An interview with Elizabeth Dinh
Elizabeth Dinh is the CEO and a founding partner of Acceler8 Capital Pty Limited, a unique fund management business that specialises in mortgage funds and property & asset management.
We interviewed her to understand the concept and story behind Acceler8.
When did you launch?
Acceler8 launched on the 18th of August 2020, a date when luck met opportunity.
August is the eighth month of the year. The word ‘Acceler8’ contains eight characters, and Levent Shevki (our other founding partner) and I are both 44: four plus four equals eight.
That’s a lot of eights
It is! Our business was registered on 16/6/2020: if you add those numbers up until you get a single numeral, the result is eight.
The gift I received when we launched was a 1988 bottle of Dom Perignon; again, if you add those numbers up until you get one digit, the result is eight. I’m looking forward to sharing the bottle with my business partners once the borders open up.
Sounds like it was meant to be
Yes. We’re surrounded by eights. Eight is a fortuitous number in Chinese numerology, so we had a bit of fun with that for luck.
Why did you found the business?
We founded Acceler8 Advisory & Capital Pty Ltd so we could get ahead of the crisis. We saw the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and knew those effects would only get worse – so we wanted to respond to that and offer people some confidence and security in these difficult times. We also knew that timing our launch in a recession, when people really needed extra liquidity, was perfect for our concept.
Were you worried about the market?
The mark of a great company is being open to challenge, and the mark of a good corporate board is to constructively challenge. Our execution and our adaptability – these things matter less than our timing. I think there’s always an element of nervousness when you embark on a new enterprise, but I knew the timing was right for this one.
Nerves don’t faze me, anyway. In my experience, there are two different kinds of doubt: self-doubt and idea-doubt. Self-doubt is paralysing; it leads you to freeze. However idea-doubt is energising: it motivates you to test, to experiment and to refine the journey. I welcome idea-doubt because it is how I grow and adapt.
What’s your plan for the business?
As members of a team, our journey together is forged with a long-term view. The first thing we had to do was engage the right people for the job, and I believe we have done that. Our combined talents offer the right balance of exploration and exploitation: this is a team sport.
Acceler8’s mission is to invest wisely, with active portfolio management, to help our clients reach their long-term financial goals. We achieve this through our investment strategies and by adhering to our values and investment principles, while making a positive contribution to society and delivering opportunities so our people can flourish. That’s our plan.
We see so many opportunities in the current climate, and we offer our investors confidence and a long-term viewpoint. The market will always ebb and flow: the key is to understand that and wait for the peaks.
What drives Acceler8?
Our primary guiding principles are accountability, excellence, integrity, teamwork and entrepreneurship.
Everything we do is guided by these principles, which define our character and culture: they are at the core of all that we do. These enduring qualities are the shared convictions we bring to our professional and personal conduct. They are a fundamental strength of our business.
We also believe in agility, focus and commitment. Underpinning these values is of course our conviction that the strength of any enterprise relies on the strength of its relationships. We believe in building long-term relationships based on professionalism, trust and mutual respect.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
I’d like to thank my team and also our clients for this opportunity. I’m excited, and I can’t wait to see what we can do together.
I believe that great leaders dare to be different. They don’t just talk about risk-taking, they actually do it. It’s about having both the vision and the drive to execute that vision.
It’s the right time for a venture like Acceler8, and I’m looking forward to seeing our clients and team members achieve their long-term goals. I’m so lucky to be part of that.
Elizabeth Dinh
CEO & Partner
