Steve Case brought his startup road show to Charleston on Wednesday, and he left behind $100,000 for a Mount Pleasant company that is less than a year old.

Bidr, whose technology lets people bid on silent auction items and get updates on their smartphones, won a pitch competition held aboard the aircraft carrier Yorktown at Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum, The Post and Courier reported. Sam Staley launched the company last June.

Case, a co-founder of AOL, is making the investment as part of his Rise of the Rest bus tour. The tour is visiting five Southern cities, and in each one Case is personally investing $100,000 in a local startup chosen through a pitch contest, according to the newspaper.

Bidr arrived on a winning streak. Last week it took home $7,500 from another startup competition at the Dig South event, the Post and Courier reported.

Eight finalists

Eight Charleston-area startups made the final round: Bidr, Bublish, Charleston Gourmet Burger, Dynepic, Eatabit, Echovate, Good Done Great and OpenAngler.

“The eight finalists were chosen because each of these startups has the potential to grow, create jobs in Charleston and disrupt their respective industries,” Case said in a statement before the visit, the Post and Courier reported. “That so many innovative and talented entrepreneurs applied to pitch, from a variety of sectors, is a clear indication that Charleston’s vibrant startup community is rising.”

S.C. Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt was scheduled to serve as a judge, the newspaper reported.

Some of the finalists have been through the accelerator program at the Harbor Entrepreneur Center in Mount Pleasant, John Osborne, the program’s co-founder and director, told the Post and Courier. Two of them, Echovate and Good Done Great, recently won rounds of another contest, the Southern Series, and will move on to its final round in Nashville, Tennessee, this summer.

A borderline pick

Case did not pretend Charleston was an obvious stop. He called it a “borderline” pick and pointed to Raleigh, North Carolina, where financing and mergers and acquisitions are much more active, the newspaper reported.

“There was real … momentum,” he said. “Here there has been … not the same level of momentum.”

Even so, Case said Charleston “is obviously well-positioned” to grow its technology and entrepreneurial base.

“People who live here want to live here,” he said. “And as you know there are a lot of other people who want to live here but haven’t quite been able to rationalize” such a move.

“That can change,” Case said.

“We are trying to do our part to get people to pay attention … to the Charleston entrepreneurial story,” he said.

A full day in the Lowcountry

Case began the day at a breakfast at Halls Chophouse with Mayor Joe Riley and a room of local technology investors and entrepreneurs, the Post and Courier reported. He urged them to support promising young businesses with ideas or money.

He toured three local companies, PeopleMatter, Rewind Candles and Levelwing. He ate a seafood lunch at The Wreck on Shem Creek with Mount Pleasant Mayor Linda Page and U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford. After the pitches, he sat for a “fireside chat” with Gov. Nikki Haley on the Yorktown.

“The glass is half-full, not half-empty,” Case said of Charleston.

The tour

The bus tour runs May 4 to 8 and covers about 1,200 miles, according to the Post and Courier. It is the third Rise of the Rest bus tour and the first in the South. Google for Entrepreneurs and UP Global are among its partners.

Case visited Richmond, Virginia, and Raleigh before Charleston. His last two stops are Atlanta and New Orleans.

“The Rise of the Rest bus tour is heading south to some of America’s oldest cities where entrepreneurs are creating some of the newest businesses, innovations and jobs,” Case said when the tour was announced in March.

Case co-founded AOL as America Online in Tysons Corner, Virginia, in the mid-1980s. He now leads Revolution, a Washington, D.C., venture capital firm. In March, the Post and Courier described Revolution as having more than $1.4 billion in assets and investments in companies including Zipcar, Bigcommerce and Sweetgreen.