96 | theceomagazine.comGOLDEN
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ppen founders Julie and Chris Vonwiller built a very
successful Australian small business, providing language
data that supports speech recognition to global
companies like Microsoft and Google. They were
soon-to-be grandparents when the company took
off, so retirement and quality time with the family
quickly became a greater priority. But, understandably, they didn’t
want to relinquish total control of their pride and joy, especially
considering the potential for growth.
Enter Jeremy Samuel and Anacacia Capital. Ten years ago,
Jeremy founded Anacacia as a platform for investors to co-invest in
small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, he set out to
manage a portfolio of “nimble market leaders in consumer, industrial
and services” that turn over between A$20 million and A$250 million
in annual revenue, and tend to have large companies as customers.
Appen ticked all those boxes. »Entrepreneur and fund manager
Jeremy Samuel saw an opportunity in the
small business market, and risked everything
to make it happen.WORDS JOE MCDONOUGH • IMAGES SCOTT EHLERINVEST | Interview