Revolution CEO Steve Case Launches Second $150M Rise Of The Rest Fund

AOL co-founder Steve Case is launching another $150-million fund to back startups outside of Silicon Valley and New York.

What Happened

At the Forbes Under 30 event in Detroit on Monday, Case announced the launch of a new $150-million Rise of the Rest fund roughly two years after the launch of the first.

Why It’s Important

Case’s venture capital fund Revolution is the parent of Revolution Ventures, the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund and the Revolution Growth fund.

Revolution Ventures launched in September, and each fund up to this point has raised at least $200 million.

The firm’s investments up to this point include Detroit’s Bloomscape, Chicago’s Paro and Washington D.C.'s Framebridge.

The first Rise of the Rest fund has already backed nearly 130 companies in 70 different cities in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

Revolution is launching the new $150-million fund in part due to the tremendous success of the original, Case said Monday.

“We have made initial investments at a faster pace than we originally anticipated, and we’re seeing a stepped-up pace of follow-on investments in companies that have scaled faster than expected,” he said.

In addition to backing a new group of 100 companies with the Rise of the Rest sequel, Revolution will be helping fund the original batch of more than 100 Rise of the Rest companies as they scale.

Benzinga’s Take

The original Rise of the Rest fund had some heavy-hitting investors, including Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN founder Jeff Bezos, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co HPE CEO Meg Whitman.

Revolution has broken the venture capital mold of making startups come to tech hotbeds and is instead taking the funding on the road to find the best innovations in the space between New York and San Francisco.

Do you agree with this take? Email feedback@benzinga.com with your thoughts.

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