It helps that he’s an hour late and his audience has spent the time getting into a keg of Shiner Bock, but when Steve Case walks into the Austin (Tex.) offices of the startup he’s just invested $40 million in, he gets a deafening welcome. More than 100 employees of Bigcommerce, a four-year-old company, are on their feet or perched on swings in its huge game room, with plate-glass views out over Hill Country. Case, overdressed from a meeting earlier in the day at the U.S. Capitol, is in a button-down shirt, pleated slacks, and tasseled loafers, looking a generation older than the scruffy dot-com workers he’s about to address. All he gets out is “Hey!” and then they’re chanting: “Steve! Steve! Steve! Steve! Steve!”
