Member Reviews
Brian B, Reviewer
RISE OF THE REST
When Steve Case called time on his twenty-year career at AOL, he began spending more of his time on the investment firm Revolution LLC. Essentially a series of venture funds, Revolution's objective was to invest in innovative startups that were based outside Silicon Valley and similar technology hubs. In support of this, Revolution organized a specific fund called "Rise of the Rest" that would later involve an eponymous roadshow/caravan giving Case a platform to talk up both startups and the ecosystems needed to support them all across America.
The lessons from that caravan are the subject of Case's book Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream.
On one level, Rise of the Rest (the book) gives Case an opportunity shine a light on the "greatest hits" of Rise of the Rest (the caravan). Much of the book is devoted to profiling the startups that Revolution discovered in places that didn't at the time fit the conventional notion of hotbeds of innovation. In doing so, Case attempts to make the case (sorry!) that there are many emerging counterweights to Silicon Valley in America that are competitive in terms of available talent and quality of life for those embarking on building the next big thing.
On a different level, Rise of the Rest is also an account of the challenges involved when building communities capable of supporting innovation. Along the way the book thereby also delves into the necessary ingredients to making such communities work. The Rise of the Rest caravan was able to drum up the attention and support that it did arguably because it stuck to a simple formula: it featured the equivalent of a rockstar executive like Case bringing to the table other business leaders, policymakers, University officials, and similar local community organizers who had something to contribute to a local startup ecosystem. Therein lay the point: innovation and entrepreneurship will thrive when different sectors like these come together to make it work. In that sense, Revolution's work was trailblazing stuff.
By equating startup success in the unlikeliest of places with the "new American Dream" it could certainly be said that Case has a romantic notion of what innovation and entrepreneurship like that mean today. Yet it's romanticism with merit. Indeed, the most heartening takeaway from Rise of the Rest is that it is possible for startups to make the same gains anywhere in the world with the right kind of support, and at least now there's a book to help show how it can be done.
