Steve Case
Steve Case
Stephen McConnell "Steve" Caseis an American entrepreneur, investor, and businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online. Since his retirement as chairman of AOL Time Warner in 2003, he has gone on to invest in early and growth-stage startups through his Washington, D.C. based venture capital firm Revolution LLC...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth21 August 1958
CityHonolulu, HI
CountryUnited States of America
I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii
So we believed that strategic alliances and partnerships were critical, and we did that for five years.
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.
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.
At AOL, we thought the killer app was people
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.
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
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.
Nobody should have to be a systems integrator to make a convergence network work in their home
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.
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.
I do think that a general liberal arts education is very important, particularly in an uncertain changing world
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.