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And So The Idea Was, Well Maybe You Can Take An Atari Video Game Machine, Where People Plug In A Game Cartridge, And Plug In A Modem, And Tie That Into A Telephone, And Essentially Turn That Game In The Machine Into An Interactive Terminal.

-Steve Case

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And So The Idea

Steve Case

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And So The Idea Was, Well Maybe You Can Take An Atari Video Game Machine, Where People Plug In A Game Cartridge, And Plug In A Modem, And Tie That Into A Telephone, And Essentially Turn That Game In The Machine Into An Interactive Terminal.

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From A Relatively Early Age I Got Interested In Business

Frankly, I Like New Things. I Feel Like I Made A Contribution To Building A More Interactive World. And I'm Proud Of That.

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You Really Need To Believe That You Are On To Something Important.

I'm Probably Never Going To Be Satisfied With Anything We Do. I Think There's Always The Possibility Of Doing Better. And I'd Say We're Doing Better Than We Were A Year Ago, In Terms Of Delivery And Quality Of Service, But Nowhere Near What We Should Be Doing .

I Do Think Actually In This Case The Government Does Get Credit For Funding Some Of The Basic Research.

I Want To Find People Who Have Had To Work Hard And Who Have Learned From Their Failures. Perseverance Is No Guarantee You’ll Succeed, But Without It, It’s Almost Guaranteed You Won’t.

You Shouldn't Focus On Why You Can't Do Something, Which Is What Most People Do. You Should Focus On Why Perhaps You Can, And Be One Of The Exceptions.

Disruption Is About Risk-taking. But Then You Become A Fortune 500 Company, Which Is About Risk Mitigation

The Pace Of Change And The Threat Of Disruption Creates Tremendous Opportunities.

The Resources You Happen To Accumulate, What Do You Do With Them? You Can Spend The Money And Buy Some Houses Or Whatever, And People Do Some Of That And That's Fine. You Can Give The Money To Other People, Your Family, But Usually When You Do That You Screw Them Up And It Ends Up Counterproductive. Or, You Take Those Resources And Reinvest Them In Things That You Believe In, And That Could Be Reinvesting In A Philanthropic Cause.

I Think The More You Have A Generalist Perspective, I Think Sometimes The More You Can Kind Of See Through The Forest And The Trees. And When It Gets A Little Bit Cloudy, You Know, Have Some Sense Of, "well, Maybe This Might Happen Or Maybe That Might Happen." So I Really Am A Big Believer In Liberal Arts Education. I Think It's Better - Particularly In These Kind Of Uncertain Times - To Know A Little Bit About A Lot Of Things As Opposed To Being Expert In One Thing.

It's Not About How To Get Started; It's About How To Get Noticed.

Business Planning

We Lose Money On Signing Up The Customers Where There's Some Marketing Costs Associated With Giving Them A Free Month. It Doesn't Much Matter Whether You Make A Little Bit Or Lose A Little Bit.. As You Well Know, Because You Lose A Ton On Every Copy Of The Washington Post (newspaper).

What I Have Figured Out Is That I Can Predict The Future. I Just Can't Predict When.

I Do Think That A General Liberal Arts Education Is Very Important, Particularly In An Uncertain Changing World

It's Stunning To Me What Kind Of An Impact Even One Person Can Have

Bill Sees And Understands The Possibilities Of A Connected World And Has The Expertise And The Experience To Help Make It A Reality, ... As More And More Consumers Want To Take Their Connectivity With Them Beyond The Desktop, Bill's Vision Will Be Critical In Charting The Company's Future Course And Delivering On The Promise Of Aol Anywhere.

If You Really Got The Right People, And You've Got Them Working Together As A Team, Whether It's In Business, Whether It's In Science, Whether It's In Politics, You Can Make A Big Difference.

One Of The Biggest Challenges We Had In The First Decade Was Not That Many People Had Personal Computers. There Weren't That Many People To Sell To, And It Was Hard To Identify Them.

The Idea That Maybe You Don't Have To Own A Car If You Only Need One Occasionally May Catch On, Just Like Time-sharing Caught On In Real Estate

Today, National Geographic Has A Membership Side With A Magazine And Some Television Side, And They Generate About A Billion Dollars In Revenue, And They're Profitable. And So At The End Of The Year They Have Some Bottom Line Profit Which They Can Then Reinvest, Because They're Running It As A Not-for-profit In Charitable Endeavors.

And I'd Say One Of The Great Lessons I've Learned Over The Past Couple Of Decades, From A Management Perspective, Is That Really When You Come Down To It, It Really Is All About People And All About Leadership.

I'm Not Sure I Knew What An Entrepreneur Was When I Was Ten, But I Knew That Starting Little Businesses And Trying To Sell Greeting Cards Or Newspapers Door-to-door Or Just Vending Machine Kind Of Thing Is.. There's Just Something Very Intriguing To Me About That.

And So The Idea Was, Well Maybe You Can Take An Atari Video Game Machine, Where People Plug In A Game Cartridge, And Plug In A Modem, And Tie That Into A Telephone, And Essentially Turn That Game In The Machine Into An Interactive Terminal.

I Think It Took Us Nine Years To Get One Million Subscribers To Aol, And Then In The Next Nine Years We Went From One Million To 35 Million.

When I First Got Started In The Late '70s, Early '80s, And First Was Thinking About The Interactive World, I Believed So Fervently That It Was The Next Big Thing, I Thought It Would Happen Quickly.

Steve Jobs Always Believed That You Didn't Want To Do Focus Groups Or Research And Ask People What They Wanted. You Wanted To Create Products That They Didn't Know They Wanted Yet And They Would Fall In Love With. And I Think That Was Part Of The Magic Of His Design Philosophy.

Falling In Love

We Need That Same Mentality In Philanthropy, Trying Things, Taking Risks, Recognizing The First Try, Maybe The Second Try, Maybe The Third Try Won't Work. But If You Stay At It And You're Learning, You're Talking To Others, And You're Learning Together, Eventually You'll Break Through And See The Kind Of Impact You Were Hoping For.

So My Degree Was In Political Science, Which I Think Was - The Closest I Could Come To Marketing Is Politics.

If You're Doing Something New You've Got To Have A Vision. You've Got To Have A Perspective. You've Got To Have Some North Star You're Aiming For, And You Just Believe Somehow You'll Get There, Which Kind Of Gets To The Passion Point.

I Continue To Have A Special Pride And Passion For Aol, And I Strongly Believe That Aol - Once The Leading Internet Company In The World - Can Return To Its Past Greatness

At The End Of The Day, The Team You Build Is The Company You Build.

The End Of The Day

I Was Not An Outstanding Student. I Did A Reasonable Amount Of Work. I Got Generally Good - Pretty Good Grades, But I Was Not That Passionate About Getting Straight A's.

Nowadays People Seem To Switch Schools, Either Because They Have To, And Certain Schools Only Serve Certain Grades, Or Because They Move To A Different Place Or Have Some Particular Interest, But I Was In The Same School For 13 Years

One Of The Problems With Computers, Particularly For The Older People, Is They Were Befuddled By Them, And The Computers Have Gotten Better. They Have Gotten Easier To Use. They Have Gotten Less Expensive. The Software Interfaces Have Made Things A Lot More Accessible

Because I Do Think - Not Just In Building Aol - But Just The World In Which We Live Is A Very Confusing, Rapidly Changing World Where Technology Has Accelerated.

At Aol, We Thought The Killer App Was People

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I Had An Older Brother Who Passed Away Recently, An Older Sister And A Younger Brother.

But The Idea That Some Day People Would Want To Be Able To Interact And Get Stock Quotes And Talk With Other People Or All These Different Things, I Just Believed That Was Going To Happen

It's Silly For Me To Raise Expectations Too Much, But I Think I'm Right On The Basic Trend, Which Is Shifting Power To Consumers.

Five Or Ten Years Ago, When It Was Clear The Internet Was Becoming A Mainstream Phenomenon, It Was Equally Clear That A Lot Of People Were Being Left Out And Could Be Left Behind

I Was Born And Raised In Honolulu, Hawaii

My Father Still Is A Lawyer, And My Mom Was A Teacher And Then Later A Career Counselor

There Are No Road Signs To Help Navigate. And, In Fact, No One Has Yet Determined Which Side Of The Road We're Supposed To Be On.

It's Stunning To Me What Kind Of An Impact Even One Person Can Have If They Have The Right Passion, Perspective And Are Able To Align The Interest Of A Great Team.

The Idea Of An Entrepreneur Is Really Thinking Out Of The Box And Taking Risks And Stepping Up To Major Challenges.

I Was A Better Builder Than A Manager. I'd Rather Focus On Maximizing The Opportunities Swinging For The Fences Than Minimizing The Risk With Bunts And Singles.

Swinging For The Fences

I Enjoyed High School And College, And I Think I Learned A Lot, But That Was Not Really My Focus. My Focus Was On Trying To Figure Out What Businesses To Start

The Attackers Are The People With Bold, Innovative Ideas Who Are Trying To Disrupt The Status Quo And Usher In A Better Way. The Defenders Are The Incumbents Who Try To Defend What They Have. We Need To Bring An Attacker Mindset To Whatever We Choose To Do.

All Great Ideas Start As Weird Ideas. What Now Seems Obvious, Early On, Is Not Obvious To Anybody.

Think About This: It Was Illegal For Most People To Connect To The Internet Before 1992.

In The End, A Vision Without The Ability To Execute It Is Probably A Hallucination.

You Can Be Entrepreneurial Even If You Don’t Want To Be In Business. You Can Be A Social Entrepreneur Focused On The Not-for-profit Sector. You Can Be An Agriculture Entrepreneur If You Want To Change How People Think About Farming. You Can Be A Policy Entrepreneur If You Want To Go Into Government. The Idea Of An Entrepreneur Is Really Thinking Out Of The Box And Taking Risks And Stepping Up To Major Challenges.

If You Believe That Some Day It's Going To Happen, Some Day It Probably Will Happen. You Just Have To Make Sure You're There When It's Happening, And Ideally You're At The Front Of The Parade, And The Principle Beneficiary Of When It Happens.

I Do Think That People Have An Obligation To Give Back But That Doesn't Necessarily Mean That You Give Back Just The Traditional Way. Maybe There's New Ways To Give Back And Make A Contribution. I'm Looking Forward To Some Mix Of Philanthropy - Maybe Through A Somewhat Different Prism - As Well As Helping Entrepreneurs Build Some Significant New Businesses.

In The Entrepreneurial World, When You Launch A Company, You Have A Particular Idea, A Particular Product, A Particular Service, Almost Always You Pivot, You Shift. The Market Reacts To Your Initial Idea. You Make Some Adjustments. It's Only After Making A Few Adjustments That You See The Success.

Entrepreneurial

When I Was Trying To Popularize The Concept Of The Internet - Ten Or 15 Years Ago - I Came Up With This Concept Of "the 5 Cs." Services Needed To Have Content, Context, Community, Commerce, And Connectivity. After That, When I Was Trying To Think Of What The Key Management Principles Were To Build Into The Culture, I Started Talking About The Ps. The P's Were Things Like Passion, Perseverance, Perspective And People. I Think The People Aspect Is Really The Most Important One.

Anything Is Possible If You Put Your Mind To It And You Really Work Hard.

So We Believed That Strategic Alliances And Partnerships Were Critical, And We Did That For Five Years.

If You Can Build A Company And Make Money, Great. But Eventually, My Intention Is To Give All My Money Away. I Told My Kids That. [wealth] Is Not Particularly Helpful To Kids. It's Almost A Burden. It's Better To Allow Them To Do Their Own Thing And Have Their Own Successes.

The Real Magic In National Geographic Isn't How Much Money They Have Left At The End Of The Year. It's The Fact That Through Their Overall Focus They Are Reaching Hundreds Of Millions Of People And Educating People About The World. It Just Happens To Be Done In A Business-oriented Kind Of Way That Is More Sustainable.

I Think What People Love About The Steve Jobs Story Is Not Just The Track Record At Apple, But That Comeback Story, That He Was Thrown Out Of Apple, Came Back And Built The Company Even Greater. And That Perseverance Is So Important In Terms Of Entrepreneurship. And Nobody Is A Better Role Model For That, For All Entrepreneurs All Over The World Than Steve Jobs.

At Revolution Health Group We Will Put Consumers Back At The Center Of The System By Giving Them More Choice, Control And Convenience.. While Building The First Comprehensive, Consumer-driven Health Care Company.

Keep Your Eye On The Prize And Focus On Your Mission. Remember What You’re Trying To Do, What Your Value Is, Why It’s Important, And At The Same Time, Change Course And Direction. If The Market’s Telling You Different Things How Are You Going To Adjust To That?

If You Don't Have Both Of Them Working Together In A Complementary, Cohesive Way, You're Not Going To Be Successful.

Working Together

And What We Did With This New Company In 1985 Is We Did Start Focusing On Pcs Instead Of Video Game Machines, Because We Learned The Hard Lesson About Bringing A Product To Market In A Consumer World Where It's Very Expensive To Build A Brand And Get Distribution And So Forth.

There Are Lots Of Cycles To Markets - Boom And Bust - And Also In Perceptions Of People. The Conventional Wisdom Of Steve Case As Genius Or Fool Was Highly Cyclical. The Truth Was Always In The Middle.

For Better Or Worse, That Is True With Any New Innovation, Certainly Any New Technological Innovation. There's Many Good Things That Come Out Of It, But Also Some Bad Things. All You Can Do Is Try To Maximize The Good Stuff And Minimize The Bad Stuff.

Having A Great Idea Is Important. But Having A Great Team Is Also Important.

So You Have To Force Yourself Out Of A Comfort Zone And Really Try To Figure Out What Are The Key Ingredients, The Key Skill Sets, The Key Perspectives That Are Necessary, And Then Figure Out A Way To Attract The Very Best People To Fill Those Particular Roles.

My Father And His Brothers Were All Lawyers, So I Think That The Expectation Was Probably For Me To Grow Up To Be An Attorney, But It Never Really Fascinated Me That Much. I Was More Interested In Building Things.

[on Swinging For The Fences] Ultimately, You Have The Potential To Build A Significant Business With The Potential To Have A Positive Impact On Millions Of People's Lives.

Swinging For The Fences

In Less Than A Year Revolution Has Gone From Being A Concept To A Reality, With Three Rapidly Growing Sector Companies, Overseeing A Dozen Acquired Firms That Collectively Employ More Than 2,500 People. But We're Just Scratching The Surface In Terms Of The Potential To Build Revolution Into A New Kind Of Company That Gives Consumers More Choice, Control And Convenience In The Important Aspects Of Their Lives.

The Only Way To Continue To Have A Robust Economy Is To Out-innovate Other Nations.

I Like ... What I Characterize As More Built-to-last Ideas Rather Than Built-to-flip Ideas.

It's Actually A Relatively Small Number Of People That Really Are Those Risk Takers, And A Relatively Small Number Of People That End Up Really Having An Impact On The World, And It Doesn't Take A Lot Of People. We Said, 'well, Rather Than Just Sit By And Wait, Or Fold Our Tent And Go Do Something Else, Let's Keep At It. Maybe We Can Be The Ones Who Can Figure This Out,' And Eventually We Were.

Most Of The People Who Had Pcs Did Not Have Modems And Could Not Use Those Pcs As Communicating Devices. They Really Were Using Them For Spreadsheets Or Word Processing Or Storing Recipes Or Playing Games Or What Have You.

I Think The Support Of The Other Team At Aol And Everybody's Really Shared Passion And Belief About This And - Saying That Some Day Everybody Was Going To Be On Line.

You're Not Just Trying To Do Something Marginally, Incrementally Better. You're Doing Something That Is A Fundamental Paradigm Shift, That Will Have Exponential Impact. That Means It's Harder To Do, But Ultimately, If It's Successful, The Impact It Has Is Far Greater.

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