Vietnamese-born American owns properties worth hundreds of millions of dollars

“When you have nothing in your hand, you will not have anything to lose”. These were the words which gave encouragement to Phat (Frank Jao) when he left Vietnam for the US in 1975. 

In the US, with good English skills, he easily found a job selling vacuum cleaners in California. Having no money, no special skills and no good idea to start a business, Phat once thought that he would spend his whole life in Orange County, where there were thousands of Vietnamese.

However, he realized that he could work harder than anyone else. He believed that if he worked three times harder than others and if he was so busy that he did not have time to spend money, he would be able to save a sum of money large enough to start up a business after 10 years.

Phat’s ‘American dream’ came sooner than expected as he spent only three years to fulfill it. In 1978, Phat started his business in the real estate sector by setting up Bridgecreek company.

Realizing that Asian immigrants, including those from Vietnam, increased rapidly, Phat had the idea of building Little Saigon, a small town of Vietnamese which not only reflects the Vietnamese culture and trade, but also represents immigrants’ stories about the ‘American dream’.

Since its establishment, Bridgecreek has invested in many real estate projects with the total value of $400 million. These include Phuoc Loc Tho (Asian Garden Mall) which serves as an important trade center for Asian people in the US.

After 30 years, Bridgecreek developed into a powerful conglomerate with the head office in the Little Saigon.

Being the CEO of Bridgecreek, Phat not only is in charge of developing the Little Saigon community with over 5,000 Asian businesses, but he also supervises the operation of many companies in the real estate sector, real estate services and investments. 

It was a nice surprise to many people that even in late 1980s, when the world suffered from the economic crisis, Phat still gained big achievements.

Since 1981, he has been expanding business in China and South East Asia.

In 2002, the then US President George Bush appointed Trieu Nhu Phat, a businessman, as a member of the Vietnam Education Fund (VEF) Board of directors. This is a fund belonging to the White House in charge of supporting the Vietnam-US education exchange which granted scholarships to hundreds of Vietnamese intellectuals, giving them the opportunities to study in the US. Later, he became the director of VEF.