Six years ago, when JD Vance came to Birmingham, he was simply a well-known figure in venture capital with a bestselling book under his belt.

Now, of course, he’s the Republican senator from Ohio and his party’s nominee for vice president.

But back in May of 2018, Vance was one-half of the “Rise of the Rest” bus tour, along with AOL co-founder Steve Case.

The tour rolled into Birmingham for a whirlwind 24 hours, meeting with figures from the city’s tech landscape – first at Innovation Depot, and later at Sloss Furnace – and hearing pitches from local startups.

“Rise of the Rest” was an exhaustive roll across the U.S. meant to spotlight startup communities between the coasts. The Magic City was the tour’s 35th stop. It highlighted a persistent problem for Alabama – the lack of large-scale venture capital for startups.

Case and Vance were out around America looking for something besides the usual suspects gobbling up investments – Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston.

In Birmingham six years ago, Vance said one of the reasons he wrote “Hillbilly Elegy,” the story of his Appalachian upbringing in Ohio, was to illustrate economic insecurity in different parts of the country. But there were people in those sections of America looking for solutions, he said.

On Wednesday night, speaking to the Republican National Convention, Vance said that his work taught him “that there is still so much talent and grit in the American heartland.”

At Sloss Furnace, Vance extolled entrepreneurship as a way of a way out of economic insecurity.

“The data is pretty clear that if you want to create high quality jobs, the jobs of the future, jobs that will be sustainable, that can pay people a solid wage, but also put local economies on the path to real participation and long-term sustainability and growth, then you really do have to invest in startups,” he said.

At the same time he spoke about economic disruption, Vance said fears of a “post-apocalyptic” wasteland wrought by a robotic workforce were “ridiculous.”

“Human beings will have good jobs, as long as we continue to invest in different parts of the country,” he said.