When Steve Case, the billionaire co-founder of AOL, first met J. D. Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” the best-selling book about the industrial decline of the Midwest, Mr. Case told him, “I really love the book but there is a part of it I don’t love.”
Mr. Vance listened patiently.
“It helped frame the problem but it didn’t really offer up a solution,” Mr. Case told him.
“Well, it is interesting you say that,” Mr. Vance replied, “because that’s really what my next chapter is going to be.”
For the past several months, there has been a torrent of press around how Mr. Case and Mr. Vance have teamed to try to revive entrepreneurship in what elites often derisively refer to as the so-called flyover states. As my colleague Steve Lohr wrote recently, Mr. Case and Mr. Vance have been barnstorming various cities in a painted bus, holding entrepreneurship competitions as if they were politicians on the campaign trail.
But until now, at least to some skeptics, it seemed like a do-gooder vanity project. Read the full story here.
Read the Forbes story here.
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