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News on September 18, Steve Smith, founder and former chairman of media giant AOL. Steve Case has set his sights on other U.S. cities outside traditional venture capital hubs such as Silicon Valley, investing in more than 200 startups across the country, including those working on hypervelocity aircraft and artificial intelligence.
Keith is very interested in speed. For example, an aircraft capable of reaching Mach 5 per hour would be able to fly from New York to London in 90 minutes, about twice as fast as a conventional Concorde and five times faster than current transatlantic flights.
Case IH invested in a hypersonic aircraft company called Hermeus. The company was founded by a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and is headquartered in Atlanta, not New York or Silicon Valley.
"They're doing some really crazy things." Case said at an event Thursday at Pegasus Park, a biotech park in Dallas. He said Hermeus is leveraging Georgia Tech's knowledge and skills, and Atlanta has a distinct advantage as an aerospace hub. "Ten years ago, these graduates might have thought they had to go to California or somewhere else to start a business, but now it's different, and they have reason to choose another city."
Case IH currently runs an investment firm called Revolution, which focuses on investing outside of traditional venture capital centers, a philosophy that Case has upheld for years. Keyes has made a lot of money in Silicon Valley over the past decade, which seems counterintuitive. However, as the environment in which Americans live, work and finance has changed in recent years, Keyes' move now looks more forward-looking.
Keyes said in an interview: "This will finally be an important turning point, and the number of start-ups will accelerate in those up-and-coming cities." "
After stepping down as AOL's CEO in 2005, Case founded Revolution in Washington, D.C., a few years later. He then merged AOL with Time Warner, a move that was criticized.
Over the past decade, Case has quietly built Revolution, making more than 200 investments across the United States. Among them is Seattle-based Carbon Robotics, which uses artificial intelligence to help farmers control weeds. Revolution also invested in Boulder, Colorado-based Meati Foods, and Dallas-based sales team productivity platforms Arcade and Gig Wage.
For now, the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, and Boston still dominate the venture capital space. According to data firm Dealroom, the total venture capital investment in these three regions accounted for about half of the total in 2022. About a decade ago, Texas received only about 2 percent of the nation's venture capital funding, but now that percentage has increased to 4 percent, Case said.
The southern United States has long been an active magnet for large businesses with its vast territory, low cost of living, and low tax rates. For example, electric car manufacturer Tesla moved its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, in 2021; Software company Anplan announced on Wednesday that it would move its decade-old San Francisco headquarters to Miami; Oracle moved its headquarters from Redwood City to Austin back in 2020.
While major moves by major companies have received extensive coverage, places like Dallas have paid less attention to the presence of start-ups. Keyes said traditional businesses need to partner with start-ups to create the future of the digital economy.
"We often see this chasm between cities, where startups are here, big companies are there, and there's very little connection between the two," he said. "Opportunities are missed." (Chenchen)
