About Us
Dedication to supporting founders from day one
Galileo Ventures is a seed VC to support the next generation of entrepreneurs.
We're changing the model – we believe backing first-time, emerging founders with value-adding capital and hands-on support will create high-impact global businesses and deliver superior returns to our investors.
24
Number of Galileo Ventures investments in four years.
80%
Percentage of our portfolio that have raised follow-on funding within 12 months of our first investment.
$50M+
Total amount Galileo portfolio companies raised.
What We Believe
A revolution in entrepreneurship is underway.
Anyone armed with a laptop, an internet connection and a great idea can build a business that reaches people around the globe. They don’t need any prior business experience or knowledge – history shows the most successful often don't.
The world's next greatest ideas are hidden in our most ambitious emerging founders.
Our investing values
What we believe makes a great partnership in the very early days.
1
Trust in
Founder Vision
A small group of founders with a strong vision is a powerful force for change.
2
New Technology for the Greater Good
Bringing to market new technology for the ultimate benefit of humanity, not just a few.
3
Investing for the
Long Haul
It takes (a long) time to build an impactful business, we're along for the journey.
Great Teams with Sustainable Businesses
Good ideas need great teams and business models that ensure they thrive and grow.
Meet our team
We're operators and founders with deep early stage experience across Australia and Silicon Valley.
James Alexander
General Partner
James is the co-founder of Galileo with deep seed stage experience and CompSci (Hons) background. Founder of APACs first multi-university student incubator (acquired) where he supported over 200 startups founded by students, grads and researchers. Prior to that he worked as an engineer at startups, including at Atlassian (pre-VC funding), and was a casual academic teaching entrepreneurship to University of Sydney engineers.
team@galileo.ventures
Hugh Stephens
General Partner
Hugh has extensive founder-operator experience. Founder of Sked Social, a bootstrapped software company with over 12,000 customers globally and $6m+ ARR. Prior he worked across digital health including advisor to HotDoc (post Series A) and on the external advisory board for the Mayo Clinic. He founded his own communications and management consultancy at 20 years old and has research articles published in The Lancet, and the Medical Journal of Australia. Hugh has BMedSci (Hons) background and is a Forbes 30 Under 30.
team@galileo.ventures
Julia French
Partner, Head of Platform
Julia supports our founders in both Australia and Silicon Valley. She was formerly the Course Director for the Diploma in Innovation in the TD School at the University of Technology Sydney. She was an early employee at WhatsApp (acquired by Meta) and has worked with hundreds of startups in Australia and Silicon Valley including Unicorns like Dropbox and Atlassian.
David Rohrsheim
Investments & Program Coach
David is part of our investments team and was previously founding Manager at Uber APAC (IPO NSYE) and investor at Draper Fisher Jurvetson (San Francisco) where he advised 17 startups.
Zac Altman
Program 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.
Austin Nichols
Program 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.
We're growing!
We're always on the look out for startup coaches and future hires. Referrals are always valued but we welcome the right people to get in touch.
Get in touch
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