Supporting Entrepreneurs Everywhere

I was in Memphis this week to join Steve Case, JD Vance, and a host of entrepreneurs, investors, and community leaders on The Rise of the Rest Tour. JD, whose memoir Hillbilly Elegy is a thought provoking account of his experience growing up in a town in economic decline in Ohio steel country, asked me to join their tour. Even though this is a busy week for us at Microsoft with our Build Developer Conference, I jumped at the chance. The Rise of the Rest Tour goes to cities with talent and burgeoning startup communities to meet with entrepreneurs, better understand their challenges and opportunities, and attempt to provide support to those entrepreneurs through investment, mentoring, and networking. Independent of the Rise of the Rest initiative, I’ve been making my own trips to these communities outside of Silicon Valley for years. And I come home energized after every one.

In Memphis we saw technologists working on high tech precision agriculture. These companies and their technology have a chance of making farming more sustainable and ecologically friendly, more profitable for farmers, and at the same time provide consumers with cheaper, healthier, and more delicious fruits, vegetables, and grains. We saw folks working on a very broad range of high tech health care companies, from improving the transportation options for getting the sick and elderly to their medical appointments, to advanced, organic medical membranes for dental surgery. We toured the Soulsville Charter School and Stax Music Academy, both built around the soul music heritage of Stax Records, both serving under-privileged students in Memphis and helping to break the cycle of poverty that in some cases has been impacting these kids’ families for generations. These talented kids are in many cases providing foundational talent for a music and music technology scene in Memphis that one day soon may be just as rich and impactful as the Memphis studios and record companies that powered the golden age of soul music. In fact, the winner of the startup pitch contest I was privileged to judge was a company called Soundways, whose young, Memphian founders are attempting to revolutionize the sound recording supply chain.

Over the past twelve months, it seems that every trip I make, whether it’s Memphis, Tennessee or Brookneal, Virginia, I come back home energized by what I’ve experienced: talented, diverse entrepreneurs getting real traction on interesting businesses and whole communities that are rallying around their city’s start ups. It gives me hope. 

It isn’t controversial to assert that we need ongoing job growth for the US economy to continue to flourish over the long term. Even though small businesses and the Fortune 500 represent a significant chunk of the employment market, fast-scaling start-ups both inside and outside of tech are what have driven and will continue to drive net job growth in the United States. If we want this engine of job creation to work for the whole American economy, we must do a better job nurturing startups outside of the usual urban innovation centers—Silicon Valley, Seattle, NYC, Boston—and a better job supporting founders who are representative of the diversity in their communities.

I’m so grateful for the work that Steve and JD are doing with Rise of the Rest, and I encourage others to think about how they can get involved in supporting a diverse range of entrepreneurs in all the places they choose to live and build their businesses. As someone born and raised in rural central Virginia, even though I love my adopted home in Silicon Valley, it would have been amazing to have the option to be part of a vibrant, entrepreneurial tech scene much closer to home when I was starting my career.