Strategic sale to Vietnamese player** (FPT, VNG, Vingroup tech arm) | 15–25% | $50–120M | Y4–Y6 |
| **Sustained portfolio entity** (cash-generative, dividends) | 25–35% | $3–8M ARR sustained | Y3+ |
| **Stall at sub-scale** | 15–25% | Consolidation candidate; absorb into TS Technology Consulting | Y3–Y5 |
| **Fail** | 10–15% | Wind-down at one or more product lines; pivot remainder | Y2–Y3 |

**5-year valuation target (75th percentile):** $40–80M

**8-year valuation target (75th percentile):** $150–300M

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## Dependencies and gating

**External dependencies before incorporation:**
- Operator-CEO offer signed
- Pre-seed term sheet signed
- 5+ named anchor customers identified (mix of TS portfolio internal + external)
- CTO / founding tech lead committed

**Internal dependencies:**
- Shared Services capacity
- Banking ready
- TS Holdings entities ready to be early HRIS customers

**Decision gate (per D18):**
- [ ] CEO gate: operator-CEO signed
- [ ] Customer gate: 5+ committed customers
- [ ] Capital gate: $300K founder + pre-seed term sheet
- [ ] Capacity gate: Shared Services confirms support

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## Related documents

- [../aggressive-8-year-growth-plan.md](../aggressive-8-year-growth-plan.md)
- [../operator-ceo-recruiting.md](../operator-ceo-recruiting.md) — founder-shareholder variant critical here
- [../government-customer-compliance.md](../government-customer-compliance.md) — provisional Tier 2
- [../../notes/decisions.md](../../notes/decisions.md) — D1, D3, D5, D17, D18, D20