Bullish on Australia: My fireside chat at arrayah hacker house
My origins story, how I got into VC, advice for founders and why Im bullish on Australia.
This is an edited transcript from a fireside chat I did at the very end of 2025 at arrayah’s billabong hacker house in Sydney. I was grateful such a big group showed up, around 50 builders, hackers and curious techies. It was a very interesting crowd, I got to chat with many of them before we did the interview and I was happy to know many didn’t know who I was, they just curious to come and hear about Australia’s tech sector!
The conversation covered a lot of ground — from my origins story, how I got into venture capital, to why I think Australia's tech ecosystem is at an inflection point.
Big thanks to arrayah. Enjoy!
Writers note: I co-wrote this with Claude Opus 6.5 which I fed the whole transcript (from an audience members AI pendant!) via Relevance AI Chat to clean it up. They Key Takeaways are from AI and I think kinda cute so left them in :)
Bullish on Australia: A Fireside Chat with James Alexander of Galileo Ventures
The Origin Story
Akshat: Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you born, and what shaped your journey into tech and venture capital?
James: I grew up in Sydney, though I spent some time in Taiwan and Germany. I’m half Chinese — my mom’s from Taiwan. When I was 18 or 19, I did a year 13 exchange in Munich, which was really eye-opening.
I learned a few things there. One, German beer is actually beer — not what we drink here. Two, the engineering culture is incredible. And three, our school system is actually really good. I thought it was just okay, but compared to Germany’s system where they separate you into streams really young and you don’t finish university until way later, I realised we had it pretty good.
But here’s what stuck with me: how much they cared about Australia. I was shocked. “We don’t think we’re very important, but a lot of other countries think we’re very important.” That was the beginning of me understanding how Australians lack a lot of confidence. And that influences everything — what we think we can do, what we think we can’t do.
So you came back to Australia and studied computer science at Sydney University?
Yeah, I did computer science. My parents wanted me to do finance, but I was like, no way, I’m doing computer science. Then when I said I’m starting a fund, my dad laughed.
My dad was an entrepreneur — he started a mining company, listed it on the ASX. So growing up, we’d have dinner conversations about board members and shareholders. I didn’t know this was weird. I thought this was normal.
What was your first business?
My first business that made me money was an eBay business when I was about 15. eBay arbitrage, basically. When eBay launched in Australia, you could only buy IT equipment at Harvey Norman with like 40% markup. So I’d buy from the US, ship it here, and still sell at a profit. My first customer was actually my dad’s business — I filled out his whole office with IT gear.
Years later, I met Daniel Petre, who started eBay Australia. That turned out to be one of the best investments in Australian history — like a 3,000x return in less than three years when eBay bought back all the franchises.
The Atlassian Moment
You did an internship at Atlassian early on. How did that happen?
So I was president of the IT Society at Sydney Uni, and we’d organise these job trips to visit places where you could work as a software engineer. Back in 2008-2009, it was basically banks, trading firms, and that was it.
Then Atlassian started sponsoring us. We visited their office, and it was miles apart different from everywhere else. They were like 120 staff at the time — I thought that was huge. They bought us lunch, and this guy drenched in sweat sits down at our table. We’re like, “Who are you?” He’s like, “Oh, I’m Scott. I’m the CEO.” He’d just been playing basketball at lunch.
He said, “If you guys want to come join us for summer, send me an email.” There were four of us at that table. No one sent him an email except me. Everyone else went to work for banks.
I did the internship, and it was crazy. I was working on the Confluence product. And months later, all these Americans in suits came through the office. We’re like, “Who are these people?” Turns out it was Accel. They were inking the deal — $30-40 million, the biggest single investment Accel had ever made at the time, and outside the US.
That was a light bulb moment. Not only was it their biggest investment ever — it was an Australian company.
The San Francisco Trip That Changed Everything
What happened after Atlassian?
I had friends leaving for SF, starting companies, getting into Y Combinator. This was 2010. No one in Australia knew what YC was. I was like, “I’m gonna go visit my friend, he’s in YC.” People were like, “What’s that?”
So I got on a plane and visited San Francisco. I instinctively knew something very interesting was happening and I should go have a look.
I went to my friend’s place in Mountain View. He’d just raised money from YC. It was him and two other engineers in this small townhouse. They all lived together and worked together. That’s all they did. And I was like, “This is pretty cool.” Then I was thinking back to Australia. “I don’t know anywhere in Australia where people are giving 22-year-olds money.”
I reached out to a bunch of Aussies in the US. One of them founded a company called Chomp — a much better way to browse the App Store. I went to visit him, we’re chatting on his rooftop, and I was like, “I’m surprised Apple doesn’t buy you.” He’s like, “Oh, well, you know, I can’t say anything about that.”
Literally the week later, Apple bought them. That became the basis of the App Store today.
So you came back from that trip thinking...?
I came back and I’m like, there’s this massive gap. There was no funding, no one was encouraging me to start a startup. So I got involved in what was then called StartupAus — the very first group of Aussies getting together to talk about what we need to do to create the culture and policy environment for startups.
Shout out to Alan Noble and Sally Ann from Google who were big supporters along with a lot of the successful VCs/Founders today such as Rick Baker and Nikki, who had just started Startmate, which was their play to bring YC to Australia.
What were you all talking about?
How do we form a proper tech industry, a global tech industry, in Australia?
The biggest problem was no venture capital. And what about success stories? Well, Atlassian was growing but not listed yet. Melbourne had the marketplaces — Domain, SEEK, carsales.com.au. But they were local-only businesses.
We needed more. And we needed it to be grassroots.
Starting Australia’s First Student Incubator
So you decided to start an incubator while you were still a student?
Yeah. I was getting to the end of my CompSci degree, and there was literally nothing for student entrepreneurs. I wrote an article for the student newspaper about Sydney Uni entrepreneurs — people like the ResMed founders, Matt Barrie from Freelancer, Ryan Junee who sold his startup to Google.
I got a lot of interest. One thing led to another, and we coalesced on this idea: why don’t we start an incubator at Sydney Uni focused on tech businesses?
The University wasn’t interested. So we got funding from the student union. The director didn’t really understand it, but he had an inkling it could be interesting. He had $20K in grant money left over from art projects that didn’t go through. I was like, “Why don’t we give grant money for people to build their own careers?”
So we took $20K, split it into $5K grants, and could fund four projects.
What was the response?
We thought thought no one gave a shit about entrepreneurship. So we booked two rooms, a small room for 40 people, a big room for 120 people. We ended up with 250.
Matt Barrie was on the panel at the launch night. He’s like, “I’ll give you guys another $20K.” So we ended up with $40K and did eight projects. That was cohort one.
Any companies we’d know from that first cohort?
Fun fact: cohort one had a biotech company (now Tetratherix) that last year IPO’d on the ASX for $40+ million. It’s a regenerative medicine company — the student was a researcher who invented a process that allows your cells to regrow. We didn’t have any serious biotech funding, so he had to bootstrap it here. It’s been a long journey, but they’re doing really well now.
What did you learn running the incubator for seven years?
“The most interesting thing was the amount of people who would start the program going, ‘I’m not an entrepreneur, but I have this idea,’ and finish it going, ‘Wow, okay, I’m actually an entrepreneur, and I want to see this become a thing.’”
A lot of people don’t think they’re a founder or they could be one. It often requires someone to nudge them and be like, no, you absolutely could. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to be an entrepreneur.
We ran a 14-week program. Competitive application, then we’d push you every week to do customer validation, build an MVP, figure out your go-to-market, then pitch. We did a big demo day at the end.
How did demo day evolve over those seven years?
When we started, there were two VCs in the room. That’s it. End of 2012, beginning of 2013. By the time we finished, maybe 20-30% of the room were VCs. There was like $2-3 billion worth of funds under management represented.
That’s seven years. From zero dollars to billions of VC dollars int the room. People don’t understand how fast that changes.
You also expanded nationally, right?
Yeah, we took it to five universities — Monash, Perth, Bond, Adelaide. We bootstrapped all their programs. It was the first national, multi-university incubator in Asia Pacific. I don’t think there’s been a single other one.
That was with the sponsorship of Google for Entrepreneurs — the only program in Australia that ever got sponsored by them directly from Mountain View. That was really cool because I got to meet all these other accelerators around the world.
I remember meeting John Doerr, one of Google’s first investors. I asked if he’d ever consider visiting Australia. He’s like, “Absolutely not. I do not leave the 20 kilometre radius that I’m in.”
I was quite shocked and horrified. The world’s pretty big. But back then, if you were a top VC, why would you leave? Peter Thiel once said the next billion dollar company will probably start within a few square kilometres of Stanford. And it was — Facebook. But now things are different.
Key takeaway: In 2012, Australia had almost zero VC presence. By 2019, billions in AUM were showing up at a student demo day. The ecosystem grew that fast — and most people didn’t notice it happening.
The Leap to Venture Capital
After seven years of running the incubator, what made you transition to VC?
I was helping all these entrepreneurs, and I really enjoyed it. I love technology, and you get to help people create new technologies. I was thinking, what’s a business that does this professionally?
There’s only really one business that does this professionally: venture capital. And I had no idea what venture capital was.
I had a few mentors, including Daniel Petre who was starting Airtree at the time. We got chatting, and he’s like, “Yeah, venture capital is all about backing entrepreneurs. If they make money, you make money.” I was like, “That’s cool. I will start a venture capital fund.”
He’s like, “Well, you know, it’s pretty difficult. Do you have a finance background?” No. “Investment banking?” No. “Have you run a big company?” It was still a student incubator.
I thought that would be enough. It turns out it was really, really, really hard.
What was hard about it?
You’ve got to raise money, just like founders. And in Australia, it’s particularly difficult to raise money for pre-seed strategy funds. The LP base isn’t quite as developed. You don’t have a lot of depth of investors that understand venture capital super well.
Venture is a fairly new asset class. You need people who understand it to invest in it. And unlocking venture capital as an asset class is a really important step in ecosystem development. That’s happening in Australia now, but it’s still got a long way to go.
Our superannuation fund industry doesn’t participate in venture capital in any big way. It’s very tokenistic. That’s where Australia will grow really strong — when our superannuation pool participates in venture in a big way.
How long did it take you to raise your first fund?
It took us three years to raise $10 million.
What’s your thesis?
Our thesis is emerging founders. We don’t invest in a market sector — we invest in a type of founder.
That’s typically people who are starting their first or second tech business. First-time founders, second-time — doesn’t matter. They have to be early. They have to have global ambition. They have to have unique insights — we call it “earned insight.” There has to be a reason why they know or think like this. And they have to have strong product sense, which usually means they’re more technical or someone on the team is.
Most investors were like, “I’m not touching that,” right?
Exactly. Unproven, scrappy, first-timers. We love that. But most investors want some version of proven — traction, ARR, product in market.
For us, it was much more about the characteristics of the founder, based on our experience running the incubator and seeing them day in, day out. I’ve been working with entrepreneurs for over 15 years now.
“As a pre-seed fund, our job is to help bridge that gap. If all we’re doing is saying, ‘come back to us when you have a million in ARR,’ are we a pre-seed fund? No. We’re just traditional venture capital.”
Key takeaway: Galileo’s thesis — “emerging founders” — is built on pattern recognition from seven years of running an incubator. They look for earned insight, global ambition, product sense, and scrappiness. Not traction.
The Andromeda Story: Backing a 22-Year-Old Building Robots
Let’s talk about Andromeda. How did that investment happen?
I was talking to Grace when she was still an undergrad in the robotics club at Melbourne University.
She sent me a message. She’s like, “I’ve got this idea for humanoid robots. I think everyone needs a humanoid robot.” I told her I agree.
And she was like, “But I don’t think it should be like a Terminator. It should be someone you actually want to talk to.” If you think about it, it makes sense. If you have a kid, do you want your kid talking to the robot that vacuums the floor? Probably not. You want a companion robot.
Grace had the vision to think this makes sense. She was partly inspired by Disney characters and animations.
What was your initial reaction?
I was like, “Oh, okay. Unpack that for me.” We got chatting. I was like, “This is really interesting. Build a prototype.”
She did. We kept chatting. I was like, “Cool, I can’t just write a cheque for you to build cool prototypes. I need you to actually build a business.”
She’s like, “I think I want to do aged care.”
For VCs, aged care is like a poison pill. You tell a VC you’re building a medical device or anything medical-related, they’ll switch off straight away. A lot of VCs have funny hang-ups with certain industries. And depending on how old they are, the bigger the hang-up.
I was like, “Look, I don’t care, but I know a lot of VCs have reservations. Why don’t you get some LOIs?”
I thought she’d come back with a few.
And?
She came back with $10 million in LOIs. Signed letters of intent. “If your robot does this, I will buy 20-30 units.”
I was like, “Cool. This is interesting.” I flew down to Melbourne. I saw her prototype, which was a talking head on a coat rack. Literally on a coat rack. They had no body. It was just wires and this talking head.
It was early versions of the GPT API. ChatGPT had just launched. People were really surprised you could ask questions and it would respond. I’m like, “Why is that surprising?” She’s like, “Yeah, we’ve been doing this for the last six months.”
We take it for granted now, but people really didn’t know you could use LLMs like that. They were possibly one of the first LLM-native businesses we invested in — by accident, because no one knew what an LLM was.
That’s the trigger for why you can build companion robots now — you can actually build a personality, whereas beforehand you couldn’t.
What did other VCs say?
We spoke to a few other VCs, and they just would not touch it. Hardware. You can’t build that type of business in Australia. And I think they underestimated Grace a lot because she was 22-23.
There’s some cultural aspects — the older generation in Australia doesn’t necessarily look at young people and go, “Oh, you can be an entrepreneur and I should fund you.” That’s luckily changing now.
So you led the pre-seed?
Yeah, we invested $300,000. We were like, “Let’s try and raise maybe $500K or $600K.” Other VCs wouldn’t touch it.
Today? Andromeda raised the largest robotics Series A $24m last year and setting up US headquarters and building the future of companion robotics.
Key takeaway: Pre-seed investing means backing people before the product exists in any real form. Grace had a talking head on a coat rack, $10M in LOIs, and deep conviction. Most VCs passed. That’s the gap pre-seed funds exist to fill.
Why James is Bullish on Australia
So let’s get to it. Are you bullish on Australia?
Very bullish.
Australia has all the right ingredients now. You’ve got the talent — it’s extremely well educated, very ambitious. We have to be scrappy because we play with way less money than all the other tech ecosystems.
You’ve got the capital now turning on. You’ve got the beginnings of a proper VC ecosystem that’s gone through a cycle. There’s been some returns. You’ve got generational companies. You’ve got success stories.
There are ~17 private unicorns in Australia right now. And then there’s six or seven exited decacorns — companies worth over $10 billion. That goes back to the 90s. Atlassian, even though it lists on NASDAQ. SEEK. Canva.
What you’ve got now is founders that have exited and a real depth of talent. If you start a startup now, you can hire from people that have left Atlassian, Google, Canva, Airwallex.
How does Australia compare globally?
“For dollars in, we create the most unicorns in the world. Way more efficient than Israel, way more efficient than the US and the UK and Singapore.”
That means performance from an investor lens. But we also have access to more markets.
If you start in the US and you want to sell into Asia, you’re going to kill yourself. You either go to Europe or South America. From Australia? It doesn’t matter. We can do Europe, we can do Asia, we can do the US. We’ve got a strong geo-expansion advantage. We’ve got a compatible culture — English speaking, very multicultural. We can build products for other geos as well.
Look at SEEK. They built the job marketplace here, then bought up all the job searching marketplaces in Asia and LATAM. Now it’s the number one business in that category globally — and more profitable than all the US equivalents. “You build one for Indonesia, it stays in Indonesia. You build one in Australia, and it beats everyone.”
You mentioned the ecosystem is globalising. What’s changed?
Remember John Doerr saying he’d never leave the 20km radius? That was 2014-2015.
Now? I cannot say the next billion dollar company will only come from the Bay Area. It might be there plus maybe five to eight other cities. And Sydney/Australia is one.
We just opened a small SF office — the first Australian seed fund to do that. We have five portfolio companies now in the US. Andromeda’s setting up HQ there. Relevance AI has 20 people in SF. Zendir in Colorado doing space software. Tixel’s in LA.
And here’s the kicker: when I started Galileo, I didn’t think US LPs would be interested in Australia. What’s happened is the opposite. They’re like, “Wow, there’s really good stuff happening now.”
Key takeaway: Australia is the most capital-efficient producer of unicorns in the world — with a geo-expansion advantage most ecosystems don’t have. The US LPs are starting to notice.
The Problems We Still Need to Solve
It’s not all perfect though, right? What are the challenges?
Oh, absolutely. Despite the progress, Australia still faces structural issues.
The capital gap is huge. We’re the fourth biggest capital pool in the world with our superannuation industry. We’ll become the second biggest in seven years, only second to the US. And not a single one of the super funds will touch me. How does that make any sense?
Compare: the Bay Area has ~1,500 seed funds. Texas has ~1,000 VC funds. Australia has ~140 VC funds, and only 5-8 are truly active at pre-seed/seed.
Anyone that goes, “Oh, there’s enough capital now” — no. We’re massively underfunded.
What about the cultural mindset?
The problem in Australia is a lot of rich families... most of the money goes to real estate. It’s like 40 to 50 percent of their net wealth in property. In the US it’s like 20 percent.
Is property a productive investment? No. It doesn’t make new products or services. It’s extremely unproductive.
Venture capital style investments are very productive. The government has made a program — the early stage venture capital limited partnerships — to incentivise wealthy people to give money to VC funds. That’s helped. But we need other layers of the stack to come on.
What about policy?
The problem with a lot of Australia’s policy is we’re very used to top-down policies. The government funds the thing, that funds this thing. It’s very top-down.
But when it comes to innovation, it is mostly bottom-up. You’ve got to fund at the grassroots level. But also lead at the top level.
Hot take on SXSW Sydney?
Look, I’m not going to have a go at the government for doing that. It’s been great. It catalyses everyone. But I think there should be more grassroots funding.
“I would have much preferred them to take the millions of dollars they funded SXSW Sydney and fund like 1,000 hacker houses who host their own events.”
Would that lead to better results than one big week of guest speakers they fly in and pay all the money for? Yes, I think so.
Key takeaway: Australia has the world’s 4th largest capital pool (soon to be 2nd) and almost none of it touches venture. The structural issues — super fund passivity, property-heavy family offices, top-down policy — are solvable, but they need to be named.
Where the Opportunity Is
Where do you see the biggest opportunities for founders?
Our fund is sector-agnostic because we think great companies from Australia will be more than just enterprise SaaS. It’s going to be much broader.
If I had unlimited money, I would be starting a seed biotech fund, 100%. There’s incredible depth of talent in life sciences. I’d also be doing global medical devices. And I’d be doing consumer.
Australia has a different pedigree, a different perspective, and that makes our consumer products potentially much more exploitable in Europe and Asia. We’ve already seen that in food and beverage and cosmetics — really strong success stories there. But we haven’t had the same tech consumer success stories yet.
I think it’s underbaked. Until we have those success stories, a lot of investors won’t touch it. But once they start coming through, the narrative will change fast.
Advice for Founders
What do founders need to know if they’re building in Australia?
On being “unproven”: everyone comes from a different background. They study different things. There’s no one thing where I’m like, “Oh yeah, it’s always a design student.” Everyone’s different.
What matters is:
Earned insight — Why are YOU uniquely positioned to solve this?
Global ambition — Are you thinking big enough?
Product sense — Can you build?
Scrappiness — Can you do more with less?
On raising capital: If you want to be an entrepreneur, don’t wait for permission. Build, validate, show traction. The capital will follow.
Building Community and Network Effects
Audience question: How do we create more network effects like the US has with college dorms and connections?
A lot of connections are made in person. Where are the opportunities to connect? Stuff like this is so important. There should be way more grassroots events around niche interests.
I’ve got friends in the Bay Area who track the number of AI events. It’s the most dense of anywhere in the world. But it’s not like there’s a billion people there. There’s just 20 events a week. It’s just part of the industry. If you want to put on an event, you do it. You put an event on.
In Australia, we need more of those opportunities at a really basic level. Go start your niche interest meetup group if you want. There’s no excuse now.
The other thing we need to be conscious of: We’ve got to be able to attract overseas talent. I asked my senior designer friend who was very instrumental in designing social network apps, “What is it about the Bay Area that means you always have the freshest, latest, most innovative ideas?”
He’s like, “It’s because if you are the top in what you do, you fly to the Bay Area.” You don’t necessarily move anymore. But you do fly there. So you get the same network effects.
For us to become that level, we also have to attract people to come here naturally. People have to want to come to Sydney, visit this hacker house, come to Bullish on Australia series.
The Bigger Vision
Audience question: Given larger time horizons and maybe infinite capital, what do you want to do with your time?
Prime Minister? No, I need to start a podcast first. Isn’t that the pathway now?
But seriously — I’m a strong believer in this idea that eventually what will happen is everyone sort of becomes an entrepreneur themselves.
Right now, the word entrepreneur is very loaded. It essentially means business. And business today is very constrained because we have a system where you make money in a certain way.
I think the way to get to whatever economy looks like in the future is to enable a lot more mass flourishing of entrepreneurship, versus the idea that everyone should have a stable job with a big company and if that dies because of technology, we fund them to have a stable job with another big company.
“Ultimately, what it means to be a successful entrepreneur — and this is what you see in all of them who are successful — is an intense manifestation of your creativity in a way that means you can thrive and survive off it. And I think not enough people get to experience that.”
When you give people the tools, confidence, and capital to build — they surprise you every time.
This fireside chat was part of the Bullish on Australia series at Billabong — Sydney’s hacker house spotlighting founders, artists, and researchers proving you can just do things starting right here in Australia.
Special thanks to Akshat for hosting and to everyone who came out despite the heavy hearts following the Bondi tragedy. This is what community looks like.
I never knew you got to hang out with Ben Keighran at Chomp!