Venture capitalist spreading funding to Middle America

Billionaire Steve Case says too much venture capitalist money goes to businesses on the coasts. So he's touring the middle of the country on a bus in search of the next big idea

Sharon Alfonski for 60 Minutes, March 17 (both video & text)

[....] Steve Case: I wanna get everybody on the bus. There are entrepreneurs like me all over the country. Most people are not paying attention to them. Most people in their communities don't believe in them. Most people on the coasts don't think there's anything interesting, innovative happening in the middle of the country. [....]

[....] The poverty rate in Memphis is almost two times the national average, crime is rampant and 30,000 people have left the city in the last decade. Memphis is a hard sell to investors and entrepreneurs have paid for it.

Steve Case: I realized it because I, you know, spent a lotta time traveling around the-- the country. There-- most people in this country wake up in the morning anxious, fearful about the future.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Fearful?

Steve Case: They're fearful.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Why?

Steve Case: Because the things they see happening, mostly on the coasts, are hurting their family, hurting their community. They see that these Silicon Valley companies bragging about disruption, sometimes that's code words for job destruction in their backyard. And that troubles them. They're losing jobs, not gaining jobs.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And do you feel that when you go there? Do you feel that they think, "We've kind of been forgotten here--"

Steve Case: Of course. They have been forgotten. It's not about a feeling about being left behind, they have been left behind. We have to kinda level the playing field so everybody everywhere really does feel like they have a shot at the American dream. Right now, they don't. [....]

[....] J.D. Vance agrees. It's the reason he became Case's partner in the Rise of the Rest fund. Vance, wrote the New York Times' best-seller "Hillbilly Elegy."

Sharyn Alfonsi: Do you still consider yourself a hillbilly?

J.D. Vance: (LAUGH) I certainly do. I certainly do, and it's the thing I'm proudest of.

Sharyn Alfonsi: A hillbilly in a blue blazer now? (LAUGHTER)

J.D. Vance: Yeah, well, my-- my wife dressed me, so you can talk to her about that.

Vance's book details his upbringing in Appalachia, surrounded by heartbreaking poverty, drug addiction and instability.

After a stint in the Marines, then earning degrees from Ohio State and Yale Law School, Vance began a career as a high tech investor in Silicon Valley.  

J.D. Vance: I definitely get a little bit skeptical when somebody's development a new app for parking, and they tell me they're changing the (LAUGHTER) world. So, I do think sometimes folks in San Francisco can drink a little bit too much of their own Kool-Aid.

Discouraged by so called "transformational technologies" that weren't, two years ago, Vance moved back to Ohio to help run the Rise of the Rest Fund.

He says many of his Silicon Valley friends had preconceived ideas about people from small towns.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Did you ever feel like you had to be defensive about where you were from?

J.D. Vance: Oh, sure, sure. I definitely had to defend this part of the world, d-- had to defend some of the people who lived here.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Defend them from what?

J.D. Vance: I-- I think defend them from the assumption that they're all stupid and that they don't know what they really want in the world. I think there is this-- this presumption that the only people who live here are the people who are forced to live here. They can't get out, or they're too dumb to know that they should leave. And that's just not true. I think people are here because they care about their communities and they want to build something special here just as folks in San Francisco want to build something special there [....]