Steve Case says his Rise of the Rest project reminds him of early AOL

Steve Case is the founding
CEO of AOL and the chairman and CEO of the venture capital firm
Revolution.
Hollis Johnson/Business
Insider

• Steve
  Case is the billionaire founding CEO of AOL and the head of
  Washington, DC-based venture-capital firm Revolution.
• AOL was the leader of the first wave of internet companies,
  and Case says we are at the start of “the third wave,” where
  what’s essentially an “internet of everything” will transform
  industries outside of Silicon Valley.
• He said the level of opportunity and skepticism around his
  current “Rise
  of the Rest” investment project gives him “deja vu” of AOL’s
  early years.
• This article is part of Business Insider’s ongoing series on
  Better
  Capitalism.

Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Steve Case worked toward building
the dream he formed at the end of college: ushering in a new
digital age.

After reading futurist Alvin Toffler’s 1980 book “The
Third Wave,” Case became convinced that Toffler’s vision of a
world where people could work, chat, and form communities through
interconnected computers was not only going to come true, but
that he would be part of it. It was America Online, the company
he cofounded and led as CEO, that
helped turn that into reality.

In a recent interview with Business Insider for its podcast
“This Is Success,” Case said a project he is currently working on
through his venture capital firm Revolution,
the “Rise of the Rest” initiative developing startup
communities in overlooked cities across the United States, is
giving him “déjà vu” about those early days of AOL. “I recognize
a lot of people are skeptical, but we hope to prove them wrong,
and we believe we will prove them wrong,” he said.

Case left AOL on a bittersweet note in 2005, having overseen the
creation of a massive company that revolutionized the way
Americans used the internet, but also seeing
the failure of the $165-billion mega merger between his
company and Time Warner. The experience, he said, taught him
about the importance of relationships when it comes to executing
a grand plan. This lesson served as bedrock for work with
President Barack Obama’s administration around laws benefitting
entrepreneurs, as well as years of investments through
Revolution, and led to his own “Third Wave” thesis.

As Case saw it, AOL led the pack of the first wave of the
internet, establishing the networks that led to the second wave
of internet companies — like Facebook, Google, and Amazon — where
the rise of smartphones helped make near-instant online access an
inescapable facet of life. The third wave, then, is where the
“internet of things” will essentially become the “internet of
everything,” where we will move past novelties like light bulbs
you can control with a smartphone app to industry-transforming
developments like new methods of collecting and analyzing
real-time livestock and crop data.

Case’s team builds
longterm relationships in each Rise of the Rest city, beyond the
bus tour.
Shayanne Gal/Business
Insider

The third wave, Case believes, will certainly not make Silicon
Valley, New York, and Boston (the three account for
75% of all venture capital in the US) irrelevant, but will
flourish outside of them. It will require startups to work more
closely with industry mainstays and regulators than second wave
companies were willing to.

Through tours of the country marked by
pitching competitions, Case has invested across 38 American
cities to make his new vision come true. He and JD Vance, the
former Silicon Valley investor and “Hillbilly
Elegy” author, are also leading a $150 million seed fund with
many of the world’s most famous investors involved as limited
partners.

“There’s a fairness aspect to it, but also just a kind of an
opportunity aspect to it,” Case said. “How do you make sure that
we really are going to level the playing field, and we really are
trying to back entrepreneurs everywhere across the country,
across many sectors of the economy, so that we can continue to be
the most innovative entrepreneurial nation in the world, and we
can try to create jobs everywhere, not just in a few places?”

He’s been building a Rise of the Rest team to maximize the
network he’s building, so that connections and investments go
much further than a single 12-hour bus tour visit. Like he was in
the ’90s with AOL, he wants to be at the forefront of a new era.

“I want to be involved in that, and there’s something I can do to
help drive that,” he said. “Because I’ve done it in the past. I
have a voice, and a platform, and I want to do something
constructive with it.”

Listen to the full episode and subscribe to “This Is
Success” on
Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.