As tech experts and investors begin to see the entrepreneurial potential in flyover states, the tech boom may no longer be a hermetic wealth bonanza isolated in coastal metropolises. In states where many residents feel they’ve been left behind by the decline of industrial jobs, the alternatives are starting to look promising. Skeptical? Here’s the scoop.
Steve Case—the founder of AOL—is at the frontier of startup-land inviting all of America to have a piece of the pie, both at the policy and business level. During the Obama Administration, he encouraged policies that would defer student loan payments for new graduates, making it easier for them to start their own businesses. At the business level, he has led many road trips across America in an RV, stopping in cities like Nashville and Albuquerque to lead startup competitions, awarding a pretty penny to the winner. Now, he’s trying to turn this into an unstoppable movement.
Rise of the Rest, a seed fund headed by Case and J.D. Vance (author of a best-selling book about the industrial decline), is beginning to attract some of the biggest investors in the world. Think Jeff Bezos (the founder of Amazon) and Howard Schulz (the chairman of Starbucks). It may, in fact, be the largest investment fund in America, ever.
It is intended to operate as an ecosystem quite like Silicon Valley – providing support and connections to people from more isolated parts of the country. In this way, small towns and big cities will work more collaboratively giving new companies in flyover states better chances to take off.
To be clear—this isn’t impact investing (although Case admits he’s a big fan of it). “We actually didn’t position this as an impact fund. First and foremost, our goal was to generate top returns,” Case told the New York Times.
One of the investors in Rise of the Rest—Mr. Schmidt of Alphabet—believes Case’s idea is brilliant. “I felt it was a no-brainer,” he told the New York Times. “There is a large selection of relatively undervalued businesses in the heartland between the coasts, some of which can scale quickly.”
If you want to learn more about folks inviting the middle slice of America into the tech conversation, read our piece on Rural Sourcing Inc., pioneers of ‘rural onshoring’—meaning, they keep jobs from going overseas by connecting coastal companies with folks in rural parts of America who are happy to work for less than Silicon Valley wage because their cost of living is less.
