Skip to main content

News

You are here

Technical.ly Baltimore: Where Steve Case Sees Opportunity for Baltimore’s Startup Community

Friday, February 16, 2018

Whether through partnerships with anchors or rallying the community, working together is key, the AOL cofounder said. He spoke Thursday at the first Anchor Ventures event.

At this point, Steve Case has seen many startup communities, as his Rise of the Rest bus tour has been to 33 cities.

Speaking Thursday at Johns Hopkins’ FastForward 1812 in East Baltimore on Thursday night, the AOL cofounder said each community has a unique story and opportunity for growth.

As far as the prospects for Baltimore, he pointed to increasing work on inclusion since the bus tour stopped in Baltimore in 2015, as well as advantages for an innovation economy such as the city’s already-strong health sector and big players such as Hopkins, the University of Maryland and Under Armour. But he stills sees work to be done.

Healthcare, he said, is a prime example of a field that will be tackled in the “third wave” of the internet, where focus will turn to bigger, institutional problems. For instance, a big challenge is getting technology more integrated into hospitals, which will take partnerships and work on regulations.

To take advantage of those opportunities, Case said there is a common thread throughout each community.

“They’re all well positioned in different kinds of ways,” he said. “The only question is, does the community rally together to the seize the moment? The ones that do that are going to rise.”

Case was asked about the public bidding process for Amazon HQ2, and also found a common thread there that communities rallied together to create the proposal. Baltimore leaders noted that happened here even as the city didn’t make the list of finalists.

Click here to read the rest of the story via Technical.ly Baltimore.