Rise of the Rest Road Trip postponed

America Online founder Steve Case, who is now chairman and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based investment firm Revolution LLC, announced Wednesday that he has postponed his company’s Rise of the Rest Road Trip, which was supposed to take place in April in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri.

A reschedule date has not been announced.

An event for startups to compete for investment dollars, Rise of the Rest has taken place since 2014. This spring’s tour was set to visit Wichita, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Northwest Arkansas and St. Louis, Missouri. 

“Unfortunately, given uncertainties about the ability of attendees to participate in the tour, we have made the very difficult decision to postpone,” Case wrote on Revolution’s website. “We put a lot of thought and time into making this decision, but believe that protecting the health of everyone that comes together for the tour from across the country — founders, startup champions, investors and press — is of paramount importance.”

This is the ninth time that Revolution had planned to do its road trip. Revolution awards a startup company $100,000 at each of five stops in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri. Since 2014, Case has toured 43 cities. In October 2019, Rise of the Rest closed its second $150 million fund with investors such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Spanx’s Sara Blakely.

Case was named as one of Virginia Business’ 50 Most Influential this year. He also is chairman of the Case Foundation and joined The Giving Pledge.