AOL Founder Invests $20 Million in Children's Apparel Startup

AOL co-founder Steve Case has been on a journey across America, looking for promising young businesses outside of New York and Silicon Valley.

On one such trip to North Carolina last fall, Case met Brandi Temple (pictured above), founder of a now 5-year-old online children's apparel company, Lolly Wolly Doodle, which claims to sell 60% of its clothes through Facebook. That meeting led to several more and on Thursday, Case's Revolution Growth venture fund announced a $20 million investment in the company.

"Part of the Revolution strategy is to invest in big ideas that are small companies, and to try to help them become big companies," Case said in a phone interview with Mashable on Thursday. "I also believe in the notion of 'the rise of the rest' — there are great entrepreneurs all around the company, [but] just a few places are getting all the attention."