About Us
We back emerging founders from day one
Galileo Ventures is a pre-seed venture capital company, launched in 2020 from Australia.
We back exceptional emerging founders with capital and hands-on support. Since inception, we've backed 25 portfolio companies from their first rounds, co-investing with leading VCs to deliver superior performance for our investors.
25
Number of Galileo Ventures investments.
80%
Percentage of portfolio that have raised follow-on funding within 12 months of our first investment.
$100M+
Total capital raised by Galileo portfolio in 4 years.
What We Believe
A revolution in entrepreneurship is underway.
For the first time in history, an entrepreneur anywhere in the world can build a global business with just an internet connection and an idea.
We believe the emerging founder – the unproven, scrappy and overlooked entrepreneur – fuelled by new technology, will build the market leaders of the future.
We believe the emerging founder – the unproven, scrappy and overlooked entrepreneur – fuelled by new technology, will build the market leaders of the future.
The world's next defining companies will come from our emerging founders.
Our investing values
What we believe makes a great early stage partnership.
1
Trust in
Founder Vision
A small group of founders with a strong vision creates powerful change.
2
Technology for the Greater Good
Bringing to market new technology for the ultimate benefit of humanity, not just a few.
3
Investing for the
Whole Journey
It takes (a long) time to build an impactful business, we're along for the journey.
Great Teams powered by Strong Businesses
Good ideas need great teams and high performing business models that ensure they thrive and grow.
Meet our team
James Alexander
General Partner (Sydney)
James is a co-founder of Galileo with a breadth of experience sourcing and supporting startups. James supports the portfolio including Board Observer for Relevance AI. Previously, James founded Australia’s first multi-university incubator where he supported over 200 startups. He is former engineer at various startups including at Atlassian (pre-VC funding).
James' superpower is the depth of his experience supporting hundreds of founders having "seen everything".
James' superpower is the depth of his experience supporting hundreds of founders having "seen everything".
Hugh Stephens
General Partner (Melbourne)
Hugh is a co-founder of Galileo with extensive founder-operator experience including advising Tixel and Board Observer for Zendir. Hugh is the founder of Sked Social, a bootstrapped SaaS company and was an angel investor before Galileo. He was previously in management consulting and worked at a number of post-series-A startups in Melbourne. Hugh was a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient.
Hugh's superpower is his ability to "speak founder" and connect with founders on a deep personal level.
Hugh's superpower is his ability to "speak founder" and connect with founders on a deep personal level.
Julia French
Partner (Sydney/San Francisco)
Julia is a Partner at Galileo, her background has seen her work at top Unicorns such as Atlassian, Dropbox and WhatsApp. She has deep founder operator experience both on the investment and support side and supports the founders across the portfolio.
Julia's superpower is her ability to pick and support founders, having worked in some of the top Unicorns.
Julia's superpower is her ability to pick and support founders, having worked in some of the top Unicorns.
Meet our advisors
Select advisors and coaches who support our founders.
David Rohrsheim
Investment Comittee and Founder Coach
David is part of our Fund I investment comittee and was previously founding Manager at Uber APAC (IPO NSYE) and investor at Draper Fisher Jurvetson (San Francisco) where he advised 17 startups.
Austin Nichols
Sales Coach
Austin is a Sales Leader at Samsara (NYSE: IOT), leading sales for one of the fastest growing IoT companies globally. Previously, Austin led sales at Dedrone and Meraki (exited to Cisco) for Asia Pacific where he grew the business from $3m to over $120m in 5 years. Austin brings deep enterprise sales expertise to our teams.
Zac Altman
Engineering Coach
Zac is a multi-time founder, most recently founding LoungeBuddy, a leading travel app (recently exited to American Express). Zac brings his CTO experience to our teams, including building and leading software teams across San Francisco and Sydney.
Andrew Dent
Founder Coach
Andrew is a multi-time founder, most recently co-founding Zeetings (sold to Canva) and HubSpan (sold to Liaison Technologies). He's an expert on key technology and product decisions.
Shane Verner
Sales Coach
Shane has over 20 years experience in leadership and enterprise technology sales with iconic US vendors, systems integrators, scale-outs and startups (including his own!). He specialises in negotiations of large, complex software sales involving multi-funcitonal teams. He also mentors Irish tech startups launching in ANZ.
We're growing!
We're always on the look out for talented operators and mentors to join our network. Referrals are always valued but we welcome the right people to get in touch.
Get in touch
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Our offices
Melbourne
231 Chapel St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Sydney
Level 4, 1 Castlereagh St, Sydney NSW 2000
San Francisco
156 2nd St, San Francisco, CA 94105
