Vanessa Pham might not be a household name on Wall Street yet, but she has plenty of time to make that happen. The 29-year-old co-founded Asian food startup Omsom with her sister, Kim. The company sells chef-crafted packaged noodles and sauces. So far, Omsom has managed to sell more than 4 million products and is available in more than 2,000 stores, including Whole Foods (AMZN), Target (TGT), and Sprouts (SFM).
Pham and her sister, the daughters of Vietnamese refugees, were able to secure investors such as Away Co-founder and CEO Jen Rubio, Zola Co-founder and CEO Shan-Lyn Ma, and food-focused VC firm New Fare Partners Founder Elly Truesdell.
At Omsom’s office in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Pham gives Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Brooke DiPalma a literal taste of how she leads her small team to shake up ethnic aisles and change the way consumers eat and think about Asian cuisine.
“Omsom is all about being proud and loud, especially when the stereotype of Asian Americans in America's kind of like submissive, or docile,” Pham says. “Omsom is our true kind of energy and ethos and spirit.”
Pham details not only how she and her sister have managed to build the brand at such a young age, but also how they were able to launch during the pandemic and endure the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which held the business’s capital.
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Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Brooks.
Video Transcript
- When your sister-run a noodle company hits grocery shelves nationwide.
VANESSA PHAM: When I was a kid and I was like always trying to like hide my lunch or I just didn't want people to come over when my mom was making something particularly aromatic. Fast forward to today where I get a chance to proudly put this in front of the country.
BROOKE DIPALMA: The types of aromatic dishes Vanessa Pham once tried to hide from the world are now on full display in vibrant packaging on the shelves of major retailers. The brand's colorful journey is also on full display across the internet, thanks to Pham's now-tell-the-world attitude.
VANESSA PHAM: Every time I go into the grocery store, I always got to take the phone out and do like the selfie video. It always feels surreal.
BROOKE DIPALMA: Omsom is a sauce and noodles startup partnering with prominent Asian chefs to offer premium authentic flavors. This isn't your usual microwavable instant noodles you might think of. A huge step Vanessa and her sister, Kim, say as part of their personal mission, to shake up ethnic aisles at grocery stores and bring these dishes to the mainstream.
But the recipe to get here, well, it wasn't a simple one. A global pandemic, Silicon Valley Bank's collapse, and the challenges any 24-year-old would face leading a brand new startup all stood in the way of her vision and mission of spreading her values and culture through the love of food.
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Tell us what Omsom means. I mean, that in itself just symbolizes so much of the mission.
VANESSA PHAM: Omsom is actually based on a Vietnamese word "om som." And in, Vietnamese it means rowdy, rambunctious, riotous. It's actually a negative term. It's what our parents would use when they were trying to scold us. And Kim and I were really inspired by that energy. What if we turn that on its head and celebrate that aspect of who we are?
And Omsom is all about being proud and loud, especially when the stereotype of Asian-Americans in America is kind of like submissive or docile. Omsom is our true kind of energy and ethos and spirit.
BROOKE DIPALMA: While hiking in Bolivia in 2018 with her more free-spirited sister, the once-risk-averse Pham decided to lean into what she felt was her true ethos and leave her steady consulting career behind.
VANESSA PHAM: We instantly circled around the mission and the industry. And the mission is to educate on multitudes within Asian America, honor and celebrate Asian cuisines and flavors, and the industry just had to be food, because, for us, it was a love language, It was how we first like really learn to engage with our culture as Vietnamese-Americans and daughters of refugees.
BROOKE DIPALMA: With nothing more than what the two sisters had in the bank, they set out on their mission to create something unique. Embracing their roots was a catalyst to create Omsom as they saw an opportunity to tap into the ethnic food market, which is set to reach $84.7 billion by 2034. And investors saw the opportunity, too, as a number of them, including the co-founder of the luggage company Away, Jen Rubio, founder of the online wedding platform, Zola, Shan-Lyn Ma, and former Whole Foods executive turned-VC founder, Eli Truesdell of New Fair Partners, helped fund the Pham sisters vision. For Pham, embracing her personality, well, that was how she learned to lead the brand.
You see yourself as more of a risk forward leader now. Do you feel like you're tapping in to that mission?
VANESSA PHAM: I would say that the person who I was when we were first building Omsom is very different than the person I am today. I think my proud and loud has actually been embracing who I am, which is very sensitive, very empathetic, lots of feelings, and learning to see that that's a huge strength as a leader if I don't make myself wrong for that or suppress that.
BROOKE DIPALMA: You also founded the company at such a young age. I think you were, what, 24?
VANESSA PHAM: I was 24.
BROOKE DIPALMA: 24?
VANESSA PHAM: A baby, a baby, yeah.
BROOKE DIPALMA: How did you push through that noise and say, I may be young, but I'm making a difference?
VANESSA PHAM: Yeah. I would say the loudest noise was actually my own self-doubt at the time. And so so much of this journey has been actually working with my kind of inner narratives and dialogue. And now I think I'm kind of my own hype woman, so.
BROOKE DIPALMA: A hype woman with a core team who have helped her create not just food products, but an environment fueled by the brand's identity and Pham's own energetic outlook-- something she has embedded in the culture.
VANESSA PHAM: Everybody here is incredibly talented, incredibly driven, and, I think, enlivened by the mission of awesome and I absolutely lean on the team. I think a strong leader must and should trust and empower those that work with them. I learned from the team every single day.
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BROOKE DIPALMA: Pham's journey in starting Omsom has definitely been a learning experience. As they sort out the right manufacturing partner, which they found in Chicago, back in Brooklyn, another huge lesson came their way-- how to launch a specialty food business in the middle of a global pandemic.
VANESSA PHAM: When we started out building Omsom, we were just wide-eyed. We didn't know what could come. And before we even launched, the first big challenge came. Do we launch in the midst of this pandemic, at the start of it? Or do we pause and wait it out?
And what we realize is that folks during this time are going to be at home. They're going to be wanting to feel a sense of connection and home. And we felt like, that's what Omsom is all about. I think we did make the right decision despite some folks warning us that it could be a difficult time.
BROOKE DIPALMA: Who were those folks, those investors, those people who backed you? How did you push over that?
VANESSA PHAM: One of my philosophies as a leader is you've got this whole kind of network of folks, whether they're investors or other folks. And I believe it's so important to take in their input, their advice, and their experience like a sponge. But at the end of the day, coming together with your team, centering your values and finding the best path forward for the company is really-- you know, that power is yours. We decided this was the time that we wanted to bring this company to the world.
BROOKE DIPALMA: Just three years after launching during COVID, Pham faced another major obstacle.
- Regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank. The FDIC has taken control of the bank deposits. So what's the fallout, the ripple effects?
BROOKE DIPALMA: Leaving the startup without access to their capital right before the brand was scheduled to launch their second product line-- saucy noodles.
VANESSA PHAM: Nothing can really prepare you for that type of uncertainty. I immediately had to figure out what our options were. And at the same time, Kim and I started working together on how we wanted to communicate what was going on to our community. We wanted to center our values around transparency and around bringing them in.
BROOKE DIPALMA: Pham and her sister were transparent with their community in a way that you might expect from the young founders-- on social media.
VANESSA PHAM: We did not know what would happen in the coming days. And so we put our heads together that Saturday morning and wrote something from the heart.
Running a proud and loud business doesn't always mean being celebratory. So let's talk about how SVB's collapse poses a major existential threat to many small businesses, including Omsom.
I think while we were still very scared and nervous, we felt deeply heartened by the people that showed up for us.
BROOKE DIPALMA: Talk about what values you hold closest to you as a leader.
VANESSA PHAM: One of the values that I've really centered in my journey as a leader is being heart forward, which is something that I don't think was necessarily historically celebrated in leadership. It was about being decisive, being kind of just leading with certainty and confidence, sometimes at the expense of your humanity.
And I feel like, at the early stages of my journey, I tried that on. And I was always making mistakes when I was in that head space of being something that I wasn't. And so the last couple of years, I've started to accept more of who I am in my leadership. If I'm working on something in my own journey, I'm open to sharing that. And I hope that invites people to feel confident and accepted in who they are at Omsom, too.
BROOKE DIPALMA: When your team thinks of you as a leader, what do you hope is the message that you're getting across?
VANESSA PHAM: I really hope that everybody at Omsom feels valued for who they are and what they bring to the table, and that they feel they have room to learn to sometimes make mistakes. It's about celebrating your truth and exactly what makes you you. I want Omsom to be the type of place where people are learning and expanding but also feeling great pride in their kind of natural strengths.
BROOKE DIPALMA: Pham and her team are determined to fill a white space. Think Cava and how it's setting out to fill the White space for fast casual Mediterranean food, or what Chipotle has done for fast casual Mexican cuisine. And now Omsom aims to fill the void for premium authentic Asian flavors in the packaged food market. That market is expected to grow around 50% globally by 2030.
And while Omsom doesn't disclose its finances publicly, the suggested retail price for its saucy noodles and its cooking sauces range from nearly $4 to $5. Since launch, the brand has sold 4 million products and expanded its presence to over 2,000 stores without losing sight of its roots.
Pham isn't satisfied yet though, far from it. She wants, in her own words, proud and loud Asian flavors to be mainstream.
VANESSA PHAM: I want to see Omsom become a cultural force, a household name, that continues to honor Asian-American communities and flavors and culture every single day. I want us to be in homes across the country but still hold that ethos and that heart that we do today.
BROOKE DIPALMA: An ethos and heart that Pham and her sister inherited from their parents, who, as refugees, weren't able to take the same kinds of risks.
Your parents must be so proud of you. What do you think they think about all that you have done?
VANESSA PHAM: They tell us all the time, which I really appreciate. They tell us that we are honoring our family history by the work that we do. And because they're refugees and they've built the life we have today, I-- it is my biggest life's dream to honor them and do right by them.
BROOKE DIPALMA: If there is one moment that really felt like, wow, I made it, we did it, what would that moment be?
VANESSA PHAM: It's When we've shown that people who helped to get us here what we've done. And so it's really my grandparents. We were featured in a spread in Elle Vietnam. And it's written in Vietnamese. So I cannot wait to bring it to them, because they can read it and really understand that. And that'll be the moment I think when it really hits me, you know, what we've accomplished.
