AOL co-founder Steve Case to host $100,000 tech startup pitch contest in Melbourne

Billionaire AOL co-founder Steve Case views the Space Coast as a nationally overlooked key in evolving Florida to a high-tech economy — and "not just the place to go for good weather or to see Mickey Mouse."

"The history there has played a pivotal role in innovation in this country over the last half century. But most people, when they think about the innovation economy, don’t think of the Space Coast," Case said.

"They think of Silicon Valley, or Boston, or other places," he said.

Case aims to change that. On April 30, his entrepreneurial Rise of the Rest bus tour will award $100,000 to a promising young company during a pitch contest at Groundswell Startups in Melbourne. He will also deliver a fireside chat during the event.

Rise of the Rest features a $150 million seed fund launched in December by Revolution, a Washington, D.C. venture capital firm led by Case and "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance. Their bus tour was featured by "60 Minutes" last month.

Case's red Rise of the Rest bus has visited 38 cities since 2014. The Melbourne event is part of a week-long Florida tour that also includes $100,000 pitch contests in far-larger Orlando, Tampa, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

"It's the third-largest state — but yet, it gets less than 2 percent of venture capital dollars," Case said of Florida. "By comparison, California gets more than 50 percent of capital venture dollars. There's a disconnect there."

Groundswell Startups:No more 'prick and stick:' Alertgy working on noninvasive glucometer for diabetes patients

Groundswell Startups:'SensiDock' device, lionfish detector highlight Indian River Lagoon hackathon

Tickets are sold out for the April 30 Groundswell Startups event, which also features a fireside chat with Case and Vance. About 350 attendees are expected — the largest crowd since the tech incubator's March 2017 grand opening, said Keith Nugent, Groundswell ambassador.

Rise of the Rest organizers are touting four of the companies vying for $100,000 as Space Coast entries, while the others are traveling to Melbourne from as far as Alaska:

• Atomos (Denver, Colorado), which hopes to move satellites using high-powered electric-propulsion space tugs.

• BoMax Hydrogen (Space Coast), which is developing a carbon-free, light-driven method to produce hydrogen to generate electricity.

• Helicon Chemical Co. (Space Coast), which develops next-generation rocket fuel for the military and commercial space industries.

• Hermeus (Atlanta, Georgia), which engineers and manufactures Mach 5 aircraft.

• Hydrosat (Washington, D.C.), which specializes in satellite imagery data for the agriculture industry.

• Indemnis (Anchorage, Alaska), which develops and manufactures parachute recovery systems for drones.

• Reaction Dynamics (Space Coast), which develops space transportation systems for launch providers.

• Tomahawk Robotics (Space Coast), which provides control software for robots.

"It's really incredible. Because there are all these metropolitan areas that are being chosen. They've lined up Miami, Puerto Rico — and then the Space Coast? But it lends us a lot of credibility as an up-and-coming sort of community," said Fumiko Shinkawa, Groundswell community manager. 

"It's somebody else from the outside recognizing that we do have all this technological talent. We do have all of these startups here. And there's really something happening culturally in this area that I think a lot of people aren't quite privy to yet," Shinkawa said.

"And I think that's the coolest part for us," she said. 

Case said 540 startups applied for Rise of the Rest's Florida-Puerto Rico road trip, and 40 were chosen. Eight will compete in each city. He described the atmosphere as "a friendlier arena than people are used to with 'Shark Tank.'" 

In a different twist, the Space Coast pitch contest was opened to companies nationwide that focus on space, drones and aviation technologies. Typically, competitors must be located within a specific distance of the host city.

"There clearly has, in the last few years, been a resurgence in entrepreneurial interest in space. Including some pretty visible new players: Blue Origin and SpaceX, OneWeb, etc.," Case said.

"What started half a century ago with NASA has obviously left a lot of destiny on the Space Coast for some of the big defense companies — Harris, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and so forth. In the last decade or so, the entrepreneurs seem like they're coming on strong and showing a lot of new momentum," he said.

"So we wanted to see how that was playing out, and see how we could propel that," he said.

On April 30, Case and the Rise of the Rest bus will tour Brevard County's startup ecosystem, from north to south. The entourage will visit OneWeb Satellites at Kennedy Space Center’s Exploration Park in the morning before conducting a working lunch with Space Florida officials at the Space Life Sciences Lab.

Afterward, the bus will head to Rocket Crafters in Cocoa before visiting Embraer's aircraft manufacturing hub at Orlando Melbourne International Airport.

Then the entourage will visit students at the Florida Institute of Technology Digital Scholarship Lab before heading to Groundswell Startups from 4 to 7 p.m. for the fireside chat and pitch competition.

Rise of the Rest's Florida road trip kicks off April 29 at Cheyenne Saloon in Orlando. After Melbourne, Rise of the Rest heads to ConnectWise in Tampa on May 1, The Citadel in Miami on May 2, and the capital city of San Juan, Puerto Rico on May 3.

Alertgy, a company based at Groundswell Startups that is developing a wristband for diabetics that monitors blood glucose levels, will compete in the Orlando event.

In October 2017, Groundswell Startups partnered with the Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast to host the similar, smaller-scale Moonshot Innovation Series pitch contest.

InitWeather won the $2,000 prize, and the Melbourne Beach artificial-intelligence weather forecasting company will also participate in the Orlando Rise of the Rest event.

Neale is the South Brevard watchdog reporter at FLORIDA TODAY.

Contact Neale at 321-242-3638 or rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @RickNeale1

Support local journalism:  Subscribe to FLORIDA TODAY at floridatoday.com/subscribe.