How Sam Kroonenburg went from Karratha kid to tech leader after $2b business sale — and why he’s back at work

When Sam Kroonenburg was 14, he started working at a computer shop in Maylands. What could have been just another weekend job for a Perth teenager was instead the starting point to a career that’s made him one of Australia’s most successful young people. The boy born in Karratha — now with an estimated wealth of $581 million after a $2 billion business sale three years ago — has lived away from WA for more than two decades but the Pilbara’s red dirt still feels like home. Then there’s the support for the Dockers, which emanates from spending many weekends in his formative years in Fremantle, his “spiritual home”. That teenage job, in which he rebuilt computers from parts, made Kroonenburg, 40, fall in love with the technology. For someone who’s always loved understanding how things work, it was the perfect role. “I was basically a self-taught programmer,” Kroonenburg said. “Then all through high school, I started my own online software company and would basically come home from school, throw my bag in the corner and spend the whole evening writing software and then selling it online, which is my passion. “I’m a massive geek.” Fast-forward to 2021 and Kroonenburg and his brother Ryan sold the six-year-old business they co-founded, A Cloud Guru, for $2b to Pluralsight, an American software giant. Kroonenburg took a couple of years out of work, spent time with his five children but found “I got restless pretty quickly”. So, he’s returning to start-ups, launching Cuttable, designed to revolutionise the way businesses advertise by using artificial intelligence. “I love working with really smart people trying to solve problems haven’t been solved before. That’s the reason we built A Cloud Guru, and so selling the business kind of didn’t make that drive go away,” Kroonenburg said. “It was never about money. I wanted to be part of a team solving a big problem again.” Returning to tech start-ups and using AI was partially driven by building apps to develop storybooks for his children in his time out of work, as a way of understanding its potential. He sees enormous potential in the next wave of AI. “I love technology, and watching what’s happening with AI is kind of what I always hoped and dreamed would happen in technology, and so I really didn’t want to sit this one out,” he said. “The cloud computing wave was massive, and it was really fun to be part of. But the AI wave is even bigger. “I want to be part of this next wave and solve interesting problems. I’m too young to retire.” With so many workplaces and even everyday Australians jumping into using AI, Kroonenburg reckons the biggest mistake many make is “having a solution and looking for a problem”. “You’ve got to start with the problem and then work out how tech could apply. Like right now, you see so many companies go ‘OK the latest thing is AI, we’ve got this great AI tech, what problem can we fix’?” Kroonenburg recognises some of the caution being applied to AI’s use, and advocates for some measures and regulation around foundation models — what data scientists use rather than building AI systems from scratch. He wants governments to encourage innovation and ensure it’s safe as the sector moves towards artificial general intelligence — which encompasses matching or surpassing human intelligence and AI self-teaching. “It’s almost like we’ve invented a new species, and we kind of have to learn what it is and get to know it,” he said, adding the benefits of AI in fields like medicine should be embraced. Kroonenburg points to the potential of AI to work out, for example, how proteins interact, that humans “could never do”. But he said we’d be “crazy to try to shield kids” from AI. “When we were kids, people used to say, ‘You can’t do your maths on a calculator because you won’t always have a calculator on you’. Oh, whoops, everyone does. “So I think you’re better to go with it.” Kroonenburg emphasised that the way many people over 35 grew up, “with access to an Encyclopaedia Britannica”, is not the world children of this or future generations will live or work in. “So many people are using AI in their day-to-day work. So I think you want to make sure kids have a base understanding and understand knowledge — how can they use AI to empower their learning, to help them learn faster, access interesting topics, test themselves, rather than, ‘Hey, turn it off, kids must live in a silo’,” he said. “I’m very much (about) embracing access to these technologies. And there should always be a lens to make sure they’re doing that safely.” A Curtin engineering graduate, Kroonenburg moved to Melbourne with his Hobart-born wife after they met while working abroad. His online learning platform A Cloud Guru was successful because it helped teach cloud computing — how services like databases, software and networking work — and other services. Specifically, it trains users for exams set by the major cloud providers: Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services. Its financial success — from humble beginnings in the Kroonenburg brothers’ bedroom and via beta testing — has changed the value of a dollar, he admits, but adds he aims to keep grounded to “what really matters to you in life”. “I enjoy spending time with my kids now as much as I did when I had no money, right, and that’s like the area of most joy in my life,” Kroonenburg says. “And that hasn’t changed at all. “So now it’s like nicer holidays and things like that, but ultimately even when you’re on a nice holiday the thing you enjoy most is playing board games! “What I have learned also is there is a little bit of a divide of people who met you before you had success; a different way that people treat you. I think once people know you’ve had success, they kind of put you on a pedestal than you feel is deserved. “But people who’ve known you for a long time, they’re like ‘oh yeah, that idiot!’ That’s been an interesting shift.” To his five kids though, all aged under 13, Kroonenburg is a basketball dad who enjoys watching from the sidelines. Despite returning to the high-pressure environment of start-ups, Kroonenburg says managing a big job with a large family is in large part to do with an “incredible partner, Claire” and “removing everything from your life that is not in service of (it)“. “I’m either working or with the family, and everything else is kind of a distraction,” he said. Not a distraction, though, are the Dockers. One of his sons is an ardent Freo fan despite growing up in Melbourne. So earlier this year he and Kroonenburg flew back for the younger one’s first home game. Like all Dockers supporters, he’s hoping for a better 2025 than the disappointing end to 2024. Kroonenburg also expects Perth’s nascent tech scene to grow given how connected the industry now is — and that stories like his and that of Canva founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, having to leave the State to grow their businesses, should soon be a thing of the past. “There’s never been a better to achieve and play on the global stage from anywhere in the world than right now,” he said. Asked if that could translate into a physical presence for Cuttable in Perth in future, Kroonenburg replied: “Never say never; potentially, I’d love to.” “I’d love to be even more connected to back home and have a good excuse to go to the Dockers more regularly.”