During a visit to Milwaukee this week, AOL founder and venture capitalist Steve Case had a packed schedule of discussions with local entrepreneurs, investors, government officials, corporate leaders and innovation ecosystem supporters.
His day ended with a fireside chat at Baird's headquarters in downtown Milwaukee, where he spoke in front of a room packed with more local corporate, government and community leaders.
"I want to be respectful to the audience here ... but Milwaukee needs to step up its game," Case said during a conversation about building thriving startup communities with MKE Tech Hub Coalition board member Gordon Nameni.
Case noted that Milwaukee is bigger than Madison and Green Bay combined but said he believes — in part due to risk aversion and a lack of collaboration — Milwaukee hasn't done enough to support startup growth.
But Case also later said he sometimes makes deliberately provocative comments suggesting that "whatever you're doing you can do more and you should do it with urgency" to motivate action by inspiring competition.
In reality, Case said he believes Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay should collaborate as a regional tech cluster, which he also noted earlier in the day during an exclusive interview with Wisconsin Inno.
Case's Milwaukee visit was arranged by the MKE Tech Hub Coalition, a nonprofit membership organization of more than 100 Milwaukee companies and community organizations interested in growing the region's technology talent pool. The group was formed in 2019.
He previously visited Madison and Green Bay in 2014 and 2017, respectively, through the Rise of the Rest initiative of his venture capital firm Revolution, in which he visited dozens of U.S. cities to promote startup growth and make seed-stage investments in founders outside of the Bay Area, New York and Boston.
Stories from Case's trips to Madison and Green Bay are featured in his new book "The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream." He wrote about how Madison entrepreneur Scott Resnick launched the grassroots community group Capital Entrepreneurs, which led to the founding of the StartingBlock Madison entrepreneurial hub.
The book also describes the story of Green Bay venture capital firm and innovation center TitletownTech, which formed through a partnership with entrepreneur Craig Dickman, the Green Bay Packers and Microsoft Corp. Dickman persistently campaigned for the Rise of the Rest bus tour to visit Green Bay, according to the book.
Case has invested in at least one Milwaukee startup: In 2019, Revolution Ventures led an $8.5 million Series A round for wine subscription box startup Bright Cellars.
Revolution also invested in Madison's lab-grown seafood startup Cultured Decadence, which was bought by a California company earlier this year, and Madison-based weather data startup Understory Inc.
Bright Cellars, Cultured Decadence and Understory are also both backed by Wisconsin venture capital firm gener8tor, among other local investors.
