What a week!
I’m sure some of you might of seen our big announcement this week but in case you didn’t we announced Galileo Ventures to the world with a lovely interview on the Aus Financial Review: Millennial founders raise first VC fund after three-year struggle.
I’ve hinted here and there that we’re gearing up on this blog but it is a big relief to finally announce this to the world after a pretty intense past 12 months getting everything setup.
A few quick thoughts and reflections:
- It’s been a 3 year fundraising journey (and still have more to do), another 2 years of thinking and planning before that and another 7+ years of working/building startups to get to this point. So, while it feels new to everyone else, for me it definitely feels familiar but still very exciting.
- AU still has a real problem backing young people (i.e. under 35) to do big things – this is both in the sense of how hard it is to raise for emerging fund managers as well as just how many people don’t believe in our strategy of investing in startups founded by mostly young people. Quite simply a lot of wealthy people don’t believe people start valuable companies at a young age in Australia.
- The founders we are meeting are incredibly talented with untapped potential and from all walks of life and all corners of the globe – even before we announced founders started finding us and asking us for advice or who to talk too. We’ve even had some super talented entrepreneurs still in High School making hundreds of thousands who just don’t know where to get advice.
- And finally, as literally one of the only gay ‘Partner-level VCs’ out there in Australia we’re pretty happy to fly the flag on promoting a more inclusive VC and LTGBQI+ investors and founders 🏳️🌈
We truely believe this is a global problem – but I do chuckle when (rich) people point to silicon valley and say the problem is ‘fixed’ – and a big part of our mission is to change the narrative on how to fund and support emerging founders at scale and across many cities .
If you’re a subscriber you’ll get a first row look as we grow a totally new type of VC fund (a VC-accelerator) and the stuff we learn along the way.
PS: Why Galileo?
Galileo Galilei is a pretty incredible human and I’m still learning more about him everyday. He used human ingenuity and new technology to discover many things, including our place among the stars and ushered in the scientific revolution (no biggie).
We back emerging founders with outsized ambition and crazy ideas that change our world for the better through innovation and new technology – ushering the revolution in entrepreneurship.
