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Long before I got into politics, I was a social entrepreneur. I started an organization called Venture for America in 2011. Our goal was to revitalize communities through entrepreneurship – we recruited energetic recent graduates to work at startups and growth companies in Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Birmingham, New Orleans, St. Louis and other cities around the country. I traveled the U.S. – primarily the Midwest and the South – from 2011 until 2017.
When Trump won, I switched gears to run for President, largely because I had seen the aftermath of the automation of manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and other states. But I still have many friends who are engaged in trying to make these communities better places through startups and entrepreneurship.
Steve Case is one of them - the founder of AOL, Revolution, and the Rise of the Rest, a venture fund that invests in entrepreneurs away from the main coastal hubs. Steve grew up in Hawaii and started his career in Ohio and Kansas before moving to Virginia and founding AOL, the original Internet company.
“We spent a decade trying to convince people that the Internet was the future. It was a tough slog – but then it took off,” Steve told me when I interviewed him for the podcast this week about his new book: “The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places Are Building the New American Dream.” I first met Steve back in 2012 when he was running the Startup America initiative.
“Part of the reason our country is so divided right now is that many people feel left behind in the new economy. When tech innovators in Silicon Valley boast about disruption, many in the rest of America see job losses in their communities, ” Steve writes. In 2014, Steve started taking a bus to Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Nashville and other cities on the Rise of the Rest bus tour, where he would meet with local entrepreneurs and host pitch contests where entrepreneurs would get investments of $100k or more. There have now been 9 tours and the Rise of the Rest tours have invested millions of dollars while highlighting local success stories and gathering people together. Think about it as a roving “Shark Tank” for 43 cities and counting.
Steve is convinced that the next wave of innovation will be led not by Silicon Valley, but by companies in Chattanooga (freight), Fayetteville (agriculture), Denver (aerospace) and other cities as tech converges with different industries to create major opportunities. He cites four major trends leading in this direction:
- The emergence of tech centers around industry expertise;
- The rise of more job-creating startup hubs.
- The pandemic-fueled acceleration of innovation trends; and
- The increased engagement of government as a catalyst.
He notes that regional entrepreneurial ecosystems have a number of ingredients: startups, investors, universities, government, corporations, startup support organizations and local media. He has seen each of these actors engage or form in more and more places around the country. And of course Steve has tried to bring them together wherever he goes and invested where possible.
Why is Steve doing this? “I truly believe that a key to unifying America has been – and will be – unleashing innovation and growth.” Steve says. “Government can – and must – play a role, but it’s clear we can’t rely solely on government to fix something that’s wrong in the marrow of our communities.’
He’s right on both counts. What is needed to bring Americans together is a sense of optimism and possibility, rather than the atmosphere of pessimism and dysfunction that has overtaken too many quarters. And while I’m passionate about the need to reform our political system, much of the energy necessary to re-energize our communities will come from people working in every part of American life.
I spent 6 years working alongside Steve, and am truly grateful that he has continued to do all he can for so many cities and towns over the past decade-plus. It’s that kind of grit and perseverance necessary to make great things happen in just about any important context.
I’m pumped for the elections in a couple weeks, but we all know we’ll be at this for quite a while. That said, we also know that sometimes things grow at a linear pace – and then take off very quickly.
For my interview with Steve click here, and to check out the Forward Party endorsements click here.
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