Sky News Interview with Steve Baxter
On 9 May 2018, Steve Baxter circulated a call seeking expressions of interest from corporates, community groups or individuals with the vision, the capability and the passion to take control of future operations and ownership of River City Labs Pty Ltd. Over twenty EOIs were received, which were then shortlisted first as a group of six, and then again as a list of four.
Founded in Brisbane by Steve Baxter in 2012, the River City Labs Group fosters the growth of tech scale-ups in Queensland and is focused on building the platform solutions for the world of tomorrow.
Since its launch more than 700 start-up founders have set up office at River City Labs. Just under 29,000 people have passed through the doors, attending more than 1,000 start-up and community events. It has run programs in partnership with some of Australia’s biggest companies, including BOQ, CUA, Suncorp and Telstra.
ACS and RCL Exclusive Announcement
ACS announced its acquisition of River City Labs Group including the operations of the RCL Accelerator and Startup Catalyst with immediate effect, with a commitment to invest $7.5 million over the next three years in ramping up its mission to support tech entrepreneurs.
Watch the full announcement below.
Yohan Ramasundara is an experienced executive with a strong track record of successful achievement of business outcomes leading high-performing teams in public, private and not-for-profit sectors for over fifteen years. Yohan is an Australian Public Service (APS) employee from Canberra. In 2017 Yohan was in San Francisco Bay Area as the Innovation Manager International Operations for Austrade. Previously he was the Head of Governance at IP Australia and National Manager of Assurance Services at Ecowise Environmental, Australia’s largest provider of integrated environmental consulting services at the time. Yohan is the President of ACS and the Secretary General of SEARCC – the Asia Pacific Forum for Information Communication Technology (ICT). Yohan is also an international Cricket umpire. A graduate of University of Canberra, with ICT, accounting and finance qualifications, he is also the recipient of the prestigious University of Canberra gold leadership award at the 2005 Blues & Leadership awards for his sporting achievements. He is currently authoring a children’s story book in his spare time.
Steve Baxter has a background in starting Internet based companies in Australia and working overseas on large scale data networks. His background prior to this was defence with a near 9 year stint as a regular soldier after enlisting at age 15 specialising in electronics, telecom, opto-electonics and guided weapon systems.
He has current investments in many start up and early stage companies txt4coffee, TrekTraka, goCatch, OrionVM and Atomo Diagnostics with several others in late stage due diligence.