As the founding CEO of AOL, the first internet company to go public, Steve Case is an icon of the first wave of the internet. Case left AOL in 2005, and has since built a large portfolio of startups through his venture capital firm, Revolution.
He's spent the past five years traveling the United States, often in a bright red or blue bus, investing in cities outside of the centers of American venture capital— Silicon Valley, New York City, and Boston — as part of Revolution's "Rise of the Rest" initiative. Whether it's a place like Louisville, Kentucky or Salt Lake City, Utah, Case and his team don't simply pass through for a day and drop off some money, but build long-term relationships with founders and local power brokers to ensure the startup scenes thrive.
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