Southeast Asia Venture Capital News

May 24, 2023

Meet The Team: Skylla

In this week's Meet The Team, our Office Administrator, Skylla, shares more about herself, from her passion for live-streaming to her goal of making a positive change on others' lives. She handles most of the day-to-day operations at Openspace and makes sure that there's always enough snacks in the pantry.

May 20, 2023

Our Recommendations: Steal Like An Artist

"Steal Like an Artist" is a compelling and thought-provoking book by Austin Kleon that presents a fresh perspective on creativity and encourages readers to embrace their own artistic potential. The book argues that creativity is not about generating entirely original ideas but rather about embracing influence, remixing existing ideas, and transforming them into something new.

May 18, 2023

Capabilities Focus: Dr Yiliang Zhao on Data in Openspace

At Openspace, we are driven by Active Intelligence, where real-time data drives the investing decisions we make. We prioritise the use of data in helping both the Openspace office as well as for our portfolio companies. As such, we'd like to shine a spotlight on the use of data here at Openspace, with help from our Director for Data Science, Dr Yiliang Zhao.

May 17, 2023

Meet The Team: Juancho

In this week's edition of Meet The Team, we learn a little more about Juancho, our Senior Associate who sources for investment opportunities and oversees our portfolio companies in the Philippines. Read on to learn more about his love for food and his experience with the Openspace family.

May 12, 2023

Our Recommendations: The Design Matters Podcast

Design Matters is a podcast that stands out as a captivating and insightful exploration of the world of design.

May 9, 2023

Portco Feature: Kumu

Today, we're sharing more about our portfolio company, Kumu. Kumu is a social entertainment app based in the Philippines, being the largest live-streaming company in the country. We're asking them more about how they support and empower their users, as we think they have valuable learning points that other startups and creators and learn from.

May 6, 2023

Recommendation: The Happiness Project

As we enter May, we'd like to recommend a read of "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin.

May 4, 2023

Founding Partner Shane Chesson is elected Vice-Chairman of SVCA

Openspace is glad to be an active participant in the Singapore Venture & Private Capital Association (“SVCA”), spearheaded by Founding Partner, Shane Chesson, who has been on the Board since 2020 and is now helping to shape the agenda after his recent election as Vice-Chairman. We extend our congrats to Shane, Sunil Mishra as Chairman and the other board members elected

April 11, 2022

Openspace congratulates Gojek (GoTo) on their successful IPO 🚀

Having led the Series A for Gojek back in 2014, we are so thrilled to see GoTo Group go public today, with a successful first day of trading. 🚀

March 16, 2022

Datature raises US$2.7m from Openspace, aims to become a leading end-to-end no-code MLOps platform

The fundraising follows impressive early traction as Datature quickly establishes itself as one of the most exciting new end-to-end no-code MLOps platforms. Designed from the ground up, Datature’s full suite of solutions provides teams with the ability to annotate, augment, train and deploy computer vision models all without a single line of code.

March 14, 2022

SariSuki raises from Openspace, expands into quick commerce

SariSuki, a fast growing social commerce startup, is expanding into quick commerce with a vision to build an end-to-end eGrocery platform in the Philippines.

March 11, 2022

Ocular by Openspace announces investment into STEPN, a move-to-earn NFT game

‍We are excited to announce that recently, Ocular, the new Web3 focused investment fund managed by Openspace made an investment into STEPN, a move-to-earn NFT game built on Solana.

January 21, 2022

Openspace welcomes Omesh Fabiani and Johan Batubara

Today, we have a big pair of announcements: welcome to Omesh Fabiani and also to Johan Batubara–our newest additions to the senior team. Omesh joins as our Chief Financial Officer, and Johan as Executive Director, Indonesia.

January 4, 2022

Philippines Rising: The New Startup Hotspot in 2022

Openspace recently spoke with The Ken about the opportunity we've long recognised in the Philippines, and how that led us to build on our portfolio in the country, and lead the Series A in Kumu, whose rapid growth has served as a signal to overseas investors that the country is full of entrepreneurial zest and emergent startups.

December 21, 2021

Jessica Huang Pouleur Announced as General Partner

We are thrilled to announce the promotion of Jessica Huang Pouleur to General Partner. She is the first to join co-founders Shane Chesson and Hian Goh, who have led the firm since 2014

November 30, 2021

Kumu: not content with just content

An article from our friends at The Ken on Kumu and its growth strategies.

June 15, 2023

Thought Leadership: Shane’s Takeaways at SVCA Conference 2023

Shane Chesson was given the privilege to be one of the keynote speakers at SVCA Conference 2023 - Asia and the World: Inside The Dynamics of a Changing Relationship. Shane provided a deeper understanding of market dynamics, enhanced diligence practices, and the future of exit strategies during the VC Panel.

June 7, 2023

Meet the Team: Jonathan Chandra

In this week's edition of Meet The Team, we learn a little more about Jonathan, our Senior Analyst (OSV+), who sources, assesses and manages a number of the fund's portfolio companies.

February 9, 2023

Capabilities Focus: Wenbo Zong on Tech & Engineering

We’re starting a new series called Capabilities Focus, which is highlighting members of our Portfolio Success team and the integral role they play at Openspace and for our portfolio companies.

February 8, 2023

The Craft Revisited: Rory Sutherland on Alchemy

This week, we’re revisiting a previous episode of The Craft, where Hian, our General Partner, discusses behavioral psychology with Rory Sutherland - author of Alchemy and Vice Chairman of the Oglivy group. Here are 5 key takeaways we gained from their conversation:

December 23, 2022

Happy Holidays, from us to you

From everyone at Openspace to everyone we have the heartfelt pleasure of knowing or working with.

July 27, 2022

New Craft Episode 🔥: Nir Eyal On Habits

In this episode of The Craft, Jessica talks to Nir Eyal about habits. He's behavioural design consultant, investor, entrepreneur and author of the seminal book ‘Hooked’.

June 14, 2022

New The Craft episode - Chris Lemons on Courage 💪

In this episode, Shane Chesson talks to Chris Lemons, a saturation diver and subject of the Netflix documentary, Last Breath.

March 8, 2022

Stronger through diversity: Openspace on International Women’s Day 2022

At Openspace, we see diversity as both a social and business imperative. It’s because we believe that by valuing diversity, we will encourage more diverse idea exchange–a fundamental element of our firm’s Active Intelligence philosophy.

September 9, 2024

Openspace Sustainability Progress Report 2023

Awareness of ESG issues has grown significantly but translating this into real, deliberate action has been slow. To highlight how we are moving from awareness to action, we are pleased to release our 4th annual Sustainability Progress Report

October 3, 2023

Nano: How Earned Wage Access is Improving Employee Financial Wellbeing in Vietnam

The report was conducted in early 2023 by Center for Impact Investing and Practices (CIIP), a non-profit centre established by Temasek Trust to advance the impact investing ecosystem in Asia

August 30, 2023

Reaping the Regional Dividend: The Southeast Asia Coalesce Index

Openspace and Stripe release Reaping the Regional Dividend: The Southeast Asia Coalesce Index, which studies the extent to which the region is growing closer together, and the upside opportunities that brings.

August 11, 2023

Openspace Releases Sustainability Progress Report 2022

We are pleased to be publishing our 2022 Sustainability Progress Report for the third year! In this report, we do a deep dive on ESG issues material to tech companies in Southeast Asia, focusing particularly on consumer protection principles, responsible AI, and cybersecurity and data governance.

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