
Hian is a founding partner of Openspace Capital, a leading multi-strategy asset management firm focused on Southeast Asia. Most notably, he was an early investor in some of Southeast Asia's most notable tech startups such as Gojek, Love Bonito and Lucence. Hian himself has extensive entrepreneurial experience. He founded and built Asian Food Channel, a 24-hour pay TV channel that was sold to US media giant Scripps Interactive (now Warner Brothers Discovery Inc.). Prior to this, he was a technology investment banker at SG Warburg (now UBS) and Salomon Smith Barney (now Citi).He holds an MBA from INSEAD and a Law Degree from Trinity College, Oxford.In our conversation today, we cover the following as seen below- TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction to Hien Goh and OpenSpace Capital1:06 The Early Days of OpenSpace Capital in 20143:02 The Southeast Asian E-Commerce Boom 5:15 Selecting the Right Founders 9:10 The TRUST Framework for Evaluating Founders14:29 What Makes A Great Founder for VCs 16:13 Investing in Gojek: Finding Indonesia's Unicorn20:05 Is AI a Bubble? 25:47 What The Dot-Com Era Can Teach US 27:30 AI Economics and New Business Models33:13 Why Focus on Cost of Distribution 35:04 Who Will Win the AI Race?40:03 The Agentic Revolution and Hian's "Hey Gorgeous" Idea 44:05 Beyond NVIDIA: The Future of AI Chips50:10 Jim Keller, The Famous Chip Ronin 54:18 Singapore's Talent Strategy in the AI Era58:59 Made in Singapore: Changing Mindsets1:03:16 Singapore Inc and Strategic Decision-Making1:05:41 Avoiding Over-Optimisation for Success1:08:21 Advice for Fresh GraduatesThis is the 60th episode Of The Front Row PodcastFull transcripts of episodes can be found here: https://www.ykeith.com/tag/podcast/Feel free to mingle in the comments below or head to...Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frontrow.65/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-yap/Website: www.ykeith.comEmail: keith@frontrow65.coGet access to every episode by subscribing for free on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/keith-yap8 or Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/front-row/id1771599400