Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest Tour Coming To Charleston: $100K To Local Startup

Look out Charleston—AOL co-founder and investor Steve Case is headed to town with the Rise of the Rest bus tour, powered by his investment firm Revolution, Google for Entrepreneurs, and UP Global. The 1,200-mile tour will make a stop in Charleston on May 6th as it tours the South. The day will include a fireside chat with Case followed by pitch competition and afterparty at the USS Yorktown. Case and the team will also visit with a number of startups in the region.

What’s perhaps most exciting about this tour stop for Charleston startups is that Case gives them the chance to throw out their pitches during a local competition. The winner receives a $100,000 personal investment. To date, Case has invested in nine local startups during previous bus tours.

Charleston is one of five stops for the tour. Other cities include Richmond, Raleigh-Durham, Atlanta, and New Orleans. This is the third Rise of the Rest bus tour, and the first one in the Southern US. In each city the Revolution team and partners will:

• Visit local startups, accelerators and incubators
• Hold public events with Steve Case, local entrepreneurs, investors, elected officials, civic leaders and others to discuss the local startup ecosystem
• Run a pitch competition with a panel of all-star judges who decide which companies will receive $100,000 investments
• Celebrate at a party and networking event for local leaders in each startup community

Charleston Pitch Competition Participants:
1. Dynepic – creating a playground for smart toys
2. Good Done Great – revolutionizing the way corporations and people give back
3. Eatabit – API that prints electronic food orders inside restaurants
4. Bidr – platform to help fundraiser’s increase performance
5. Charleston Gourmet Burger – unique, all natural gourmet burger seasonings
6. OpenAngler – platform to find and book fishing charters
7. Bublish – cloud-based tools, metrics and resources for authorpreneurs
8. Echovate – replicating top performers through data-science machine learning

Attendees can register for the free events using the RSVP links below:

2pm on 5/6: Entrepreneur Studio with Steve Case on the USS Yorktown RSVP

3pm on 5/6: Pitch Competition for $100k on the USS Yorktown RSVP

5pm on 5/6: Happy Hour Party on the USS Yorktown RSVP

Case founded his Washington, DC-based investment firm, Revolution, in 2005 with the mission to build disruptive, innovative companies that offer consumers more choice, convenience, and control in their lives. Revolution seeks to create significant value for companies that are attacking large, traditional industries with innovative new products and services.

He’s partnered with Google for Entrepreneurs and UP Global for this unique and beneficial bus tour. Both Google for Entrepreneurs and UP Global have an impressive history of supporting startups.

Google for Entrepreneurs provides financial support and the best of Google’s resources to dozens of coworking spaces and community programs across 125 countries. The organization also creates campuses— physical hubs where entrepreneurs can learn, connect, and build companies that will change the world.

UP Global, the umbrella organization for Startup Weekend, Startup Next, Startup Digest, and Startup Education, currently fosters entrepreneurship in 600 cities across the world, serving over 150,000 innovators. By 2016, the organization will support 1,000 communities through partnerships with local grassroots leaders and partnerships with organizations including Google for Entrepreneurs, the Case Foundation and Kauffman Foundation among others.