Openspace Ventures

Shane Chesson and Hian Goh co-founded Openspace in Singapore in 2014. Chesson was previously managing director and co-head of technology investment banking for Citigroup in Asia Pacific, with earlier stints at Merrill Lynch and Bain and Company, and serves as vice chairman of the Singapore Venture and Private Capital Association. Goh built and sold the Asian Food Channel to Scripps Networks Interactive and worked as a technology banker at SG Warburg and Salomon Smith Barney; he is a Kauffman Fellow with a law degree from Oxford.

Jessica Huang Pouleur is partner and leads Openspace Growth, arriving from Disney, where she headed corporate strategy and business development across Asia Pacific and the Middle East, and Providence Equity Partners, where she led the Southeast Asia investment team. Roughly twenty-three investment professionals cover Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Openspace was founded in Singapore in 2014, built out of NSI Ventures, the venture arm of the Northstar Group, and now reports roughly $800M in committed capital across six funds. The firm does not itemize its earlier vehicles. The one fund with a disclosed close is Openspace Ventures IV, which reached a final close of $163M in November 2024 with the Japan International Cooperation Agency named as a limited partner alongside existing global institutional investors. That fund's US feeder had taken $25.35M from eleven accredited investors as of a June 2024 SEC filing, a slice of the total rather than the fund size.

The platform has since broadened well past early-stage venture into four further strategies: Ocular for frontier technology, a growth equity book covering Series C and D, Onyx for growth credit, and Orbit for listed small and mid-cap growth on the Singapore exchange. Sizes and vintages for Openspace Ventures I through III and the growth vehicle are not disclosed.