Steve Case
The Rise of the Rest
ISBN: 978-1-9821-9184-9
Have you ever read a book that feels like it was either rushed to print or was composed of the remnants of multiple books that couldn’t stand on their own? Steve Case’s most recent book, The Rise of the Rest, felt like both of these things. The title of the book is based on his multi-year bus tour of entrepreneurial ecosystems throughout the majority of the United States, outside of Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York City. The first part of the book recapped much of the tour, while the second part of the book discussed the future of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in the United States. Unfortunately, the book did not deliver the way the bus tour did.
I really enjoyed the first half of the book. I was drawn into the tour and into entrepreneurship more broadly because people I’d worked with previously had gotten into the field, and the things they were doing looked incredibly interesting. They were attending a Rise of the Rest tour stop in Des Moines, and while I didn’t join them in person, I lived vicariously through the pictures they posted online. Once I found out about the tour, I followed its progress online. Reading through this book was a fun throwback to those days, prior to the start of this now nearly decade-old blog.
It was a treat to read through Case’s experiences in the different communities that he visited and what he took away from those experiences. The movement of talent and people away from the “traditional” startup locations really accelerated during the pandemic, but the foundation was laid by programs like the Rise of the Rest tour. The tour showed that innovation can happen anywhere – there is nothing magical about Silicon Valley or New York City beyond the concentration of people in the area. It’s up to local communities to make their places shine, creating concentrations of community so that creative, innovative people can gather and exchange ideas. This has been done through the United States: in Denver and Boulder, Colorado; in Chattanooga, Tennessee; and in multiple cities in Texas.
Unfortunately, the second part of the book seemed to go off the rails. It felt like this part of the book was composed of a number of blog posts topped off with peak pandemic-era nonsense. Case likes to talk up his government connections without truly understanding how much big government hurts the communities he toured. Communities already struggling prior to 2020 have been left further behind, and the response to the pandemic was the final nail in the coffin for millions of small businesses teetering on the edge of solvency. These last chapters should have been posted as blog posts and not shoehorned into this book.
Overall, 5/10, would not recommend. This book was a mediocre read and probably was hurt by the fact that it felt like two half-completed books that were glued together by the publisher. If the first half of the book had been developed better, it would have been a better read overall. The Rise of the Rest tour was one of the things that drew me toward entrepreneurship – specifically, entrepreneurial ecosystem building here in Iowa. I would have enjoyed more detail on the rest of the tour, as I really only knew about their stops nearby in the Midwest. If you want a better read from Steve Case, just pick up a copy of his other book.