Attention midstate startups: You have a chance at $100,000

(York) — Think your Central Pennsylvania startup has what it takes to be the next Amazon or Google?

If so, you might have a chance to pitch your business to AOL co-founder and tech investor Steve Case when he visits the York-Lancaster-Harrisburg area on Oct. 10 as part of his national “Rise of the Rest” tour.

The winner will walk away with a $100,000 investment from Case’s Washington, DC.-based venture capital firm, Revolution LLC.

Southcentral Pennsylvania will be the first of four stops Case and best-selling author and fellow venture capitalist J.D. Vance will make this fall as they make the rounds of regions or cities they see as up-and-coming high-tech hubs.

The tour will also take them to Indianapolis, Ann Arbor, Mich.; Columbus, Ohio, and Green Bay, Wisc.

The goal of Case’s tour is to promote startups in parts of the U.S. outside the traditional tech hubs of Boston and Silicon Valley.

“Rise of the Rest celebrates and funds emerging startup ecosystems across the U.S.,” Case said in a news release. “We are thrilled to hit the road once again to find the companies driving innovation and creating jobs across the country.”

This will be Case’s sixth Rise of the Rest tour. Previous stops have included Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

Revolution’s investments include stakes in such high-flying startups as online food delivery service OrderUp, T-shirt printing company CustomInk and restaurant chain Sweetgreen.

Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy,” is a partner in Revolution.

York, Lancaster and Harrisburg submitted a joint bid to be part of the tour, said Kevin Schreiber, CEO of the York County Economic Alliance.

The region’s combined population of about 1.2 million people, its co-working spaces in the three cities and the presence of companies such as Harley-Davidson and Dentsply that are using advanced manufacturing, impressed Rise of the Rest officials when they toured the area in May, Schreiber said.

York, with its York Plan, was an industrial powerhouse during World War II.

“We changed the world once before, and with our industrial makeup, we can change the world again,” he said.

For more information about the Rise of the Rest tour, visit  www.riseofrest.com.

Entrepreneurs interested in being selected for the pitch competition can apply online at https://www.riseofrest.com/apply/ Applications are due by Aug. 15.

This story is part of a partnership between WITF and the York Daily Record.