Introducing Revolution’s Second Rise of the Rest Seed Fund
When Revolution first started the Rise of the Rest Road Trip in 2014, our goal was simply to provide greater visibility for entrepreneurs — and the individuals and organizations that support them — in cities like Detroit, Indianapolis, Denver, New Orleans, Chattanooga, and Phoenix.
But our team didn’t stop there. Because the more cities we visited, the more we became convinced that there were amazing companies scaling in these cities led by dedicated and diverse founders who, despite the viability of their ideas, were struggling to raise the necessary capital to accelerate their businesses.
So in 2017, we launched the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, a $150M fund backed by an extraordinary group of entrepreneurs, investors, and executives that are publicly standing behind the idea that great companies can start and scale anywhere.
And yesterday, we announced that we are doubling down on that effort, two years faster than anticipated, with our second $150M Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. With that announcement, we wanted to provide an update on our vision, a state of the Rise of the Rest if you will:
1. It’s more than a bus tour: Many people have heard about our annual road trips and perhaps have seen pictures of our team tirelessly traveling across the country in front of a bright red bus. Relatedly, we typically field a series of similar questions: “Is Steve Case really on the bus? (A: yes!); Is Steve running for president? (A: No!); Can you bring the bus to my city? (A: Tell us more!).” Indeed, our tour is a key part of our investment strategy, as it provides us with the opportunity to really understand the dynamics of a particular startup ecosystem.
But Rise of the Rest is so much more. In fact, most of our investing activity happens outside of the bus tours. To date, we have invested in nearly 130 companies from 67 cities in 32 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico. In addition to investing throughout the year, we also create programs and events to bring together the founders and CEOs in our portfolio as well as regional investors, subject matter experts, and startup support organizations. This allows our network to share best practices and it also helps us as we look to further deploy capital in rising cities.
2. All politics is local: When we launched the first Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, we were clear that we wouldn’t lead rounds and that we were looking to co-invest alongside regional funds. We have been lucky to work with 200 regional venture funds over the last two years, many of whom have directly introduced us to future investments For example: Charleston-based Good Growth Fund introduced us to Pryon, the enterprise AI platform from Raleigh, NC; Firebrand Ventures connected us to Replica, the Kansas City-based startup building a next-gen urban planning tool for governments; Great North Labs introduced us to Dispatch, a last-mile logistics marketplace that originally launched to serve B2B wholesalers in their backyard of Minneapolis, MN; and The Dallas Entrepreneur Center connected us with hometown hero Neighborhood Goods, a next-gen department store reimagining the possibilities for the DTC brands they market.
3. Coastal support: We are always looking to get local capital off the sidelines to support growing startup ecosystems, but the truth remains that the majority of venture capitalists live and work on the coasts. Their support, particularly for later rounds, is critical and luckily, we are starting to see coastal funds pay attention to rising stars in rising cities. In our portfolio specifically, we have lots of examples to support this movement: Kleiner Perkins led Atlanta-based STORD’s series A, Menlo Ventures led Indy-based Zylo’s Series B, and Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures backed 75F’s Series A in Minneapolis.
4. Talent: As we build out our portfolio support platform, we are laser-focused on talent — helping companies accurately identify needs and rapidly find individuals to fill them. We launched our jobs board a year ago with more than 1,500 jobs featured in cities outside of Silicon Valley. And while most people are focused on the lack of engineering talent outside of Northern California, we found that more than half of the open positions at our portfolio companies were for non-technical roles. Startups need talented individuals to fill roles in areas like marketing, legal, finance, and sales. We will soon be rolling out additional updates to our platform that will further support our portfolio companies in this effort.
As we look to the future, we remain deeply committed to our core value of helping to level the playing field to give entrepreneurs in all parts of the country access to the capital they need to take a shot at building the transformative businesses of the future. We work hard to meet people where they are — both literally and figuratively — and serve as a partner who can help them get where they are trying to go. Onward!
