Steve Case's Second Act - Legislative Bravery

BusinessWeek recently profiled Steve Case's ascension to similar heights that he once reached during his AOL days over a decade ago.  What I found most interesting about this article is how Steve has performed this feat - by embracing the legislative process and helping shape legislation that benefits his business interests.

One of the key elements of fear-based decision making is the role of regulation in a particular industry. As I am writing about in my upcoming book one of the best ways to be brave in the face of regulation is to get out in front of it.  Embrace the legislative process and be a part of it so you can capitalize on the shifts in the market that regulation creates.  While It takes bravery beyond just being engaged in the legislative process (something I will cover in more detail in a later post) being engaged is the first step.

Steve Case has gotten engaged in spades.  Since his time at AOL & the combined AOL Time Warner he has been engaged in the following ways:

• In early 2011, he was selected by President Barack Obama to serve as Chairman of the Startup America Partnership

• Named to the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness

• Case serves as a co-chair of the Democracy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center

These are just his governmental roles and doesn't factor into his controlling interest in Revolution and its collection of companies.

According to the BusinessWeek article, "Case has become a genuinely productive figure in Washington—one of the few bipartisans who can take a meeting with the Obama White House one day and congressional Republicans the next, with actual legislation to his credit."

Not only has Steve Case become engaged in the legislative process but in many cases he is help leading the process and has become a good resource for bringing the two sides together into substantive conclusions.  This year's Congress has become known as the most grid-locked and 'do nothing' Congress that Steve has found a role in helping to bring parties together for progress towards goals.

“He’s really become a very serious and effective advocate,” says Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council. “He is not a flash in the pan. He is focused. He is substantive. And he stays at it. There are not that many people who are willing to make a real ongoing commitment of their personal capital to learning the ins and outs of our sometimes crazy world.”  In Case’s political work, there are shades of how he built AOL—not with blazing charisma, but through extreme persistence, taking every meeting and being content with the good instead of the perfect.

Not only is Steve not afraid of the political process but he has embraced.  He has spurned silicon valley as a home and has put down his roots in the Washington DC area where he can be closer to the action and be more effective:

The simplest reason for politicians’ embrace of Case may be that he does not hold them in contempt, the way much of Silicon Valley seems to do. In caricature, tech leaders are libertarians who like to “move fast and break things,” as Facebook’s credo goes, and who look down on people in Washington as their constipated opposites. “They have a total disdain,” says Mark Warner, the Democratic senator from Virginia. “It’s always good to have a healthy disdain for politics. But there’s almost this naive arrogance to it, in the sense that they don’t really want to know how hard it is to get from A to Z.

Case has had a lot to gain personally for all this effort, not just on the Venture Capital side for Revolution but also some of Revolutions's core businesses depend heavily on the flow of foreign workers that are at the heart for his most recent push towards a compromise on immigration reform.

A grateful VC industry is on the receiving end of Case’s efforts. The JOBS Act contained multiple sweetheart provisions for technology companies

At the heart of all this work is opportunity.  Not just to create a stronger legacy but to find new frontiers for his cash and better returns.  His access and influence in Washington allows him to think more strategically about where his investments should flow and capitalize on the likely outcomes of emerging legislation:

Legacy or no, Case sees a huge opportunity at the junction of his two passions, entrepreneurship and policy. He recognized, when few others did, that the Internet would become part of everyday American life, remaking everything from personal finance to advertising. Now Case argues that the last few industries on the brink of being revolutionized by the Internet—health care, education, transportation—happen to be ones in which the government plays a gigantic role in purchasing and rulemaking.