This news service speaks to the founder and CEO of a new venture capital business that is based in Australia's Gold Coast.

Admiralty Capital Group is a Gold Coast, Australia-based alternative asset manager investing for clients across an array of local and global opportunities. It is planning to build its first fund mid-way this year, with its second in the middle of 2025 and 2026.

Led and founded by chief executive Ryan Holsheimer (main picture), it concentrates on early-stage and growth-stage companies in Australia and internationally. Holsheimer, who has a background in financial markets, having been a former JP Morgan head of APAC cash equities and equity distribution, was most recently based in Hong Kong. He returned home to Queensland’s Gold Coast in 2022.

WealthBriefingAsia asked Holsheimer what the business is going to concentrate on.

“For the venture capital fund, we will look at early-stage financing. We will look at companies that are brand new; they may only have a prototype on their phone to show us. We’ll also look at series A funding, companies that might be doing fundraises of $10 and $20 million,” he replied. “We would participate in those as well. The companies we are looking to invest in are across an array of sectors. All of them generally have some technology focus, but across different industries.”

There are two types of investors who are interested in what Holsheimer’s firm wants to do. 

“One is local wealthy families here in Queensland. The second group is senior finance executives, including asset managers and hedge funds, and ex-colleagues who like the fact that I'm pivoting to this in my career and want to back me,” he said. “I was in Hong Kong for a total of 15 years so a lot of my network is built in Hong Kong.”

What’s the reason for launching Admiralty?

“In many ways, this is a very big pivot to go from a very large investment bank with over 300,000 employees to being in a small team, but I’ve been enjoying it very much. You have a lot more freedom to excel, to really dive in and understand the issues and opportunities. I've been enjoying the ability to carefully research new industries and select smart investments with my own family office money. A decision to start Admiralty Capital Group is a decision to now make these investments on a bigger scale,” he said. 

WBA asked Holsheimer about the recent tough environment for VC, given the rise in interest rates. 

“The challenge the VC industry has at the moment is making exits,” he replied. “They’re finding it difficult in this environment to sell their stake in a company. For a company to IPO in some cases, that’s proving difficult at this stage in the cycle. That’s not an issue for me because I’m deploying capital now.”

“The banking industry often goes through these expansion and contraction cycles and it's definitely in a harder part of the cycle right now. The deal flow has been a lot lower than it has been in previous years. But I think there is more positivity and optimism that things will turn. And what we've always discovered is just when you think market conditions are really challenging, they can improve quite quickly.”

Australia's Gold Coast

The future?
“We plan to grow Admiralty Capital Group to about 10 people by year-end. These would be mostly investment manager roles. I’m not closed to the idea of people working from anywhere where they can be effective. I think if the right people want to be based in Hong Kong that would be fabulous,” Holsheimer said.  

“At the end of the day, we’re about finding and supporting brilliant, young companies in the world that are trying to solve big global issues in a scalable and profitable way. If we can do that, then I think our investors will be very happy,” he concluded.