The next K-pop? POPS founder Esther Nguyen hopes TikTok can make Southeast Asian music a global phenomenon

Esther Nguyen has what may be a stereotypical story for a Vietnamese-American entrepreneur working in Vietnam. Her parents fled the country when Saigon fell in 1975; Nguyen, born in Michigan and raised in the Bay Area, had long felt the pull of her family’s former home. “I knew I wanted to do something in Southeast Asia, and specifically Vietnam,” Nguyen tells Fortune. “I thought about what really resonates with the local culture, and landed on music.” In 2007, she packed her bags and moved to Ho Chi Minh City with a dream of creating the “Spotify of Vietnam,” before there was even a digital ecosystem to work in. The local music industry, she recalls, was a mess. Back then, “no one understood digital rights,” and artists were signing contracts for CDs…