Meet our entrepreneurs.

ACE Training and MultiSkills Training is a registered training organisation in Victoria delivering nationally accredited courses across construction, mining, and workplace safety. Rob acquired ACE in August 2021, the first completed SMEVentures acquisition, and added MultiSkills as a bolt-on. Five years in, the business runs with the original team and client base. Rob is the longest-tenured SMEVentures operator.

Steve Orell is a chartered accountant with an MBA from Duke who co-founded two technology companies before he bought one. He built Proximity Insight to a team of 20 selling software to luxury retailers in three countries, co-founded the consultancy Cattle Dog Digital and grew it to 15 people, and was finance director of a software company with more than 300 staff. He bought eMerge IT in 2023 and runs it as CEO out of Darwin. eMerge looks after the IT for organisations in regional and remote Australia, with Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations as its core work, and supports more than 150 of them across three states.

Ryan Bernsmann spent twelve years in the Australian Army, deploying to Iraq and Timor-Leste and finishing as a major commanding a company within a 675-strong infantry battalion. He took an MBA at INSEAD, then ran the local investment portfolio at Microsoft Australia. In 2023 he bought Grima Recycling from the family who built it, and the founders stayed on for six months to hand it over properly. Grima collects and processes commercial and industrial recycling across greater Sydney. Ryan added Kollect and Papertrade in 2025 and now runs three sites.

Jason Hew learned what a business can do for a family at his grandfather's petrol station in rural Malaysia. He is a chartered accountant who started at PwC, moved into mergers and acquisitions in Sydney, and helped build Woolworths' venture arm from its early days, where he evaluated more than 800 companies and invested in twelve. He was general manager of strategy at Cashrewards before he left to buy a business. In 2024 he bought two in a single transaction: WF Energy Controls in Sydney, making instrument transformers since 1910, and TWS Energy Controls in Christchurch, doing the same since 1981. They supply the utilities that run the grid in both countries.

Stijn De Vriendt came to Australia from Belgium in 2014 and spent thirteen years at Accenture, rising from graduate analyst to director in business strategy across Europe, Asia and Australia. He then co-founded a consulting firm, grew it to a team of five and sold it to Labelium, a French multinational. In 2025 he bought Custom Transport Equipment in Drouin, in West Gippsland, which has been building tilt slides, trailers and custom truck bodies since 2007 and has delivered more than a thousand of them. Stijn runs it with the production team and the customers that were already there.

Kylie Wright grew up on a sheep and wheat farm at Cowra and was the first in her family to go to university. She took an MBA at Oxford and has spent 20 years running companies, first as co-head of global research at GLG, where she led a team of 400, then as chief operating officer of World 50, chief executive of the reputation data company RepTrak across ten countries, and first chief executive of the RSA Conference. In 2026 she bought SPL Security Solutions on the Gold Coast, a locksmith and electronic security firm of 35 years' standing with more than 85 qualified staff, among them 18 locksmiths and 22 electricians.