AOL co-founder Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest Tour — a semiregular bus tour of smaller startup communities across the country spearheaded by venture firm Revolution Inc. — is being revamped for the Covid-19 age as a digital pitch event for Black-founded startups.
The startups competing in the newly dubbed Equity Edition will compete for $2 million in investments, with $1 million going to the winner and two sets of $500,000 going to each of the runners-up. Half of that money will be from Revolution, the other half from Morgan Stanley’s Multicultural Innovation Lab, a partner in the event.
The new virtual event was born after Revolution scrapped plans for its ninth bus tour scheduled for April in Wichita, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Oklahoma City; St. Louis, Missouri; and northwest Arkansas. But after the killing of George Floyd and racial justice protests that swept the nation, Revolution decided to create a new event, said David Hall, managing partner of Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.
“Rise of the Rest has always been about more than just geography,” Hall said, stressing it had long invested in underserved communities and diverse groups of founders. “It’s about ending the cycle of money going to the same kind of people with ideas formed from the same kind of backgrounds and the same kind of schools.”
All the applicants will have their startups reviewed by Rise of the Rest, Opportunity Hub, Morgan Stanley and 100 Black Angels & Allies investment teams and will receive specific feedback on their pitch deck. Eight to 10 startups will compete for the big prizes in front of senior venture firms, as well as hold meetings with venture firms such as Greycroft, Cowboy Ventures, Lightship Capital, MaC Ventures and Kapor Capital.
Applicants have until Oct. 25 to send in their applications, and the multiday virtual event will run Dec. 1-3. Other attending investors include Kleiner Perkins, M25, Motley Fool Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Upfront Ventures and Village Capital
Hall believes the prize money is big enough to serve as a catalyst for the winner to truly grow their business.
“We are thinking of this as filling an entire seed round for an entrepreneur that wins,” Hall said. “This isn’t 'The Price is Right' with a bunch of consolation prices. This is a way for companies to get into these rooms that historically these companies haven’t been able to get access to.”
There will also be additional investments from OHUB’s affiliate Black Angels & Allies fund.
But this won’t be a one-and-done event, Hall said, as the firm anticipates incorporating the “Equity Edition” into future Rise of the Rest tours. It is also kind of a down payment on Revolution's own efforts to diversify the tech world.
The competition will also be preceded by a series of events, including a virtual town hall with city leaders, historically black colleges and universities, and startup communities on ways to support more Black founders across the country.
“Revolution has long advocated for more funding for startups based outside of the coastal tech hubs, but we must do more to specifically level the playing field for Black founders, who currently receive less than 1% of venture funding. This tour is just one part of what must be a broader effort to scale and sustain inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem building in overlooked cities across America,” said Steve Case, chairman and CEO of Revolution, in a statement announcing the competition
Since 2014, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest team has traveled more than 11,500 miles on a bus to more than 40 cities, investing $100,000 at each stop. The Rise of the Rest fund is currently invested in more than 150 companies in more than 70 cities across the United States.
