Steve will ‘feed’ here

STEVE Baxter’s Shark Tank bio is an impressive read…

Tech start-up multimillionaire Steve Baxter is a proud Queenslander, born in the remote town of Cloncurry and raised in Emerald, in the state’s central highlands.

He left school at 15 and joined the army, enlisting in its apprenticeship program.

In 1994, at the age of 23, Steve put his life savings of $11,000 on the line to launch his first start-up, the pioneering internet service provider SE Net, from the spare room of his Adelaide home.

Servicing more than 35,000 customers, SE Net was eventually acquired by Ozemail/UUNet under the stewardship of its founding director and now Federal Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.

In 2001, Steve teamed with a schoolmate to launch his second start-up, PIPE Networks. Eight years later they sold it to the TPG Group for $373 million.

Two years ago, Steve launched River City Labs in Brisbane, a leading co-working community to encourage entrepreneurs in Queensland.