From Volunteer Work to Co-Founder: Dalin's Journey Building PAWhere in Cambodia

PAWhere began with a group of young people who met through volunteer work and kept noticing the same thing: pets going missing every day. In Phnom Penh, between 15 and 20 pets, sometimes more, go missing daily, and only a very small percentage are ever found.

Their answer was PAWhere, a smart tracking device that connects to an app so owners can look after their pets anywhere and anytime from their phones. Va Dalin is the startup's co-founder and Marketing Manager.

For Dalin, the hardest and most unexpected part wasn't the technology itself. It was turning a technology idea into something people are actually willing to use and pay for.

That meant understanding customer behaviour, building trust, finding the right partners, and testing whether there was enough demand in a relatively small market.

Starting a company young comes with a gap in experience and contacts. Dalin and the team fill it by showing up: community events that share knowledge on building startups, competitions where mentors and trainers give guidance, and digital technology events where they showcase their prototypes.

Day-to-day work with users and local vendors happens in Khmer. English becomes essential when the team pitches to regional investors, international incubators and cross-border partners.

It is also the language of the technical documentation, developer specs, marketing materials, international tech summits, global software tools and learning resources the team relies on.

Dalin's biggest lesson so far: a digital product only succeeds when it fits the everyday habits and routines of the people it is built for. Dalin is still learning, too, and names digital marketing as the skill most worth understanding deeply because it matters so much for startups.