Steve Baxter

They tend to be like fast-moving consumer goods or food and beverage.

So they're good businesses, and I respect anyone in business I respect, but software businesses tend to have a higher valuation multiple than your standard mall consumer businesses, to be honest.

They also have a higher risk at the same time.

You get paid for your risk, something the current government doesn't quite understand.

Well, mate, we're almost trying to wipe out the middle class with the budget that they brought in.

Oh, it's all deliberate.

They've got their 94 seats.

They've rolled the dice, right?

Which is a real shame.

Yeah, so I did four years in the Shark Tank TV show.

About halfway through that process, the Army approached me again and asked if I'd be involved in innovation programs.

And that was in, I think, 2016, 17.

say again is it weapons tech so they have that is um they have a variety of programs and the defense force loosely where they they try to innovate new capability essentially around weapons the year i got involved the focus areas were electronic warfare and drones specifically gps tonight electronic warfare and drawings what year was that

think it's 2016 i want to say yeah that's when it really started to take off yeah because um yeah drones weren't really a capability when i was over in afghan i mean the big drones were but not the small drones we're seeing over in the ukraine now or over in the middle east they're changing the face of warfare oh massively yeah so and then you know that and that sort of they let me in the tent at that point in time i suppose open the kimono whatever analogy you want to use and then um

I spent many years sort of talking to them, trying to help them understand how private capital could play a role in early stage innovation, and they didn't get it.

I hope they're good war fighters, because they're not good innovators, to be quite blunt.

And then I saw all these amazing opportunities sort of dying on the vine, and I thought, well, I'm going to do something about this.

So I started a specific fund around investing in early stage defence technology called Beaten Zone Venture Partners.

Now, you as an infantryman know the term Beaten Zone.

Mm-hmm.