In this episode of the Powerful Stories podcast, I have an insightful conversation with the global powerhouse that is Kate Vale. Kate is General Partner at ALIAVIA Ventures, an investor, advisor, board member and a mum. I’m also lucky enough to call her a friend.
As the former Managing Director @ Google and YouTube, Australia and New Zealand, Kate grew the business from $0-$500m in 9 years. As Managing Director, Kate launched Spotify to be the #1 streaming service in the Australian and New Zealand regions. Leading both businesses to IPO.
As an investor, Kate has invested in outstanding early stage companies with the current valuation exceeding $3.5 billion.
Kate Vale’s achievements include hiring several hundred employees during her tenure at Google; as well as creating the maternity leave policy at Google because it didn’t exist when she had her first baby; and playing a pivotal role in scaling the business incredibly quickly.
Fast forward to today, and Kate is the co-founder of ALIAVIA Venture, a venture capital fund that invests in females in the tech industry who are seeking to launch a global business. The fund was launched with business partner Marissa Warren after they discovered in 2019 that women were receiving less than 5% of all venture capital funding.
Kate talks about working in the male-dominated VC world and reveals some more truly staggering statistics about the gender inequity in this space, including the fact that at present there are less than a dozen female General Partners across the approximately 70 venture capital funds currently operating in Australia.
Kate is a woman who believes in ideas and is willing to back great ideas, and she also believes in people. She also eschews the fear of failure in favour of jumping off the cliff and backing herself, no matter what. This is a truly powerful entrepreneur who is using the power of experience and connection to deliver impact on a global scale, and I hope you take as many learnings away from this conversation as I did.
Much love,
Tory xox