Investors: Columbus needs to sing its praises
Rise of the Rest events encourage entrepreneurship.
Columbus COLUMBUS — needs to be more eager to tout itself as a business destination, even if it feels weird for humble Midwesterners.
That’s according to organizers of Rise of the Rest, an initiative that was in the city Friday to listen to business pitches and encourage investment in businesses that aren’t on the coasts.
“(Columbus is) clearly on the rise, clearly collaborative and recognizing that startups play a crucial role in job creation and economic growth,” said Steve Case, the co-founder of America Online who now leads Revolution LLC, the investment firm that sponsors Rise of the Rest.
“You’ve made a lot of progress,” he said. “But there’s still work to do, because, last year Ohio, overall, got just 1 percent of the venture capital in the United States.”
He was joined by J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author who now lives in Columbus and is working with Revolution, among other ventures.
“Some folks are admirably humble, but sometimes you’ve got to be willing to tell your story,” Vance said.
Case and Vance went through a packed schedule on Friday, meeting with local leaders, taking tours of offices that help startup businesses, and listening to pitches from relatively new companies.
The Columbus stop was the fourth day on a five-day bus tour, wedged between Indianapolis on Thursday and Green Bay, Wisconsin, next Tuesday. Rise of the Rest has made similar stops in more than 20 other cities over the past three years.
At each stop, Case’s organization makes a $100,000 investment in a company, selected based on brief presentations. The amount is small compared to what is needed to ramp up a business, but its selection raises its profile. Also, Case said he is hoping to publicize each of the tour stops as destinations for businesses.
He is aiming to shift a balance in which the large majority of financing for early-stage technology businesses is made in a few coastal markets, while the rest of the country gets very little.
One stop on Friday was at Rev1 Ventures, which nurtures new tech businesses.
Several leaders of those businesses said the whole region benefits if Columbus can establish a nationwide reputation as a center for entrepreneurs. This will help attract talented people to the region, said Pam Springer, president and CEO, Oris Intelligence, a company that helps businesses monitor online pricing and enforce rules for their brands.
“It’s an ecosystem in which success begets success, and people want to be where the light is,” she said.