The Queensland Government-funded collaboration space, The Precinct, is positioning Queensland as a global startup hotspot, according to Minister for Innovation, Science and the Digital Economy Leeanne Enoch.

The Precinct is located in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley’s within the historic TC Beirne building.

According to Ms Enoch, "The Precinct is positioning Queensland as an ideal destination for startups, where the best and brightest come to transform new ideas into high growth businesses.” 

The Palaszczuk Government invested $6 million from its $420 million Advance Queensland initiative to deliver The Precinct, which is home to 18 tenants including startups, investors and government agencies’ innovation teams.

Member for Brisbane Central Grace Grace said The Precinct's ‘Stair Stadium’ event space has proven to be the heart of the Queensland startup ecosystem, by already hosting more than 170 events.

Ms Grace said these events included Startup Weekends, pitch nights, Demo Days, GovHack events and meetups.

“The Precinct has a dedicated ‘Regional Landing Pad’ to link Queensland’s regional startup spaces and create a statewide network of innovation to foster more entrepreneurialism in Queensland,” Ms Grace said.

“Regional entrepreneurs can work from The Precinct in Brisbane, while remaining connected to their home region.”

The Precinct’s foundation tenants include River City Labs, CSIRO’s Data61, eHealth Queensland, Softbank Technologies from Japan, the Open Data Institute of Queensland, One Ventures, R&R Strategic, Enigma Consolidated (formerly CyberLabs), ClipChamp, Find-Me, Airway Medical Innovations, and Myriad – who are behind Australasia’s leading technology and innovation festival.

Queensland is not new to innovation in this arena – the state’s Office of the Chief Entrepreneur was the first of its kind. The office of the chief entrepreneur works with incubators, accelerators and coworking spaces to support the development of Queensland’s startup ecosystem, attracting local and global talent and investment to help small businesses grow, scale and create jobs.

 Recently Ben Southall was appointed ‘adventurer-in-residence’ as part of the ‘Venturer’ program, which aims to inspire and train the state’s next wave of entrepreneurial talent, building strengths such as tenacity, resilience and emotional intelligence and forging successful and robust startup teams that can crack global markets.

The ‘adventurer-in-residence’ will be based in The Precinct one day per week, working with entrepreneurs, both established and budding, to take them out of their comfort zone.
The Chief Entrepreneur, Steve Baxter, who is also based at The Precinct, said: "We've got a lot of emerging talent in the tech startup space, but we need to keep pushing them towards a global mindset.

“Concentrating the many facets of the startup community in The Precinct will help us achieve this.”

The office of the chief entrepreneur works with incubators, accelerators and coworking spaces to support the development of Queensland’s startup ecosystem, attracting local and global talent and investment to help small businesses grow, scale and create jobs.

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