A letter to future NextGenners

NextGen Ventures was born in 2023 out of a realisation and a dream.

The realisation was that there is magic in young ambition: youth is the best time to take risk, and young people operate with an unconditioned view of the world, unburdened by preconceptions of ‘how things are done’. The unique capacity of young people, both to take on risk and to operate in the world in novel ways, shows in the success of many great Australian founders who started young - like the founders of Canva, Atlassian, harrison.ai, and many others.

The dream was (and is) that NextGen becomes the vehicle through which young Australian talent is recognised, supported, and enabled. That applies to the companies we back, of which there have been 13, but it also applies to the students who make up our team, and who are a big part of the reason for our continued existence.

We are Australia’s first student-focussed venture capital firm, and we’ve recently raised $5M to back the most ambitious young Australians before anyone else. Our student team consists of ~20 curious, authentic, and high agency young people, across disciplines including engineering, medicine, biotech, law, computer science, and everywhere in between.

You’ll learn about venture capital in greater depth than you would anywhere else in Australia. We take you through a month-long training bootcamp, including live founder meetings with some of Australia’s best investors, and comprehensive sessions on the different components of what it takes to be a venture investor. Then, you’ll go out in the world and have the opportunity to form life-long relationships with the potential unicorn founders of tomorrow, take radical responsibility over the end-to-end due diligence process, and potentially partner with a founder (or multiple founders) by backing them with their first cheque.

You’ll learn about the world, and where it’s going. You’ll be exposed to some of the most ambitious young thinkers and dreamers on the frontier, across sectors like rocketry, quantum chemistry, and space, and get the chance to go deep into what they’re building.

You’ll also learn a lot from and about other people. NextGen gives you a unique platform to get in a room with brilliant and rare people, who view the world in ways that can challenge assumptions you didn’t even realise you had. That learning could arise from interactions with a student founder, with an ecosystem leader, or even with a fellow NextGenner.

What you might not expect is that you’ll also learn about yourself. You’ll learn about the impostor syndrome you didn’t know you had when placed in rooms where everyone else seems smarter and more qualified than you (but where there is no difference in reality). You’ll learn about who you really are, and how you intentionally want to show up in the world, when building great relationships with incredible peers you’ve just met. Also, you’ll learn about who you can be when you continuously challenge yourself everyday to be the best version of yourself, and work relentlessly towards your unique definition of success.

You will meet many founders, build many authentic relationships, and get a feel for what you look for in a person you think of as being truly special. You’ll also help to run events, convening communities of energetic, enthusiastic, and curious young people around causes you find to be meaningful and fulfilling. Hopefully, you’ll get the chance to bring a startup you have grown to love and adore to Investment Committee, write up the memo that captures where your conviction comes from, have your thinking rigorously challenged by your peers, and ultimately lead investments into outlier founders.

At NextGen, we pride ourselves on being a team defined by unapologetic ambition, authenticity, curiosity, and high agency. Every recruitment round, we look to ensure those traits remain central to our people, and by extension, our culture.

It doesn’t matter what your background is: you don’t need to know anything about venture capital, technology, or finance. All that matters is that you bring an extreme hunger to learn and an insatiable appetite for execution.

NextGen is one of the only spaces in Australia where ambition in students is not only encouraged, but accelerated. If you bring unrelenting ambition to the NextGen team, the potential returns can be significant.

You get an avenue to meet hundreds of people who can challenge you immensely. You get as much responsibility as you’re willing to take on from day 1. Most importantly, you get to be surrounded by a team of people who are just as hungry as you to ensure that you reach your definition of success. To get there, we truly care about supporting you through direct mentorship, or leveraging our existing network to assist in uncovering what that definition of success might be.

Some highlights from our alumni:

• Donald and Varad are working at Fluency, our first ever portfolio company

• Jamal and Jack are working at Superpower

• Riana is working at Preview Health

• Mary is working at Hey Juno

And our current team:

• Harry is working at Lyrebird Health

• Sara is working at Cuttable

• Saachi is working at Innovation Bay

• Disha is working at Startmate

• David is working at Everlab

You could be next. Apply to join the 2026 team now!