Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, is now chief executive officer of Revolution, a venture capital firm that plans to invest most of the $1 billion it manages in startups outside Silicon Valley. He’s fielding pitches on his “Rise of the Rest” bus tour, with stops this fall in Buffalo, New York, Manchester, New Hampshire, Portland, Maine, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
“What some people on the coast refer to negatively as fly- over country is going to be the epicenter of the next wave of innovation,” Case said in a phone interview.
Giant Slide
Nowhere is this more evident in Lincoln, which from the inside of some offices could be mistaken for Palo Alto. Firespring, a software company for non-profit organizations, gives its 260 employees access to pool tables, subsidized massages, a beer keg and a giant slide that workers take to the daily 11:11 a.m. meeting that lasts exactly 11 minutes. The point is to create a dynamic work environment that keeps 20- somethings interested, founder Jay Wilkinson, 49, said.
David Chait, 30, who co-founded the group-travel app Travefy, moved from Manhattan’s Upper West Side in search of an affordable place to build a business and a family.
Chait now shares a 1,700-square-foot townhouse with his wife and daughter. It costs $1,500 a month, half of what he paid for his New York apartment, where it was impossible to both sit on the couch and open the folding table.
“For Lincoln, we live in an expensive place, but we still have New York goggles on, so we say, ‘What a deal,’” Chait said.
Cow Fitbit
The geographic diversity of new tech companies is reflected in the products they’re spinning out. Lincoln-based Quantified Ag, in the heart of farm country, is producing wireless ear tags that work like fitbits for cows, allowing feedlot owners to monitor the health of individual animals.
Ajay Agrawal, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto, said only time will tell whether the heartland startup boom is real or just a mirage created by local economic development subsidies.