VC Catalyst

Kate is the CEO of LaunchVic, the Victorian Government’s startup agency and has considerable experience in technological innovation across start-ups, academia, corporates, and government.
An experienced non-executive director, Kate is currently a member of Charles Sturt University Council. She previously led the development of an HR start-up through a listing on the ASX. She held the position of Senior Telecommunications Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and has also worked as a General Manager at NBN Co.

Matt is a software developer, ex-CTO, ex co-founder, ex-recruiter, ex-BD guy. In his own words, that’s a lot of ex’s! Now he’s focussed on early-stage investing with a bias towards founders building enduring companies over the long haul.

Alister is the founder and Managing Partner of Folklore Ventures, a first cheque to forever investment firm, which believes in the power of founder vision and the potential of teams, right from the start. He previously co-founded ShippingEasy, a SaaS company delivering fulfilment automation to eCommerce merchants that was acquired in 2016 and has more than 15 years’ experience as a VC, founder and adviser to technology companies.

Kylie is Co-founder of Flying Fox Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, which makes it easy for private investors to build their own diversified technology portfolios. Flying Fox has now invested in more than 45 great Australian startups. Passionate about introducing more investors to the joys of early-stage tech investing, Kylie is a regular contributor to leading investor education programs including VC Catalyst and Airtree’s Explorer Program.
Kylie brings empathy to the founder experience, having founded two technology businesses. She has almost two decades experience as a corporate transaction lawyer and is a capable company director.

A champion of startup women, Nisha counts startups like Glamsquad, Zola, Modsy, goTenna, Pymetrics, Lola, Beutycon and The Wing as part of her portfolio at BBG. Nisha is also the founder of #BUILTBYGIRLS, an organisation committed to giving young women the tools to help them build the world of tomorrow in a tech-enabled economy.

Ben is an active angel investor and founder of Archangel VC which invests in pre-seed and seed stage companies in Australia and New Zealand. He’s worked with dozens of startups including as an advisor or mentor and was voted a Startmate MVP. Prior to early stage investing, Ben worked at a corporate venture capital firm investing in the US and China where he achieved several exits. Before investing Ben worked helping companies grow and launch new initiatives in the areas of SaaS, cybersecurity and healthcare.

Peter Gahan is Professor of Management and Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) (Faculty of Business and Economics) at the University of Melbourne. He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Workplace Leadership, where he was Foundation Director from 2012 to 2017. Peter has previously held academic and visiting academic positions at UNSW, Monash University, University of South California, The European University Institute, Cardiff Business School, New York University and Stockholm Business School.

Jill has held positions at Kellogg Graduate School of Management, INSEAD, Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration. She currently teaches Managerial Judgement, Decision Making and Resilient Leadership in the MBA, Executive and Senior Executive MBA programs as well as the Advanced Managers Program.

Leila is responsible for building relationships with investors, raising Square Peg’s funds and investor relations. Leila has considerable experience in working with institutional investors, family offices and financial advisors, as well as raising funds across multiple asset classes and strategies.

Previously, she was an Executive Director in the Institutional Sales team at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) (2009-2017). Prior to that, she managed relationships across asset consultants and research houses for GSAM.

Peter is currently Chief Strategy Office and Board Advisor at Harrison.ai in Singapore, a group of companies who are using AI to help scale global healthcare capacity. Peter previously spent 10 years in venture capital as Co-Founder and Partner at Singapore-based VC firm Qualgro. In his time there, he headed investments at Series A & Series B in SaaS, data, and AI across the APC region. Prior to Qualgro, Peter was a Director at Singtel Innov8 and Co-Founder of Optus-Innov8, and is also an investor and mentor at Startmate.

Gabrielle joined Main Sequence Ventures, a deep tech venture capital firm managing the CSIRO’S Innovation Fund, in 2019 bringing over 15 years of financial markets experience. She has a strong focus on ESG principles and is deeply involved in a number of company creation opportunities. Her goal is to help deep tech entrepreneurs and their teams access the knowledge, networks, and capital they need to build globally significant companies. Gabrielle previously worked in investment banking at ABN AMRO and Morgan Stanley and investment management at Challenger.

A seasoned entrepreneur and VC investor, Jules is currently Partner at Mindset Venture in Los Angeles. Prior to this, she was Partner at IBM’s Blockchain Accelerator in NYC and Co-Founder of Prose Ventures, an independent fund focused on professional services. Jules has exited three major startups including Evolve Law and Hire an Esquire. She has degrees from UCLA and LSE and is a Kauffman Fellow and mentor for young women.

Paul is an international investor with extensive experience in Silicon Valley, the UK and Australia. Following a prolific career in strategic communications and leading many startups through to major acquisition, Paul cofounded rampersand to invest in and support Australian early-stage technology companies.

Rayn has been an active angel investor for the past 7 years. He has invested in over 70 startups and funds including Blackbird, Instaclustr, Propeller Aero, Carbar, Eucalyptus & Fresh Equities. Rayn is a venture partner at Archangel Ventures, an early-stage angel fund focusing on the first 2 funding rounds. In his free time, Rayn loves to collect startup tshirts and Linkedin recommendations.

Nicole is founder of Start Small Ventures, an advisory firm providing capital raising and growth strategy support to startups and supporting early-stage investors with investment strategy and approach. She was previously Investment Director at Rampersand. Prior to that Nicole spent seven years in SEEK’s strategy team, following on from a number of years in strategy consulting and investment banking. Her journey has given her broad insight into investing, product strategy, general business operations and fast growth environments, all very useful when it comes to finding—and helping—the best tech startups in the country.

Will is Managing Partner at Giant Leap, Australia’s first and only 100% impact venture capital fund manager. Giant Leap invests in exceptional, rapidly scalable businesses that blend financial returns with deep social and environmental impact, across three impact themes: sustainable living, health and wellbeing and empowering people. Will has 15+ years of experience in financial services specifically within venture capital, private equity, property investment and corporate finance. . He is also a non-executive director of Alberts Group and a mentor with Startmate.

James is a Partner at Square Peg, empowering exceptional founders across Australia, Israel and South-East Asia. He previously ran both Startmate, Australia’s most powerful startup network, investing in early-stage companies each year and helping them grow, and the Startmate Fellowship. Prior to this James was based in the US where he helped scale Khan Academy from YouTube success to the biggest ed-tech organisation in the world. As VP of Strategy and Ops, he built the BD and Adoption (Marketing) functions and ran the Educator/Classroom business.

Jodie is Co-CEO at Tractor Ventures and is passionate about helping businesses start and grow. She was previously General Manager at SBE Australia, set up the Innovation Bay community in Melbourne, is an advisor to multiple startups and mentor at Startmate. Jodie also has experience as cofounder of two-sided marketplace, Occasional Butler, which was acquired by rival Airtasker and depo8 coworking space.

Dan is a partner at Square Peg, where he started in 2012 in the Melbourne office, before moving to Tel Aviv in 2014 to launch and manage our Israeli operation; he returned to Melbourne at the end of 2020 to once again focus on the Australian market. Some of his investments include Fiverr & Aidoc out of Israel, and OwnHome, ZeroCo & Amber in Australia. Dan has a background in strategy, having started his career as a management consultant before moving to SEEK in a corporate strategy role.

Chris is an Australian entrepreneur and super angel. He built and sold price comparison business Getprice to News Corp, eCommerce marketplace Next Commerce to Future PLC and programmatic ad marketplace Hynt to Zalando. Chris is a founding investor and Chairman of vacation rentals platform Holidu and has invested in more than 60 startups. He worked as Venture Partner with VC funds EQT Ventures, Project A and SquarePeg Capital prior to establishing Inventures and Inventures Collective, an Angel Collective backing ambitious founders building frontier technology to positively impact society.