Cultivating tall poppies: The venture capitalist betting big on Australia’s student founders

22 July 2025

Monash Business School graduate Mitchell Hughes is helping student entrepreneurs secure early funding — and taking aim at the culture that tells ambitious young Australians to play it safe.

All too often, student founders who are just starting out on their entrepreneurial journeys are told they have to wait their turn.

Mitchell Hughes believes that’s a huge waste of potential.

As a commerce student at Monash Business School, he saw plenty of peers with promising ideas but no clear path to advance them.

Today, he’s backing those same kinds of innovators through NextGen Ventures, a fund he co-founded with University of Melbourne graduate Jerry X’Lingson to support early-stage startups.

“Australia’s culture doesn’t encourage or reward ambition, yet it’s an integral trait if you want to build something truly great,” Mr Hughes said.

“You're rarely encouraged to think big, and if you do, tall poppy syndrome kicks in and cuts you down.

“We want to build a culture where ambition is normalised - where young people can dream big without apology, aim to build something generational, and then feel empowered to will it into existence.”

Global inspiration, local action

The idea for NextGen Ventures took shape after Mr Hughes spent time exploring startup ecosystems in the US, UK and Israel – returning convinced that Australia was underestimating its own rising stars.

“I saw how far behind Australia was at the grassroots and how much higher the bar was in those places than people in Australia realise,” he said.

Each of these systems, he noticed, had one thing in common: a successful VC fund focused on students.

“That’s when it clicked — we needed to bring that model to Australia, as it filled that gap,” he said.

“Our motivation was to build the infrastructure to back the next generation from day one.”

A new way to support start-ups

Launched in late 2023, NextGen Ventures is Australia’s first venture capital fund dedicated to student founders.

With backing from names like Blackbird Ventures, Airtree, and a long list of angel investors, the fund has already deployed capital into ventures such as Fluency - an AI process platform created by teams from Swinburne and RMIT.

What sets the fund apart is its structure: a distributed network of 20 scouts across seven Australian universities, embedded in campus communities and trained to identify emerging talent.

It’s a bottom-up model inspired by international success stories like the US-based Dorm Room Fund.

Rather than waiting for polished decks or seed-stage traction, NextGen Ventures is designed to be the first support for founders.

“We invest at the earliest stage, often before traditional VCs have even had a look, because we’ve built deep, peer-to-peer relationships with these founders from day zero,” he said.

“We’re a $2.5 million fund, typically writing $70,000 cheques, and we make around 10 investments per year.”

‘Just start. Don’t overthink it’

NextGen Venture’s first year has already turned heads across the startup ecosystem, but Mr Hughes is playing the long game.

His focus now is on building a stronger pipeline of student-led startups and reshaping how the industry views and supports its youngest innovators.“

Our measure of success is simple: make Australia one of the best places in the world to be a young, ambitious builder over the next two decades,” he said.

“Everything we do is anchored to that vision.”

His advice to students who want to start something but don’t know where to begin is just as focused.

“Just start. Don’t overthink it - just build, experiment, talk to people. Don’t let fear, a lack of curiosity, or a sense that you’re not ready stop you,” he said.

“But more than anything - especially in the context of Australian culture - you need to embrace failure. Your first thing will fail. It should. You should look back a year later and feel a bit embarrassed. That’s a sign you’ve taken action and grown.”

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