[{"_1":2,"_3":-5,"_4":-5},"loaderData",{"_5":6,"_7":8},"actionData","errors","root",{"_139":-5,"_140":-5,"_141":142,"_143":144,"_145":146},"routes/clips.$id.$slug",{"_9":10,"_11":12},"clip",{"_13":14,"_15":16,"_17":-5,"_18":19,"_20":-5,"_21":22,"_23":24,"_25":26,"_27":28,"_29":30,"_31":32,"_33":34,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":40,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_44":45,"_46":-5,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":-5},"canonicalUrl","https://howleaderslead.com/clips/2925/innovation-happens-on-the-ground","id",2925,"title","Innovation happens on the ground","subtitle","transcript","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.200\nI did work for about a year for pizza when I was owned by PepsiCo and I was\n\n2\n00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:07.040\nmoved to Wichita\n\n3\n00:00:07.040 --> 00:00:10.620\nto become the director of pizza development which seemed like a pretty good\n\n4\n00:00:10.620 --> 00:00:11.040\ntitle when\n\n5\n00:00:11.040 --> 00:00:15.200\nI was 23, 24 and a pretty good jump in salary.\n\n6\n00:00:15.200 --> 00:00:19.610\nThe lesson I wanted to learn there and did learn there was Procter & Gamble as\n\n7\n00:00:19.610 --> 00:00:20.040\nyou know\n\n8\n00:00:20.040 --> 00:00:23.800\nis a very centralized top down company.\n\n9\n00:00:23.800 --> 00:00:27.150\nPizza Hut was, again, you know it better than I, but was much more of a bottoms\n\n10\n00:00:27.150 --> 00:00:28.120\nup franchisee\n\n11\n00:00:28.120 --> 00:00:32.620\nlead company and a lot of the innovations happened at the periphery and either\n\n12\n00:00:32.620 --> 00:00:33.080\nthrough\n\n13\n00:00:33.080 --> 00:00:36.660\nfranchisees or even part of my job as director of New Pizza Field and I travel\n\n14\n00:00:36.660 --> 00:00:37.280\naround the\n\n15\n00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:38.280\ncountry.\n\n16\n00:00:38.280 --> 00:00:39.280\nThere was something like 50,000 pizzerias.\n\n17\n00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:42.660\nI said rather than sit here in our test kitchens in Wichita, why don't I hit\n\n18\n00:00:42.660 --> 00:00:44.000\nthe road and find\n\n19\n00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:45.360\nout what other people are doing.\n\n20\n00:00:45.360 --> 00:00:47.840\nThat might lead to some interesting ideas.\n\n21\n00:00:47.840 --> 00:00:52.380\nSo that was I think helpful both in terms of understanding that ideas can be\n\n22\n00:00:52.380 --> 00:00:53.400\nfound anywhere,\n\n23\n00:00:53.400 --> 00:00:57.970\nkind of ties in what we're now doing with Rise the Rest as well as a bias\n\n24\n00:00:57.970 --> 00:00:58.920\ntowards kind\n\n25\n00:00:58.920 --> 00:01:01.880\nof getting out of the office and hitting the road.\n","pretty_transcript","start_time",1051059,"end_time",1112989,"keywords","Innovation, frontlines, product, pizza hut, travel, ideas","slug","innovation-happens-on-the-ground","origin","cms","mux_playback_id","aVXysGnxnDAn02LYbvrq9PQylcs00DVA3RJhkSKeoHijs","mux_asset_id","jiQrjHUhHuT6XRonHWk7gxubLrCqKwyh2ONV1tJ02C7I","leader_id",231,"episode_id",383,"updated_at","2025-06-12T15:53:38.000000Z","meta_title","meta_description","og_image_media_id","web_url","https://www.howleaderslead.com/clips/2925/innovation-happens-on-the-ground","og_image_url","leader",{"_13":36,"_103":104,"_105":106,"_107":108,"_25":109,"_110":111,"_62":112,"_59":112,"_113":114,"_69":115,"_39":116,"_117":-5,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_118":119,"_91":120,"_44":121,"_122":123,"_124":125,"_46":-5,"_126":127,"_128":129,"_95":130,"_51":-5},"episode",{"_13":38,"_15":52,"_27":53,"_17":54,"_55":56,"_18":57,"_20":58,"_59":60,"_61":-5,"_62":60,"_63":-5,"_64":65,"_66":67,"_68":-5,"_69":-5,"_70":71,"_72":73,"_74":75,"_35":36,"_39":76,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_77":78,"_79":80,"_81":82,"_83":84,"_85":-5,"_86":-5,"_87":88,"_89":90,"_91":-5,"_46":-5,"_92":93,"_94":-5,"_95":-5,"_51":-5},"og_image_media","Success takes time","success-takes-time","Listen to this leadership podcast with AOL Cofounder and Revolution CEO Steve Case and learn how to build the resilience to keep going when progress feels slow.","summary","

When you’re building something new, it’s easy to get discouraged by how long it takes to gain traction. But if anyone knows how to stay in the game, it’s Steve Case.

In this episode, the AOL cofounder and Revolution CEO opens up about the grit, patience, and strategy it took to pioneer the internet—and why most success stories take a lot longer than people think. You’ll hear how he built AOL through years of slow progress, what he looks for in entrepreneurs today, and how that iconic line, “You’ve Got Mail,” came to be.

If you’re feeling stuck or off track, this episode will help you refocus and recharge!

You’ll also learn:

Three qualities of successful entrepreneurs
The #1 mindset you need if your business is in growth mode
A powerful leadership lesson from the disappointing AOL-Time Warner merger
Why a one-size-fits-all leadership style might let you down

","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000\nAlmost every company, there's a few overnight successes, but very, very few.\n\n2\n00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:08.320\nMost of them are, you know, a struggle and a slog and there are times where it\n\n3\n00:00:08.320 --> 00:00:08.960\ndoesn't look like\n\n4\n00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:12.720\nit's even going to be successful. And just being able to punch through that,\n\n5\n00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:13.680\npower through that,\n\n6\n00:00:13.680 --> 00:00:16.640\nstick with it, I think, is incredibly important.\n\n7\n00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:28.880\nEverybody loves the success story, but not enough people talk about what it\n\n8\n00:00:28.880 --> 00:00:29.760\ntakes to stay in the\n\n9\n00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:34.630\ngame long enough to build one. Welcome to How Leaders Lead. I'm David Novak,\n\n10\n00:00:34.630 --> 00:00:35.200\nand every week,\n\n11\n00:00:35.200 --> 00:00:39.250\nI have conversations with the best leaders in the world to help you become the\n\n12\n00:00:39.250 --> 00:00:40.400\nbest leader you can be.\n\n13\n00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:45.970\nMy guest today is Steve Case, the co-founder of America Online. These days, he\n\n14\n00:00:45.970 --> 00:00:46.640\n's the chair and\n\n15\n00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:52.810\nCEO of Revolution, a firm that backs entrepreneurs from all across the country,\n\n16\n00:00:52.810 --> 00:00:53.760\nincluding companies\n\n17\n00:00:53.760 --> 00:00:59.460\nlike Kava and FrameBridge. Now, the internet might feel like the air we breathe\n\n18\n00:00:59.460 --> 00:01:01.760\ntoday, but in 1985,\n\n19\n00:01:01.760 --> 00:01:08.400\nwhen Steve co-founded AOL, that sure as heck was not the case. Steve and his\n\n20\n00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:08.960\nteam had to\n\n21\n00:01:08.960 --> 00:01:14.720\npersist through years of doubts and setbacks and chaos before America really\n\n22\n00:01:14.720 --> 00:01:15.760\ndid get online\n\n23\n00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:20.900\nand make AOL the top performing stock of the 90s. So what do you do when\n\n24\n00:01:20.900 --> 00:01:22.720\nprogress is slow like that?\n\n25\n00:01:22.720 --> 00:01:26.640\nIn today's episode, you'll see how Steve built the resilience to keep going\n\n26\n00:01:26.640 --> 00:01:26.880\nwhen\n\n27\n00:01:26.880 --> 00:01:31.920\nsuccess felt like a slog and how the good news is for us, that same mindset he\n\n28\n00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:32.560\nused to grow his\n\n29\n00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:37.760\nbusiness is one you can learn from too. So let's see how it's done and hear how\n\n30\n00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:39.040\nthat iconic \"You've\n\n31\n00:01:39.040 --> 00:01:43.460\nGot Me\" line came to be. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to\n\n32\n00:01:43.460 --> 00:01:45.040\nbe yours, Steve Case.\n\n33\n00:01:50.880 --> 00:01:55.060\nYou know, Steve, I was thinking about, you know, here we are doing this\n\n34\n00:01:55.060 --> 00:01:56.000\ninterview right now,\n\n35\n00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:01.760\ncompletely online from two different locations. I'm in Louisville, Kentucky,\n\n36\n00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:08.280\nyou're in Washington, D.C. and this isn't possible. This isn't possible without\n\n37\n00:02:08.280 --> 00:02:09.280\nall that you built,\n\n38\n00:02:09.280 --> 00:02:13.460\nyou know. What's it feel like to have changed the world like you did with the\n\n39\n00:02:13.460 --> 00:02:14.480\nAmerican Online?\n\n40\n00:02:14.480 --> 00:02:17.280\nWell, you're kind to say that. Obviously, there's a lot of people, a lot of\n\n41\n00:02:17.280 --> 00:02:18.240\ncompanies all came\n\n42\n00:02:18.240 --> 00:02:22.080\ntogether to kind of make the internet part of everyday life. I'm certainly\n\n43\n00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:22.880\nproud of the role\n\n44\n00:02:22.880 --> 00:02:27.310\nthat our team played when we got started, you know, to your point, 40 years ago\n\n45\n00:02:27.310 --> 00:02:28.000\n, we started the\n\n46\n00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:33.320\ncompany in 1985. Only 3% of people were online. Those 3% were online an hour a\n\n47\n00:02:33.320 --> 00:02:35.120\nweek. Nobody knew\n\n48\n00:02:35.120 --> 00:02:38.670\nwhat the internet was. Nobody cared what the internet was. And even those\n\n49\n00:02:38.670 --> 00:02:39.920\npeople who got online\n\n50\n00:02:39.920 --> 00:02:44.800\nwere using very, very, very, very slow modems that could barely send texts and\n\n51\n00:02:44.800 --> 00:02:45.760\nlet alone sending\n\n52\n00:02:45.760 --> 00:02:50.160\nphotos and certainly couldn't send videos. So we have come a long way from\n\n53\n00:02:50.160 --> 00:02:51.840\nnobody being connected\n\n54\n00:02:51.840 --> 00:02:56.050\nand to essentially everybody being connected and most people not believing in\n\n55\n00:02:56.050 --> 00:02:56.720\nthe idea of the\n\n56\n00:02:56.720 --> 00:03:00.670\ninternet. Now everybody recognizing it is a pretty fundamental aspect of\n\n57\n00:03:00.670 --> 00:03:02.240\neveryday life. So it's\n\n58\n00:03:02.240 --> 00:03:06.430\nbeen a remarkable journey. I'm just honored to be have had a seat seat on that\n\n59\n00:03:06.430 --> 00:03:07.440\nbus. Yeah, well,\n\n60\n00:03:07.440 --> 00:03:11.280\nyou certainly did. I think you're at the front near the driver, you know, and I\n\n61\n00:03:11.280 --> 00:03:12.560\ngot to ask you,\n\n62\n00:03:12.560 --> 00:03:20.640\nyou know, what's the best AOL username you ever had? Steve. And it pays to get\n\n63\n00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:21.120\nin early.\n\n64\n00:03:21.120 --> 00:03:27.920\nI got Steve. I got Steve. Steve Case and Steve worked pretty well. We only had\n\n65\n00:03:27.920 --> 00:03:28.480\nlike hundreds,\n\n66\n00:03:28.480 --> 00:03:32.160\neven thousands of members, but we had millions and tens of millions. It didn't\n\n67\n00:03:32.160 --> 00:03:33.040\nwork so well because\n\n68\n00:03:33.040 --> 00:03:38.800\npeople would end up. I also sent a welcome email to every new member of AOL,\n\n69\n00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:40.080\nparticularly in the\n\n70\n00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:43.760\nearly days, they're kind of pioneers joining us on this journey, joining us on\n\n71\n00:03:43.760 --> 00:03:44.400\nthis mission.\n\n72\n00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:48.560\nI wanted to feel part of the community. And I felt part of my job would not\n\n73\n00:03:48.560 --> 00:03:49.680\njust to be CEO,\n\n74\n00:03:49.680 --> 00:03:54.080\nbut almost be mayor of the community kind of setting the tone. So I would send\n\n75\n00:03:54.080 --> 00:03:54.560\nthose out,\n\n76\n00:03:54.560 --> 00:03:58.480\nwhich is no big deal in the early days. You know, some people would click on\n\n77\n00:03:58.480 --> 00:03:59.760\nreply, but later on,\n\n78\n00:03:59.760 --> 00:04:04.000\nwe were getting, you know, tens of thousands of emails every day at one point,\n\n79\n00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:04.880\nwe have like 30\n\n80\n00:04:04.880 --> 00:04:09.080\npeople full time. We're part of the Steve Case email team. So that's the case\n\n81\n00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:09.840\nthat what seemed\n\n82\n00:04:09.840 --> 00:04:15.280\nlike a good idea when we were small, didn't scale so well. What would be the\n\n83\n00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:16.240\nmost embarrassing\n\n84\n00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:21.130\nuser name you ever had? Or did you have one in that category? I couldn't. I don\n\n85\n00:04:21.130 --> 00:04:21.920\n't think I had one,\n\n86\n00:04:21.920 --> 00:04:25.720\nbut if I could probably excited to have it, everybody on our team would have\n\n87\n00:04:25.720 --> 00:04:26.640\nknown about it.\n\n88\n00:04:26.640 --> 00:04:32.240\nTherefore, when it's been fun. Well, we're going to talk more about AOL in a\n\n89\n00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:33.520\nbit, but these days,\n\n90\n00:04:33.520 --> 00:04:39.370\nyou're partnering with entrepreneurs through your investment firm Revolution.\n\n91\n00:04:39.370 --> 00:04:41.440\nTell us about what's\n\n92\n00:04:41.440 --> 00:04:47.020\nreally driving that passion that you have. Well, it goes back to the AOL\n\n93\n00:04:47.020 --> 00:04:48.480\ninternet journey,\n\n94\n00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:52.170\nyou know, was about a 20 year journey from the time I first, you know, kind of\n\n95\n00:04:52.170 --> 00:04:52.880\nlearned about it,\n\n96\n00:04:52.880 --> 00:04:56.320\ntime we started the company, time we scaled the company that we merged with\n\n97\n00:04:56.320 --> 00:04:57.040\nwith Time Warner,\n\n98\n00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:01.270\nand I stepped aside as CEO, and then a couple later stepped aside as chair. It\n\n99\n00:05:01.270 --> 00:05:02.000\nwas about a two\n\n100\n00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:08.080\ndecade kind of journey. And when I did step aside to see I was only like four\n\n101\n00:05:08.080 --> 00:05:08.480\nyears old,\n\n102\n00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:12.190\n41, something like that. So I was like, okay, what am I going to do next? I\n\n103\n00:05:12.190 --> 00:05:13.120\ndecided what my real\n\n104\n00:05:13.120 --> 00:05:18.510\npassion was, was on building things and backing entrepreneurs and assembling\n\n105\n00:05:18.510 --> 00:05:20.000\nteams and climbing\n\n106\n00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:24.340\nmountains that people didn't think were climbable. And so that led to, you know\n\n107\n00:05:24.340 --> 00:05:25.280\n, Revolution being\n\n108\n00:05:25.280 --> 00:05:29.740\nmore of a kind of a venture capital firm, but with a bias towards backing\n\n109\n00:05:29.740 --> 00:05:31.040\npeople and ideas that\n\n110\n00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:36.760\ncan can change the world. And also doing that in areas of people's lives that\n\n111\n00:05:36.760 --> 00:05:37.600\nwere important. So\n\n112\n00:05:37.600 --> 00:05:41.700\nattacking some of the biggest industries in the world, healthcare, financial\n\n113\n00:05:41.700 --> 00:05:42.800\nservices and things\n\n114\n00:05:42.800 --> 00:05:47.260\nlike that. And also doing it from by backing entrepreneurs and places that\n\n115\n00:05:47.260 --> 00:05:48.480\noften feel left out\n\n116\n00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:53.510\nleft behind. So like where you are in Louisville, not just backing people in\n\n117\n00:05:53.510 --> 00:05:54.240\nSilicon Valley or New\n\n118\n00:05:54.240 --> 00:05:58.650\nYork City, backing people everywhere. And so that kind of became sort of the\n\n119\n00:05:58.650 --> 00:06:00.240\npassion. It was partly,\n\n120\n00:06:00.240 --> 00:06:03.390\nyou know, being able to as venture capitalists get to do kind of live in the\n\n121\n00:06:03.390 --> 00:06:04.320\nfuture, get a sense\n\n122\n00:06:04.320 --> 00:06:08.120\nof what's going to happen next and be part of making it happen by investing in\n\n123\n00:06:08.120 --> 00:06:08.720\ncompanies and\n\n124\n00:06:08.720 --> 00:06:14.240\nmentoring entrepreneurs and doing what I could to take them to the next level.\n\n125\n00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:15.040\nBut also with this\n\n126\n00:06:15.040 --> 00:06:18.650\nbias towards kind of leveling the playing field and trying to create more\n\n127\n00:06:18.650 --> 00:06:20.080\nopportunity for more\n\n128\n00:06:20.080 --> 00:06:24.270\npeople in more places, which frankly was the same idea that drove my interest\n\n129\n00:06:24.270 --> 00:06:24.800\nin AOL and the\n\n130\n00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:28.710\nInternet was like leveling the playing field. So everybody had access to these\n\n131\n00:06:28.710 --> 00:06:29.520\ntools or media\n\n132\n00:06:29.520 --> 00:06:35.440\nwould be more distributed, not just a few big TV stations, etc, etc. And so it\n\n133\n00:06:35.440 --> 00:06:36.400\n's not that surprising\n\n134\n00:06:36.400 --> 00:06:41.780\nas I have now looked back over the past 40 years, 20 focus more on internet, 20\n\n135\n00:06:41.780 --> 00:06:42.880\nfocus more on\n\n136\n00:06:42.880 --> 00:06:47.780\nbacking entrepreneurs that in some ways it's the same idea, kind of backing\n\n137\n00:06:47.780 --> 00:06:49.600\npeople backing ideas\n\n138\n00:06:49.600 --> 00:06:53.840\nand trying to do it in a way that's a little bit more inclusive of people who\n\n139\n00:06:53.840 --> 00:06:54.720\notherwise might be\n\n140\n00:06:54.720 --> 00:06:58.980\nleft out and left behind. So you go into different cities, you don't just go\n\n141\n00:06:58.980 --> 00:07:00.080\ninto Silicon Valley or\n\n142\n00:07:00.080 --> 00:07:03.890\nNew York or places where you might think are these hubs, you know, how do you\n\n143\n00:07:03.890 --> 00:07:05.120\nget the word out that\n\n144\n00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:09.210\nthis is this is what you're trying to do? Well, early on it was a little more\n\n145\n00:07:09.210 --> 00:07:09.920\ndifficult. When\n\n146\n00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:14.040\nwe started this effort, you know, initially, when I started revolution the\n\n147\n00:07:14.040 --> 00:07:15.840\nventure firm then started\n\n148\n00:07:15.840 --> 00:07:20.160\nby doing some things like bus tours and to visit different different cities.\n\n149\n00:07:20.160 --> 00:07:20.880\nAnd I remember the\n\n150\n00:07:20.880 --> 00:07:25.840\nfirst we did over a decade ago, we went to Detroit and Pittsburgh, Cincinnati,\n\n151\n00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:26.480\nNashville, I think\n\n152\n00:07:26.480 --> 00:07:30.990\nwe were the first cities now gone to 50, 60 other cities, we've now made over\n\n153\n00:07:30.990 --> 00:07:32.320\n200 investments in\n\n154\n00:07:32.320 --> 00:07:36.710\ncompanies located over 100 different cities. So it's been a fairly broad kind\n\n155\n00:07:36.710 --> 00:07:38.640\nof outreach and\n\n156\n00:07:38.640 --> 00:07:42.580\nin the process we built a fairly significant network really, really all across\n\n157\n00:07:42.580 --> 00:07:43.200\nthe country.\n\n158\n00:07:43.200 --> 00:07:46.560\nAnd so we had a team that would kind of advance these cities, find out what's\n\n159\n00:07:46.560 --> 00:07:47.520\nhappening in those\n\n160\n00:07:47.520 --> 00:07:51.430\neach of the particular cities and identify interesting companies that we might\n\n161\n00:07:51.430 --> 00:07:52.480\nwant to visit or people\n\n162\n00:07:52.480 --> 00:07:55.730\nwe might want to invite to different events and we coordinate with the mayor,\n\n163\n00:07:55.730 --> 00:07:56.880\nsometimes the governor\n\n164\n00:07:56.880 --> 00:08:00.560\nsenators others to try to kind of shine a spotlight on what's happening in the\n\n165\n00:08:00.560 --> 00:08:00.880\ncity,\n\n166\n00:08:00.880 --> 00:08:05.280\ntry to drive more collaboration in the city. So the first you might have been a\n\n167\n00:08:05.280 --> 00:08:05.760\nlittle more\n\n168\n00:08:05.760 --> 00:08:09.230\nchallenging over time, we started building some momentum and got them\n\n169\n00:08:09.230 --> 00:08:10.640\nvisibility, we then started\n\n170\n00:08:10.640 --> 00:08:14.510\ngetting, you know, university presidents and mayors writing to us saying, come\n\n171\n00:08:14.510 --> 00:08:15.040\nto my city,\n\n172\n00:08:15.040 --> 00:08:18.960\ncome to my city, we want to show you everything that's happening. And so it got\n\n173\n00:08:18.960 --> 00:08:19.760\na little bit easier\n\n174\n00:08:19.760 --> 00:08:24.720\nas repregressed, but it's really been a gratifying journey to see these cities\n\n175\n00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:25.680\nup close and personal,\n\n176\n00:08:25.680 --> 00:08:30.880\nsee essentially most of the country, you know, not by plane but by bus driving\n\n177\n00:08:30.880 --> 00:08:31.440\nbetween these\n\n178\n00:08:31.440 --> 00:08:34.660\ndifferent cities when when in these cities driving around the cities and really\n\n179\n00:08:34.660 --> 00:08:35.920\nkind of getting a\n\n180\n00:08:35.920 --> 00:08:41.110\nsense of it and seeing a new sense of, I think, hope and possibility in parts\n\n181\n00:08:41.110 --> 00:08:42.160\nof parts of all,\n\n182\n00:08:42.160 --> 00:08:45.860\nreally all parts of America that don't get much attention to the data, you\n\n183\n00:08:45.860 --> 00:08:46.480\nprobably know this,\n\n184\n00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:51.560\nbut maybe not everybody does that over the last decade about 75% of venture\n\n185\n00:08:51.560 --> 00:08:52.080\ncapital\n\n186\n00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:55.150\nhas gone to just three states, you know, California and New York and\n\n187\n00:08:55.150 --> 00:08:56.560\nMassachusetts do really well,\n\n188\n00:08:56.560 --> 00:09:00.600\nthe other 47 states, you know, kind of struggle states like Kentucky get less\n\n189\n00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:02.080\nthan 1% California\n\n190\n00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:06.840\nalone gets 50%. So how do we entrepreneurs in place like Kentucky or Ohio or\n\n191\n00:09:06.840 --> 00:09:07.920\nMichigan or many\n\n192\n00:09:07.920 --> 00:09:12.080\nother other states often feel they kind of have to leave, leave where they are\n\n193\n00:09:12.080 --> 00:09:12.960\nto go to the coast\n\n194\n00:09:12.960 --> 00:09:17.140\nto have an opportunity and I think that's tragic, we want to make sure people\n\n195\n00:09:17.140 --> 00:09:18.080\ncan start and scale\n\n196\n00:09:18.080 --> 00:09:21.900\nanywhere. So that's really driven a lot of this passion. It's not just about\n\n197\n00:09:21.900 --> 00:09:23.040\nbacking companies to\n\n198\n00:09:23.040 --> 00:09:26.700\ngenerate a return on investment, of course that's what venture capital is all\n\n199\n00:09:26.700 --> 00:09:27.680\nabout. There's this\n\n200\n00:09:27.680 --> 00:09:31.490\nhigher calling, if you will, higher purpose around backing entrepreneurs in\n\n201\n00:09:31.490 --> 00:09:32.720\nthese what we call rise\n\n202\n00:09:32.720 --> 00:09:36.640\nthe rest cities. You know, I always say show me a good leader and I'll show you\n\n203\n00:09:36.640 --> 00:09:37.360\na good business\n\n204\n00:09:37.360 --> 00:09:40.800\nand you've been picking leaders for a long time as you pick companies that you\n\n205\n00:09:40.800 --> 00:09:41.680\nwant to invest in\n\n206\n00:09:41.680 --> 00:09:44.980\nand you obviously think about the entrepreneur and I'm sure you have a\n\n207\n00:09:44.980 --> 00:09:46.000\nperspective on that.\n\n208\n00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:50.800\nWhat do you look for in a leader? What do you think makes a great entrepreneur?\n\n209\n00:09:50.800 --> 00:09:56.500\nWell, we back at Revolution, we have three separate groups, a very, very early\n\n210\n00:09:56.500 --> 00:09:57.280\nstage seed\n\n211\n00:09:57.280 --> 00:10:02.160\ninvestment group. You're really just investing in a very small team or more\n\n212\n00:10:02.160 --> 00:10:03.680\nbacking the idea\n\n213\n00:10:03.680 --> 00:10:07.440\nof venture group where it's been best in companies to have a little bit more\n\n214\n00:10:07.440 --> 00:10:11.360\nscale. Maybe there's a couple dozen employees at that point. They started to\n\n215\n00:10:11.360 --> 00:10:12.400\nfigure out what\n\n216\n00:10:12.400 --> 00:10:16.640\nbusiness they're in and what the business model might look like. We also have a\n\n217\n00:10:16.640 --> 00:10:18.160\nlater stage growth\n\n218\n00:10:18.160 --> 00:10:21.750\nteam that focuses on companies that really have kind of broken through but\n\n219\n00:10:21.750 --> 00:10:22.400\nreally have,\n\n220\n00:10:22.400 --> 00:10:25.920\nwe think, significant potential. One way to think about it from an investor\n\n221\n00:10:25.920 --> 00:10:26.560\nstandpoint,\n\n222\n00:10:26.560 --> 00:10:31.850\nthat seed fund generally is writing $500,000 checks in these companies, the\n\n223\n00:10:31.850 --> 00:10:32.480\nventure fund,\n\n224\n00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:37.020\nmaybe $5 million checks and the growth fund, maybe $25 million checks. So it's\n\n225\n00:10:37.020 --> 00:10:37.760\nscaling.\n\n226\n00:10:37.760 --> 00:10:43.120\nSo the way we think about your question differs at each stage because at that\n\n227\n00:10:43.120 --> 00:10:44.000\nearliest stage,\n\n228\n00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:48.860\nyou're really betting on that person and that particular idea as you head\n\n229\n00:10:48.860 --> 00:10:50.160\ntowards more of the\n\n230\n00:10:50.160 --> 00:10:53.830\ngrowth stage. These really are starting to be real businesses. They might have\n\n231\n00:10:53.830 --> 00:10:54.720\n10, 20, 30 million\n\n232\n00:10:54.720 --> 00:10:58.420\ndollars of revenue and we get convinced that they can be a billion dollars plus\n\n233\n00:10:58.420 --> 00:11:00.320\nof revenue.\n\n234\n00:11:00.320 --> 00:11:03.760\nSo those are some of the differences. There are some things that are pretty\n\n235\n00:11:03.760 --> 00:11:04.160\ncommon,\n\n236\n00:11:04.160 --> 00:11:08.160\nwhich is obviously this is about people and it's not just about the\n\n237\n00:11:08.160 --> 00:11:09.360\nentrepreneurs, about the team.\n\n238\n00:11:09.360 --> 00:11:12.400\nThe entrepreneur is able to assemble, do they have the right mix of skills,\n\n239\n00:11:12.400 --> 00:11:13.360\nwhether they're\n\n240\n00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:18.880\ntackling healthcare or tackling sports tech or FinTech or whatever it might be,\n\n241\n00:11:18.880 --> 00:11:23.600\nhaving the right mix of skill sets that really bring to bear is critically\n\n242\n00:11:23.600 --> 00:11:26.160\nimportant at every stage\n\n243\n00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:32.000\nand really having people that are thinking big. Entrepreneurship is hard,\n\n244\n00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:32.800\nstartups are hard,\n\n245\n00:11:32.800 --> 00:11:37.200\nmany, many obviously fail. We really want people that are super passionate\n\n246\n00:11:37.200 --> 00:11:38.000\nabout what they're doing\n\n247\n00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:41.520\nand therefore will stick with it when times are tough. With my experience with\n\n248\n00:11:41.520 --> 00:11:41.760\nAOL,\n\n249\n00:11:41.760 --> 00:11:46.720\neventually it broke through but it really took us a decade before we became\n\n250\n00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:48.320\nkind of an overnight\n\n251\n00:11:48.320 --> 00:11:52.060\nsensation and we've seen that time and time again with other companies. So\n\n252\n00:11:52.060 --> 00:11:53.200\nhaving people that are\n\n253\n00:11:53.760 --> 00:12:00.080\nreally driven by the pursuit of that idea, that vision pursuit of that mission\n\n254\n00:12:00.080 --> 00:12:02.000\nis critically\n\n255\n00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:06.320\nimportant. And last thing I make is a little bit of humility. Confidence and\n\n256\n00:12:06.320 --> 00:12:07.120\nentrepreneurship is\n\n257\n00:12:07.120 --> 00:12:10.190\ncritical. You have to really believe you got to get a lot of other people to\n\n258\n00:12:10.190 --> 00:12:11.120\nbelieve, to join your\n\n259\n00:12:11.120 --> 00:12:15.280\nteam, to invest alongside you, to partner with you, to be your customers. And\n\n260\n00:12:15.280 --> 00:12:15.840\nso you've got to be\n\n261\n00:12:15.840 --> 00:12:20.110\nsuper confident but you also have to have a degree of humility because these\n\n262\n00:12:20.110 --> 00:12:22.000\nare challenging\n\n263\n00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:26.480\nsituations and nobody knows exactly what's going to happen next. There's a lot\n\n264\n00:12:26.480 --> 00:12:27.360\nof ambiguity\n\n265\n00:12:27.360 --> 00:12:33.600\nand so have been bringing a balance between being quite confident but also\n\n266\n00:12:33.600 --> 00:12:35.120\nhaving a certain\n\n267\n00:12:35.120 --> 00:12:38.080\nunderstanding that you don't necessarily have all the answers. Maybe you don't\n\n268\n00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:38.720\neven have all the\n\n269\n00:12:38.720 --> 00:12:44.240\nquestions and so you're on a learning journey as these things develop.\n\n270\n00:12:44.240 --> 00:12:47.760\nYou know it's always speaking a journey. It's always fun to really hear about\n\n271\n00:12:47.760 --> 00:12:48.400\nthe journey that\n\n272\n00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:51.920\nsomeone like yourself is taking to get to where you are today. And I like to\n\n273\n00:12:51.920 --> 00:12:52.880\ntake people way back.\n\n274\n00:12:52.880 --> 00:12:56.450\nCan you share a story from your childhood that really shaped the kind of leader\n\n275\n00:12:56.450 --> 00:12:57.600\nyou are today?\n\n276\n00:12:57.600 --> 00:13:01.290\nSure. Well my I grew up in Hawaii, you know, so which is kind of interesting.\n\n277\n00:13:01.290 --> 00:13:02.080\nActually I was born\n\n278\n00:13:02.080 --> 00:13:06.200\nwhen Hawaii wasn't yet a state. It became a state on my first birthday. It just\n\n279\n00:13:06.200 --> 00:13:06.960\nkind of kind of\n\n280\n00:13:06.960 --> 00:13:10.450\ninteresting. Both my parents were born and raised in Hawaii. They went to the\n\n281\n00:13:10.450 --> 00:13:11.280\nmainland to get\n\n282\n00:13:11.280 --> 00:13:16.130\neducation. My mom in Berkeley and California. My dad went to Williams and\n\n283\n00:13:16.130 --> 00:13:17.440\nMassachusetts and then\n\n284\n00:13:17.440 --> 00:13:21.920\nwent to law school in Colorado. And then both moved back to Hawaii. That's when\n\n285\n00:13:21.920 --> 00:13:23.040\nthey met and\n\n286\n00:13:23.040 --> 00:13:27.120\nthankfully they did because they decided to get married and that me and three\n\n287\n00:13:27.120 --> 00:13:28.320\nother siblings.\n\n288\n00:13:28.320 --> 00:13:31.780\nAnd so that's a little bit of the back story. The other part of the thing that\n\n289\n00:13:31.780 --> 00:13:32.240\n's interesting\n\n290\n00:13:32.240 --> 00:13:36.300\nthere is you know my dad was a lawyer and he worked for the same firm for 60\n\n291\n00:13:36.300 --> 00:13:37.200\nyears. You know\n\n292\n00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:40.790\nthe time he got out of law school the time he retired well into his 80s worked\n\n293\n00:13:40.790 --> 00:13:42.320\nfor the same firm.\n\n294\n00:13:42.320 --> 00:13:48.560\nSo there was a modeling of hard work but also of a certain kind of loyalty to a\n\n295\n00:13:48.560 --> 00:13:49.200\ncertain\n\n296\n00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:54.000\norganization. In my case it was, you know my journey has been all different\n\n297\n00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:54.880\nbecause I did in\n\n298\n00:13:54.880 --> 00:13:58.300\nthe early days bounce around a little bit. I kind of knew what my destination,\n\n299\n00:13:58.300 --> 00:13:58.800\nI thought I knew\n\n300\n00:13:58.800 --> 00:14:01.790\nwhat my destination was which I wanted to play a role in building the internet\n\n301\n00:14:01.790 --> 00:14:02.480\nbut I know quite\n\n302\n00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:06.190\nhow to get there. So I had to jump around a little bit to finally position\n\n303\n00:14:06.190 --> 00:14:07.600\nmyself to do it.\n\n304\n00:14:07.600 --> 00:14:11.480\nAnd the other aspect I remember growing up is I was always interested in\n\n305\n00:14:11.480 --> 00:14:12.400\nbusiness starting things.\n\n306\n00:14:12.400 --> 00:14:16.080\nI didn't know what the word entrepreneur met at the time but I knew I liked to\n\n307\n00:14:16.080 --> 00:14:16.880\ncome up with ideas\n\n308\n00:14:16.880 --> 00:14:20.480\nand turn them into businesses. Not really amount it to much but some of the\n\n309\n00:14:20.480 --> 00:14:21.680\nexperiences I got at\n\n310\n00:14:21.680 --> 00:14:26.720\na relatively young age 8, 10, 12. You know I think we're super you know kind of\n\n311\n00:14:26.720 --> 00:14:29.440\nformative and ultimately\n\n312\n00:14:29.440 --> 00:14:34.400\nget led me on this pursuit of entrepreneurship. Curiously what was the first\n\n313\n00:14:34.400 --> 00:14:35.280\nidea you had that\n\n314\n00:14:35.280 --> 00:14:39.030\nyou tried to make somebody on? Well of course my first idea like everybody's\n\n315\n00:14:39.030 --> 00:14:39.760\nfirst idea is\n\n316\n00:14:39.760 --> 00:14:43.820\nAlumni to Stand. I did learn a lesson there which is we had a reciprocal alumni\n\n317\n00:14:43.820 --> 00:14:44.240\nstand\n\n318\n00:14:44.240 --> 00:14:48.320\nand the first couple of times we did it it was great because we basically would\n\n319\n00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:48.960\nget all these\n\n320\n00:14:48.960 --> 00:14:54.310\ningredients you know free from my mom's kitchen and then go out and make it and\n\n321\n00:14:54.310 --> 00:14:55.120\nsell it and get\n\n322\n00:14:55.120 --> 00:14:59.560\n100% of the revenue. After a couple of times my parents decided this was not\n\n323\n00:14:59.560 --> 00:15:00.560\nthe right lesson\n\n324\n00:15:00.560 --> 00:15:04.920\nto learn and they said okay now now you actually have to pay for like the le\n\n325\n00:15:04.920 --> 00:15:05.920\nmons and pay for the\n\n326\n00:15:05.920 --> 00:15:11.280\nsugar and so forth and then I realized oh it's you know it's not 100% margin\n\n327\n00:15:11.280 --> 00:15:12.640\nthere actually is this\n\n328\n00:15:12.640 --> 00:15:17.200\nthing called cost of goods and business suddenly became much less interesting\n\n329\n00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:18.400\nwhen I when the\n\n330\n00:15:18.400 --> 00:15:22.400\nprofits diminished when I had to actually pay the real cost but it was a good\n\n331\n00:15:22.400 --> 00:15:23.440\nlesson in terms of\n\n332\n00:15:23.440 --> 00:15:27.180\nbuilding something and also a good lesson in terms of learning some of the cost\n\n333\n00:15:27.180 --> 00:15:27.840\nstructure. I also\n\n334\n00:15:27.840 --> 00:15:32.030\nsold things like Christmas card door to door cable television door to door\n\n335\n00:15:32.030 --> 00:15:32.880\nthere I learned that you\n\n336\n00:15:32.880 --> 00:15:36.360\nknow you have to be get used to a lot of no's you just keep knocking and\n\n337\n00:15:36.360 --> 00:15:37.920\neventually you'll get to a\n\n338\n00:15:37.920 --> 00:15:43.360\nyeah so you know those were some of the those early experiences that ended up\n\n339\n00:15:43.360 --> 00:15:43.920\nhave you know\n\n340\n00:15:43.920 --> 00:15:47.550\nkind of implanting on me I think some lessons that have been helpful. And you\n\n341\n00:15:47.550 --> 00:15:48.080\nwanted to work\n\n342\n00:15:48.080 --> 00:15:51.490\nyour way into building the internet but one of the one of the things that you\n\n343\n00:15:51.490 --> 00:15:52.560\nand I have in common\n\n344\n00:15:52.560 --> 00:15:58.190\nis that we both lived in Wichita Kansas and we both had roles at Pizza Hut.\n\n345\n00:15:58.190 --> 00:15:59.040\nWhat's a leadership\n\n346\n00:15:59.040 --> 00:16:03.550\nlesson you you picked up working at a company like Pizza? Well obviously you\n\n347\n00:16:03.550 --> 00:16:04.480\ngot better lessons\n\n348\n00:16:04.480 --> 00:16:08.210\nbecause you ended up being you know and the CEO of Yum which is Pizza Hut and a\n\n349\n00:16:08.210 --> 00:16:09.520\nlot a lot of other\n\n350\n00:16:09.520 --> 00:16:15.040\nother things but one of the lessons I learned at well good two things. Ties and\n\n351\n00:16:15.040 --> 00:16:15.440\nwhat I said\n\n352\n00:16:15.440 --> 00:16:19.550\nearlier when I graduated from college in 1980 I actually by then kind of knew\n\n353\n00:16:19.550 --> 00:16:20.640\nwhat I wanted to do\n\n354\n00:16:20.640 --> 00:16:25.180\nthis idea the internet was just beginning me emerging and I wanted to jump into\n\n355\n00:16:25.180 --> 00:16:25.920\nit but when I was\n\n356\n00:16:25.920 --> 00:16:29.800\ngraduating there was no internet companies to go to so I couldn't like find a\n\n357\n00:16:29.800 --> 00:16:30.640\njob at an internet\n\n358\n00:16:30.640 --> 00:16:34.300\ncompany it was still more of a concept than a reality and back then venture\n\n359\n00:16:34.300 --> 00:16:35.200\ncapitals were not\n\n360\n00:16:35.200 --> 00:16:39.330\nbacking you know 21 year olds with hairbrained ideas so I didn't have the\n\n361\n00:16:39.330 --> 00:16:40.320\nability to start\n\n362\n00:16:40.320 --> 00:16:43.970\nsomething. So then I said well what am I gonna do how am I gonna get learn some\n\n363\n00:16:43.970 --> 00:16:44.960\nskills maybe build\n\n364\n00:16:44.960 --> 00:16:49.440\nsome you know a bit of a track record some credibility some momentum that will\n\n365\n00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:50.160\nultimately\n\n366\n00:16:50.160 --> 00:16:53.750\nenable me to you know kind of do what I really want to do which was this this\n\n367\n00:16:53.750 --> 00:16:54.400\ninternet thing. So the\n\n368\n00:16:54.400 --> 00:16:58.750\nfirst job I worked for was in Cincinnati Ohio for Procter & Gamble and their\n\n369\n00:16:58.750 --> 00:16:59.920\nbrand management\n\n370\n00:16:59.920 --> 00:17:03.370\nprogram and learned a lot there I was just there a couple years but learned a\n\n371\n00:17:03.370 --> 00:17:03.920\nlot about\n\n372\n00:17:03.920 --> 00:17:07.690\nyou know testing things and they're as you know very diligent about how they\n\n373\n00:17:07.690 --> 00:17:08.400\ncome go to market\n\n374\n00:17:08.400 --> 00:17:12.220\nwith products and very thoughtful around using technology also learned an\n\n375\n00:17:12.220 --> 00:17:13.360\nimportant lesson there\n\n376\n00:17:13.360 --> 00:17:18.080\naround succinct communications there you know their one-page memo was really\n\n377\n00:17:18.080 --> 00:17:19.840\nimportant.\n\n378\n00:17:19.840 --> 00:17:23.360\nYeah you know it's it's it's it's you learn that it takes much more time to\n\n379\n00:17:23.360 --> 00:17:24.400\nwrite a short memo than\n\n380\n00:17:24.400 --> 00:17:27.840\nit does to write a long memo and it really forces you to crisp up your thinking\n\n381\n00:17:27.840 --> 00:17:28.560\nwhich is it\n\n382\n00:17:28.560 --> 00:17:32.080\ndidn't serve me well. So I did that for a couple of years and I did work for\n\n383\n00:17:32.080 --> 00:17:32.800\nfor about a year for\n\n384\n00:17:32.800 --> 00:17:37.740\npizza when I was owned by PepsiCo and I was you know kind of moved to Wichita\n\n385\n00:17:37.740 --> 00:17:39.280\nto become the director\n\n386\n00:17:39.280 --> 00:17:44.250\nof pizza development which seemed like a pretty good title when I was 23 24 and\n\n387\n00:17:44.250 --> 00:17:44.720\na pretty good\n\n388\n00:17:44.720 --> 00:17:49.480\njump in in salary but the lesson I wanted to learn there and did learn there\n\n389\n00:17:49.480 --> 00:17:50.800\nwas Procter & Gamble as\n\n390\n00:17:50.800 --> 00:17:56.010\nyou know is a very centralized top-down company. You know pizza was again you\n\n391\n00:17:56.010 --> 00:17:56.720\nknow it better than\n\n392\n00:17:56.720 --> 00:18:00.410\nI but was much more of a bottoms up franchisee led company and a lot of the\n\n393\n00:18:00.410 --> 00:18:01.600\ninnovations happened\n\n394\n00:18:01.600 --> 00:18:05.960\nat the periphery and either through franchisees or even part of my job as\n\n395\n00:18:05.960 --> 00:18:07.280\ndirector of New Peace\n\n396\n00:18:07.280 --> 00:18:10.580\nField and I travel around the country there's something like 50,000 pizzerias I\n\n397\n00:18:10.580 --> 00:18:11.120\nsaid rather than\n\n398\n00:18:11.120 --> 00:18:14.940\nsit here in our test kitchens in Wichita why don't I hit the hit the road and\n\n399\n00:18:14.940 --> 00:18:15.520\nfind out what other\n\n400\n00:18:15.520 --> 00:18:19.600\npeople are doing that might lead to some interesting ideas so that that that\n\n401\n00:18:19.600 --> 00:18:20.800\nwas I think helpful both\n\n402\n00:18:20.800 --> 00:18:25.190\nin terms of understanding that ideas can be found anywhere kind of ties in what\n\n403\n00:18:25.190 --> 00:18:25.840\nwe're now\n\n404\n00:18:25.840 --> 00:18:30.890\ndoing with the with rise the rest as well as a bias towards kind of getting out\n\n405\n00:18:30.890 --> 00:18:31.520\nof the office\n\n406\n00:18:31.520 --> 00:18:36.330\nand in hitting the road. Hey everyone it's Kula from Howl Leaders Lead and if\n\n407\n00:18:36.330 --> 00:18:37.040\nyou've watched our\n\n408\n00:18:37.040 --> 00:18:41.200\npodcast for any number of episodes you probably know that a common theme from\n\n409\n00:18:41.200 --> 00:18:41.840\nall of the great\n\n410\n00:18:41.840 --> 00:18:46.260\nleaders we interview is that they are active learners they had this commitment\n\n411\n00:18:46.260 --> 00:18:47.120\nto continuing\n\n412\n00:18:47.120 --> 00:18:51.260\nto learn and grow so that they don't say stagnant and so that they continue to\n\n413\n00:18:51.260 --> 00:18:52.320\nsee success in their\n\n414\n00:18:52.320 --> 00:18:57.160\nleadership and in their life. This theme of active learning is so important and\n\n415\n00:18:57.160 --> 00:18:58.080\nit's what David's\n\n416\n00:18:58.080 --> 00:19:02.440\nlatest book Howl Leaders Learn is all about it's all about helping you develop\n\n417\n00:19:02.440 --> 00:19:03.840\nthat skill of active\n\n418\n00:19:03.840 --> 00:19:07.880\nlearning so that you too can continue to see success in your leadership and in\n\n419\n00:19:07.880 --> 00:19:08.640\nyour life.\n\n420\n00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:12.160\nThe book is really entertaining it pulls stories from some of our greatest\n\n421\n00:19:12.160 --> 00:19:13.680\npodcast guests and pairs\n\n422\n00:19:13.680 --> 00:19:17.840\nthose stories with insights that you can incorporate into your leadership and\n\n423\n00:19:17.840 --> 00:19:18.880\ninto your life right\n\n424\n00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:23.530\naway. Grab Howl Leaders Learn on Amazon or wherever books are sold and I think\n\n425\n00:19:23.530 --> 00:19:24.240\nyou're really gonna\n\n426\n00:19:24.240 --> 00:19:27.650\nlove it. You feel David's personality through the pages and through his\n\n427\n00:19:27.650 --> 00:19:28.880\nstorytelling and it's a\n\n428\n00:19:28.880 --> 00:19:34.320\nreally powerful way to level up your leadership. You know you end up starting\n\n429\n00:19:34.320 --> 00:19:36.400\nAOL and it seems\n\n430\n00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:41.200\nso obvious now why it was such a big big idea but you know take us back to\n\n431\n00:19:41.200 --> 00:19:42.400\nthose early days give\n\n432\n00:19:42.400 --> 00:19:46.910\nus a little bit of a history lesson on you know how AOL was born and how you\n\n433\n00:19:46.910 --> 00:19:48.080\nconvinced yourself\n\n434\n00:19:48.080 --> 00:19:52.100\nthat it was such a breakthrough idea because you were heading that way it seems\n\n435\n00:19:52.100 --> 00:19:53.040\nyou know take it\n\n436\n00:19:53.040 --> 00:19:56.660\ntake us through that. Well the reason I thought I was an interesting idea when\n\n437\n00:19:56.660 --> 00:19:57.840\nI was still in college\n\n438\n00:19:57.840 --> 00:20:03.880\njust as 78, 79, 80 I was reading about these experiments that different\n\n439\n00:20:03.880 --> 00:20:05.360\ncompanies were doing in\n\n440\n00:20:05.360 --> 00:20:09.200\nFrance or something called a mini-tail in the UK something called Press Tell\n\n441\n00:20:09.200 --> 00:20:10.000\nthese interactive\n\n442\n00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:13.920\nservices or even were some in the United States and also while I was in college\n\n443\n00:20:13.920 --> 00:20:14.640\nread the book the\n\n444\n00:20:14.640 --> 00:20:18.350\nthird wave by Alvin Toff of the Futurist and he basically laid out you know\n\n445\n00:20:18.350 --> 00:20:19.440\nwhat was gonna happen\n\n446\n00:20:19.440 --> 00:20:23.040\nin terms of the the internet talking about electronic cottage and different\n\n447\n00:20:23.040 --> 00:20:23.840\nways people could get\n\n448\n00:20:23.840 --> 00:20:28.720\ninformation and connect with people and so forth and I read this and this is\n\n449\n00:20:28.720 --> 00:20:29.680\ndefinitely gonna happen I\n\n450\n00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:34.480\nwant to be part of making it happen so that the idea became something I was\n\n451\n00:20:34.480 --> 00:20:35.920\npretty passionate about\n\n452\n00:20:35.920 --> 00:20:40.790\nrelatively early on the way I got to it was as I said a little early a little\n\n453\n00:20:40.790 --> 00:20:41.920\nbit circuitous\n\n454\n00:20:41.920 --> 00:20:45.470\nfirst a little bit of PNG then a little bit of pizza and I moved to the\n\n455\n00:20:45.470 --> 00:20:46.880\nWashington DC area to\n\n456\n00:20:46.880 --> 00:20:51.300\njoin a startup that was doing something in this internet space but a few months\n\n457\n00:20:51.300 --> 00:20:52.240\nafter I joined\n\n458\n00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:55.650\nthe company was nearing bankruptcy they raised a bunch of money the product was\n\n459\n00:20:55.650 --> 00:20:56.320\nhaving some\n\n460\n00:20:56.320 --> 00:20:59.900\nsome challenges and so it was a little bit my lesson around entrepreneurship a\n\n461\n00:20:59.900 --> 00:21:00.880\nlittle like well\n\n462\n00:21:00.880 --> 00:21:05.520\nwelcome to the NFL it's not so easy and so we struggled for a couple of years\n\n463\n00:21:05.520 --> 00:21:06.080\njust trying to\n\n464\n00:21:06.080 --> 00:21:10.090\nyou know keep that company alive but thankfully two of the people I met there\n\n465\n00:21:10.090 --> 00:21:11.200\nJim Kimsey and Mark\n\n466\n00:21:11.200 --> 00:21:18.280\nSerif ended up being my co-founders of American online AOL in 1985 so it was a\n\n467\n00:21:18.280 --> 00:21:19.280\nyou know a strange\n\n468\n00:21:19.280 --> 00:21:23.240\njourney my parents were a little worried about my my trajectory having again my\n\n469\n00:21:23.240 --> 00:21:24.080\ndad having been at\n\n470\n00:21:24.080 --> 00:21:28.780\none place for six years I was at PNG for two years pizza for one year then you\n\n471\n00:21:28.780 --> 00:21:30.000\nknow at this new\n\n472\n00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:33.660\nstartup for about a year before it stumbled and then was starting something\n\n473\n00:21:33.660 --> 00:21:34.880\nelse so I think they were\n\n474\n00:21:34.880 --> 00:21:38.870\nyou know you know I know they were quite concerned about you know my my\n\n475\n00:21:38.870 --> 00:21:40.720\ntrajectory but eventually we\n\n476\n00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:44.100\nwere able to break through but the reason it took so long for the internet to\n\n477\n00:21:44.100 --> 00:21:45.520\ntake off in retrospect\n\n478\n00:21:45.520 --> 00:21:49.190\nit's more obvious at the time I was pretty frustrated by it as most people didn\n\n479\n00:21:49.190 --> 00:21:50.320\n't see a reason to\n\n480\n00:21:50.320 --> 00:21:54.110\nbe online there wasn't any digital content there was not any e-commerce yet we\n\n481\n00:21:54.110 --> 00:21:54.640\nhad to create\n\n482\n00:21:54.640 --> 00:21:58.640\nall that infrastructure all those you know services most people didn't have\n\n483\n00:21:58.640 --> 00:21:59.200\npersonal\n\n484\n00:21:59.200 --> 00:22:02.240\ncomputers the few people that did have personal computers didn't have\n\n485\n00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:03.440\ncommunication modems to\n\n486\n00:22:03.440 --> 00:22:07.800\nconnect their computer to the these networks the cost of the time was something\n\n487\n00:22:07.800 --> 00:22:08.720\nlike ten dollars\n\n488\n00:22:08.720 --> 00:22:12.310\nan hour so it's kind of for you know pretty pretty scary to be online you'd\n\n489\n00:22:12.310 --> 00:22:13.520\nonly want to be on for\n\n490\n00:22:13.520 --> 00:22:17.480\nbrief periods of time there's nobody to talk to because there was nobody else\n\n491\n00:22:17.480 --> 00:22:18.240\non so there were a\n\n492\n00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:22.670\nwhole host of reasons and it just took us a while to really create a service\n\n493\n00:22:22.670 --> 00:22:24.000\nthat was easy to use\n\n494\n00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:27.300\nand useful and fun and affordable and it convinced people they wanted it and\n\n495\n00:22:27.300 --> 00:22:28.880\nconvinced pc manufacturers\n\n496\n00:22:28.880 --> 00:22:32.140\nto build those modems and and you know work with the telecommunications\n\n497\n00:22:32.140 --> 00:22:33.120\ncompanies to lower the\n\n498\n00:22:33.120 --> 00:22:37.050\ncost of communications and work with the government to commercialize access the\n\n499\n00:22:37.050 --> 00:22:38.240\ninternet and open\n\n500\n00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:41.660\naccess to the telephone network and a whole bunch of things that needed to\n\n501\n00:22:41.660 --> 00:22:42.560\nhappen and it just took\n\n502\n00:22:42.560 --> 00:22:47.150\na decade so that was why as i said earlier one of my lessons is is revolution\n\n503\n00:22:47.150 --> 00:22:48.400\nsometimes happened\n\n504\n00:22:48.400 --> 00:22:52.720\nthat often happen in more evolutionary ways you're where it really is a slog\n\n505\n00:22:52.720 --> 00:22:53.520\nwhere sometimes you\n\n506\n00:22:53.520 --> 00:22:57.840\nmay even think you should give up but eventually you know the sun comes out and\n\n507\n00:22:57.840 --> 00:22:58.960\nyou start seeing\n\n508\n00:22:58.960 --> 00:23:03.040\nsome real momentum yeah the the sun definitely came out and you know and i've\n\n509\n00:23:03.040 --> 00:23:04.000\nheard you say that\n\n510\n00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:09.280\nyou know we we always believe the killer app of the internet was was people\n\n511\n00:23:10.400 --> 00:23:17.280\nnot content not commerce people you know say more well the reason we felt that\n\n512\n00:23:17.280 --> 00:23:18.320\nand even from the\n\n513\n00:23:18.320 --> 00:23:24.570\nearliest days in 1985 the majority of the usage of AOL was communications\n\n514\n00:23:24.570 --> 00:23:26.000\nfeatures community\n\n515\n00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:29.660\nfeatures things like people connection where you can chat with people or\n\n516\n00:23:29.660 --> 00:23:30.640\ninstant messaging\n\n517\n00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:36.000\nnow texting or bullet boards or or just a whole variety of ways that you know\n\n518\n00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:37.040\nconnect people\n\n519\n00:23:37.040 --> 00:23:40.160\nto people they already know and just are trying to stay connected with\n\n520\n00:23:40.160 --> 00:23:41.040\nobviously email and things\n\n521\n00:23:41.040 --> 00:23:44.330\nlike that are pretty pretty fundamental as well as connecting to people to\n\n522\n00:23:44.330 --> 00:23:45.440\ncommunities they care\n\n523\n00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:50.060\nabout so they meet some new people that they they extend their their their\n\n524\n00:23:50.060 --> 00:23:51.200\nnetwork and so we\n\n525\n00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:54.540\nknew that was a powerful idea that people have always wanted to be connected\n\n526\n00:23:54.540 --> 00:23:55.280\nthat's part of the\n\n527\n00:23:55.280 --> 00:23:59.280\nreason why people go to restaurants part of the reason why you know people\n\n528\n00:23:59.280 --> 00:23:59.920\nhistorically use the\n\n529\n00:23:59.920 --> 00:24:03.970\ntelephone to make you know phone calls so there was always this this human\n\n530\n00:24:03.970 --> 00:24:05.280\ndesire for connectivity\n\n531\n00:24:05.280 --> 00:24:09.210\nwith other people and we wanted to use this technology to do that we also\n\n532\n00:24:09.210 --> 00:24:11.360\nwanted to humanize the technology\n\n533\n00:24:11.360 --> 00:24:15.140\nbecause people take it for granted now but we started 40 years ago the internet\n\n534\n00:24:15.140 --> 00:24:16.480\nwas kind of scary\n\n535\n00:24:16.480 --> 00:24:20.640\nit was it was sort of felt like it's sort of a weird you know kind of kind of\n\n536\n00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:21.520\nhacker world\n\n537\n00:24:21.520 --> 00:24:25.120\nand can you know have we wanted to put a friendly face on it and one way to do\n\n538\n00:24:25.120 --> 00:24:26.080\nthat was to you know\n\n539\n00:24:26.080 --> 00:24:30.490\nto focus on people there also was frankly a pragmatic reason that that some of\n\n540\n00:24:30.490 --> 00:24:31.680\nthe bigger players out\n\n541\n00:24:31.680 --> 00:24:36.390\nthere own significant content you know publishers like a night ritter and you\n\n542\n00:24:36.390 --> 00:24:37.360\nknow time ink and\n\n543\n00:24:37.360 --> 00:24:42.490\nand you know or owned you know commerce one of the big competitors was prodigy\n\n544\n00:24:42.490 --> 00:24:43.200\nwhich is backed by\n\n545\n00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:47.420\neven Sears obviously Sears was the major you know commerce you know kind of\n\n546\n00:24:47.420 --> 00:24:49.200\ncompany and\n\n547\n00:24:49.200 --> 00:24:53.160\nand prodigy had committed one billion dollars to launch so we knew we couldn't\n\n548\n00:24:53.160 --> 00:24:54.000\ncompete with them\n\n549\n00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:57.600\nhead to head in terms of how much money we had for so much money they had and\n\n550\n00:24:57.600 --> 00:24:58.720\nwe couldn't compete\n\n551\n00:24:58.720 --> 00:25:02.830\nby trying to do a better job of what they did well so we said let's focus on\n\n552\n00:25:02.830 --> 00:25:03.840\nwhat really is unique\n\n553\n00:25:03.840 --> 00:25:07.440\nfor us and differentiates for us and and that was focused on on people and\n\n554\n00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:08.720\ncommunity and and even\n\n555\n00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:12.960\ntoday if you look at the popular services whether it be you know Facebook or or\n\n556\n00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:14.000\nTikTok or many other\n\n557\n00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:17.780\nthings they're really showing that continuing that power of community\n\n558\n00:25:17.780 --> 00:25:19.760\nabsolutely and I have to ask\n\n559\n00:25:19.760 --> 00:25:24.480\nyou how'd you how'd you come up with the name American America online well like\n\n560\n00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:25.440\nmany things a\n\n561\n00:25:25.440 --> 00:25:29.680\nlittle bit accidental and a little bit actually of a of a crisis creating an\n\n562\n00:25:29.680 --> 00:25:30.560\nopportunity that\n\n563\n00:25:30.560 --> 00:25:34.070\nour strategy in those early days because we didn't have much money we only\n\n564\n00:25:34.070 --> 00:25:35.040\nraised one million\n\n565\n00:25:35.040 --> 00:25:39.440\ndollars of adventure capital was to partner with the PC manufacturers and\n\n566\n00:25:39.440 --> 00:25:40.720\ncreate custom kind of\n\n567\n00:25:40.720 --> 00:25:45.520\nwhat's called now white label online services so we partnered with Commodore\n\n568\n00:25:45.520 --> 00:25:45.920\nwhich had the\n\n569\n00:25:45.920 --> 00:25:50.160\nCommodore 64 computer and created something called Q-Link and partnered with\n\n570\n00:25:50.160 --> 00:25:51.120\nyou know Radio Shack\n\n571\n00:25:51.120 --> 00:25:54.140\nTandy which at the time was a big you know PC manufacturer created something\n\n572\n00:25:54.140 --> 00:25:55.680\ncalled PC Link\n\n573\n00:25:55.680 --> 00:25:58.880\nyou know partnered with IBM to create something called promenade and partner\n\n574\n00:25:58.880 --> 00:25:59.760\nwith Apple to create\n\n575\n00:25:59.760 --> 00:26:03.380\nsomething called Apple Link we got Apple to agree to license the Apple brand\n\n576\n00:26:03.380 --> 00:26:04.480\nname to us to launch\n\n577\n00:26:04.480 --> 00:26:08.140\nthis this service and we launched the service and then about a year into it\n\n578\n00:26:08.140 --> 00:26:10.080\nApple said come to think\n\n579\n00:26:10.080 --> 00:26:14.700\nof it we don't really like the fact that you are using our Apple brand name you\n\n580\n00:26:14.700 --> 00:26:15.760\nknow we regret we\n\n581\n00:26:15.760 --> 00:26:19.930\ndid that deal we want to tear up that deal and that was a little bit of a\n\n582\n00:26:19.930 --> 00:26:21.360\ncrisis because that was\n\n583\n00:26:21.360 --> 00:26:25.310\nwhat we thought would be our biggest growth driver so we kind of negotiated a\n\n584\n00:26:25.310 --> 00:26:26.880\ntransition and a settlement\n\n585\n00:26:26.880 --> 00:26:31.300\nwasn't a lot a couple million dollars but that gave us the ability to to rel\n\n586\n00:26:31.300 --> 00:26:32.400\naunch the service and\n\n587\n00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:35.970\nwe didn't know what to call it couldn't call it Apple Link anymore couldn't\n\n588\n00:26:35.970 --> 00:26:36.960\nafford a branding\n\n589\n00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:40.920\nagency so we basically had an internal contest to decide what to name there are\n\n590\n00:26:40.920 --> 00:26:41.840\nthree or four names\n\n591\n00:26:41.840 --> 00:26:45.670\nthat were explore and promenade and some others but one of them was online\n\n592\n00:26:45.670 --> 00:26:46.880\nAmerica so that sounds\n\n593\n00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:50.360\ninteresting and also has the benefit of kind of describing what we're doing\n\n594\n00:26:50.360 --> 00:26:51.440\nsince we don't have\n\n595\n00:26:51.440 --> 00:26:54.660\nmoney to spend on building a brand we need to have something that's pretty\n\n596\n00:26:54.660 --> 00:26:56.080\ndescriptive but I thought\n\n597\n00:26:56.080 --> 00:26:59.990\nI would sound better if it was American online so we just flipped the words and\n\n598\n00:26:59.990 --> 00:27:00.560\nthat suddenly\n\n599\n00:27:00.560 --> 00:27:04.340\nbecame our brand so it was an internal contest I think somebody got a hundred\n\n600\n00:27:04.340 --> 00:27:05.760\nbucks for suggesting\n\n601\n00:27:05.760 --> 00:27:11.370\nthat and the rest is history and you end up being the first internet company to\n\n602\n00:27:11.370 --> 00:27:12.560\ngo public back in\n\n603\n00:27:12.560 --> 00:27:18.850\n1992 what was it like going into unchartered territory like that and what did\n\n604\n00:27:18.850 --> 00:27:19.920\nyou learn as a\n\n605\n00:27:19.920 --> 00:27:24.900\nleader doing something that hadn't been done before well a couple things one\n\n606\n00:27:24.900 --> 00:27:26.480\nthing that was a little\n\n607\n00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:30.960\nbit of a negative you know when we were going public uh you know as you said it\n\n608\n00:27:30.960 --> 00:27:32.400\nwas 1992 but as\n\n609\n00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:37.920\nwe're planning for it in 1991 the board was concerned that the public market\n\n610\n00:27:37.920 --> 00:27:38.800\nyou know Wall\n\n611\n00:27:38.800 --> 00:27:43.140\nStreet if you will was not necessarily going to easily embrace this idea of the\n\n612\n00:27:43.140 --> 00:27:43.920\ninternet and\n\n613\n00:27:43.920 --> 00:27:49.640\ndecided that it would be even harder if the the CEO of the company was just 31\n\n614\n00:27:49.640 --> 00:27:51.280\n32 years old so they\n\n615\n00:27:51.280 --> 00:27:55.990\nactually decided that I should step aside as CEO have the other co-founder Jim\n\n616\n00:27:55.990 --> 00:27:57.200\nKimsey was 20 years\n\n617\n00:27:57.200 --> 00:28:01.600\nolder come back as CEO and that was pretty frustrating obviously I didn't think\n\n618\n00:28:01.600 --> 00:28:03.040\nit was fair but I\n\n619\n00:28:03.040 --> 00:28:07.160\nI almost quit frankly and even some of our team threatened their quit and I\n\n620\n00:28:07.160 --> 00:28:08.560\nsaid no we believe\n\n621\n00:28:08.560 --> 00:28:11.560\nin this company we believe in this idea let's you know like hang in there let's\n\n622\n00:28:11.560 --> 00:28:12.320\nplay the long\n\n623\n00:28:12.320 --> 00:28:16.780\ngame so I stuck it out we did go public six months later I became CEO again so\n\n624\n00:28:16.780 --> 00:28:18.000\nthat was one\n\n625\n00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:22.640\ninteresting kind of story because obviously things have changed now many\n\n626\n00:28:22.640 --> 00:28:23.520\ncompanies are going\n\n627\n00:28:23.520 --> 00:28:27.280\npublic with with CEOs in their in their in their 20s and it's obviously worked\n\n628\n00:28:27.280 --> 00:28:27.600\nyou know I worked\n\n629\n00:28:27.600 --> 00:28:32.720\npretty well the other is I viewed it as an opportunity to sell the idea of the\n\n630\n00:28:32.720 --> 00:28:34.000\ninternet if we could\n\n631\n00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:37.980\nsell the idea of the internet people would then see that american line as a\n\n632\n00:28:37.980 --> 00:28:39.280\ncompany as an investment\n\n633\n00:28:39.280 --> 00:28:43.620\nmight make sense so it was really more evangelizing the the idea of the\n\n634\n00:28:43.620 --> 00:28:45.440\ninternet and that's you know\n\n635\n00:28:45.440 --> 00:28:48.450\nI did for a lot of years and you know just trying to kind of put the internet\n\n636\n00:28:48.450 --> 00:28:49.360\non the map and then\n\n637\n00:28:49.360 --> 00:28:54.900\nposition AOL within the internet so it was long and hard and a struggle we we\n\n638\n00:28:54.900 --> 00:28:56.160\nour roadshow\n\n639\n00:28:56.160 --> 00:29:00.160\nwe ended up raising ten million dollars in our IPO the value of the company\n\n640\n00:29:00.160 --> 00:29:01.040\nwhen we went public\n\n641\n00:29:01.040 --> 00:29:05.330\nthat day was 70 million dollars you know yeah nobody really knew her care what\n\n642\n00:29:05.330 --> 00:29:06.320\nwe're doing but\n\n643\n00:29:06.320 --> 00:29:10.340\nthen thankfully seven years later it was it was 160 billion dollars and it\n\n644\n00:29:10.340 --> 00:29:11.360\nturned out to be the\n\n645\n00:29:11.360 --> 00:29:15.520\nbest performing stock of the decade so a lot of those skeptical institutional\n\n646\n00:29:15.520 --> 00:29:16.560\ninvestors on our\n\n647\n00:29:16.560 --> 00:29:20.350\nIPO roadshow were you're regretted not taking the meeting or at least paying a\n\n648\n00:29:20.350 --> 00:29:20.800\nlittle bit more\n\n649\n00:29:20.800 --> 00:29:24.750\nattention because it turned out we really were on to something well you know\n\n650\n00:29:24.750 --> 00:29:25.840\nand you said your\n\n651\n00:29:25.840 --> 00:29:30.750\nyour first decade was really tough and then then then it started to take off\n\n652\n00:29:30.750 --> 00:29:31.360\nhow do you know when\n\n653\n00:29:31.360 --> 00:29:36.250\nto stick with something or whether you pivot and what would you learn about\n\n654\n00:29:36.250 --> 00:29:38.000\nthat well it ties\n\n655\n00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:44.330\nthem a lot of your focus on on leadership but I what I learned was that context\n\n656\n00:29:44.330 --> 00:29:46.000\nmatters circumstances\n\n657\n00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:51.040\nmatter and the leader I needed to be as CEO when the company had 50 employees\n\n658\n00:29:51.040 --> 00:29:52.000\nwas different than when\n\n659\n00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:56.510\nit had 5,000 employees and when we were a small private company that was\n\n660\n00:29:56.510 --> 00:29:57.840\ndifferent than a large\n\n661\n00:29:57.840 --> 00:30:02.100\nrepublic company and as the company scaled it had a had a broader set of\n\n662\n00:30:02.100 --> 00:30:03.280\nresponsibilities a\n\n663\n00:30:03.280 --> 00:30:06.830\nbroader set of constituents was including governments around the world so again\n\n664\n00:30:06.830 --> 00:30:07.760\ntrying to educate\n\n665\n00:30:07.760 --> 00:30:13.220\nthem about you know so you know my my leadership styling changed I went from\n\n666\n00:30:13.220 --> 00:30:14.080\nlike most entrepreneurs\n\n667\n00:30:14.080 --> 00:30:18.000\nbeing involved in everything to trying to really build a team and delegate as\n\n668\n00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:19.200\nmuch as possible and\n\n669\n00:30:19.200 --> 00:30:22.930\nempower and trust the people that work for me so I didn't have to be involved\n\n670\n00:30:22.930 --> 00:30:23.760\nin everything\n\n671\n00:30:23.760 --> 00:30:30.640\nand and just had to reassess pretty much every year you know what what changes\n\n672\n00:30:30.640 --> 00:30:31.200\nshould we make to\n\n673\n00:30:31.200 --> 00:30:35.780\nthe organization what new perspectives do we need maybe somebody's done a great\n\n674\n00:30:35.780 --> 00:30:36.640\njob in marketing\n\n675\n00:30:36.640 --> 00:30:40.390\nor finance or whatever it might be maybe they're not going to be able to you\n\n676\n00:30:40.390 --> 00:30:41.440\nknow make the next\n\n677\n00:30:41.440 --> 00:30:45.120\nyou know take the next lap for us maybe we need to bring in somebody else with\n\n678\n00:30:45.120 --> 00:30:46.240\na broader set of\n\n679\n00:30:46.240 --> 00:30:50.220\nexperiences or maybe we need to launch a new effort in some new area like\n\n680\n00:30:50.220 --> 00:30:51.200\nmobile or something\n\n681\n00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:54.470\nelse and we need to bring in somebody you know that had that experience so it\n\n682\n00:30:54.470 --> 00:30:55.680\nwas constantly trying\n\n683\n00:30:55.680 --> 00:30:59.550\nto kind of look in the future two three years kind of understand what the\n\n684\n00:30:59.550 --> 00:31:00.960\noverall market might look\n\n685\n00:31:00.960 --> 00:31:05.110\nlike then what our company might look like then and start putting in place\n\n686\n00:31:05.110 --> 00:31:06.320\nbefore we needed to\n\n687\n00:31:06.320 --> 00:31:12.400\nthe structure and the team that would enable us to get to that next stop on the\n\n688\n00:31:12.400 --> 00:31:13.680\non the journey so\n\n689\n00:31:13.680 --> 00:31:17.220\nit was a constant reassessment and the last point I'll make is part of what I\n\n690\n00:31:17.220 --> 00:31:18.240\nwas doing traveling\n\n691\n00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:22.500\naround a lot was constantly on the outlook for people I was called the you know\n\n692\n00:31:22.500 --> 00:31:23.520\nchief executive\n\n693\n00:31:23.520 --> 00:31:27.130\nofficer but I really was more like the chief recruiting officer because I was\n\n694\n00:31:27.130 --> 00:31:28.160\nconstantly on\n\n695\n00:31:28.160 --> 00:31:32.520\non the lookout for talent even when I remember meeting you in the late 90s when\n\n696\n00:31:32.520 --> 00:31:33.120\nyou came to\n\n697\n00:31:33.120 --> 00:31:36.430\nthe office with Bob Pittman I was thinking oh this guy seems like he's pretty\n\n698\n00:31:36.430 --> 00:31:37.920\ngood pretty good operator\n\n699\n00:31:37.920 --> 00:31:42.020\nand we can pull him into the orbit I was not successful there but I was always\n\n700\n00:31:42.020 --> 00:31:43.040\non the lookout\n\n701\n00:31:43.040 --> 00:31:48.840\nyou've got mail became one of the most iconic phrases of of its time it's\n\n702\n00:31:48.840 --> 00:31:51.040\npractically the soundtrack\n\n703\n00:31:51.040 --> 00:31:56.820\nof the early internet can you tell us the story of you've got mail yeah again\n\n704\n00:31:56.820 --> 00:31:57.440\nthat's\n\n705\n00:31:57.440 --> 00:32:01.400\nit's really a function of being a very small company I think at the time we had\n\n706\n00:32:01.400 --> 00:32:03.280\nmaybe 30 or 40 employees\n\n707\n00:32:03.280 --> 00:32:07.920\nand and I was trying to figure out ways to again make the service friendly or\n\n708\n00:32:07.920 --> 00:32:09.440\nmore approachable\n\n709\n00:32:09.440 --> 00:32:13.760\nat the time because the modem speeds the communication speeds were so low we\n\n710\n00:32:13.760 --> 00:32:14.480\ncouldn't send\n\n711\n00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:19.160\nyou know kind of any audio over the phone lines but we could put on the\n\n712\n00:32:19.160 --> 00:32:19.920\nphysical\n\n713\n00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:24.960\ndisc the floppy disc you know kind of messages so I said why don't we add to\n\n714\n00:32:24.960 --> 00:32:26.720\nthe add to our software\n\n715\n00:32:26.720 --> 00:32:32.820\nsome friendly welcoming you know voices like welcome and you've got mail and\n\n716\n00:32:32.820 --> 00:32:33.600\nthings like that\n\n717\n00:32:33.600 --> 00:32:37.760\nthat would seem like a we just implant on our disc and when somebody signs on\n\n718\n00:32:37.760 --> 00:32:38.800\nbasically the network\n\n719\n00:32:38.800 --> 00:32:43.070\nsays welcome you've got mail I thought that would be another way to make it\n\n720\n00:32:43.070 --> 00:32:44.400\nseem more friendly more\n\n721\n00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:49.220\nmore approachable and somebody in our customer service center you know Karen\n\n722\n00:32:49.220 --> 00:32:50.960\nEdwards heard me\n\n723\n00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:55.440\nsay that and she said so you know my husband Elwood is a radio guy he does he\n\n724\n00:32:55.440 --> 00:32:56.560\ndoes work at a radio\n\n725\n00:32:56.560 --> 00:33:00.500\nstation that's a pretty good radio voice if you just write down what you want\n\n726\n00:33:00.500 --> 00:33:01.040\nyou know to put on\n\n727\n00:33:01.040 --> 00:33:05.560\nthe software I'll I'll see if he'll I'll go home tonight and see if he'll he'll\n\n728\n00:33:05.560 --> 00:33:06.400\ndo it so I got a\n\n729\n00:33:06.400 --> 00:33:10.270\nlittle post-it note and wrote down three four things and you know gave it to\n\n730\n00:33:10.270 --> 00:33:11.200\nher and you know next\n\n731\n00:33:11.200 --> 00:33:15.840\nmorning shows up with a cassette tape plays it and and you know Elwood you know\n\n732\n00:33:15.840 --> 00:33:17.200\nvoice was perfect so I\n\n733\n00:33:17.200 --> 00:33:21.480\ntold her our engineers you know add this to the software it went out in the\n\n734\n00:33:21.480 --> 00:33:22.640\nnext version of the\n\n735\n00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:27.560\nsoftware and a year or two later Elwood had one of the most famous voices in\n\n736\n00:33:27.560 --> 00:33:28.880\nthe world so again it\n\n737\n00:33:28.880 --> 00:33:32.370\nkind of an accident more just you know kind of musing about some way to improve\n\n738\n00:33:32.370 --> 00:33:33.280\nthe product and\n\n739\n00:33:33.280 --> 00:33:36.900\nsomebody happened to overhear me and she happened to have a husband who had a\n\n740\n00:33:36.900 --> 00:33:37.920\ngood radio voice and\n\n741\n00:33:38.400 --> 00:33:43.840\nand it was you know it was and that's the story of a lot of the companies we\n\n742\n00:33:43.840 --> 00:33:44.880\nback the entrepreneurial\n\n743\n00:33:44.880 --> 00:33:49.700\njourneys that we've seen that you have a plan you have a sense of you're you're\n\n744\n00:33:49.700 --> 00:33:51.440\nwhere you want to go\n\n745\n00:33:51.440 --> 00:33:57.570\nwe always have to you know be flexible and agile and and curious and and kind\n\n746\n00:33:57.570 --> 00:33:58.560\nof you know try new\n\n747\n00:33:58.560 --> 00:34:02.950\nthings experiment new things talking to new people just to kind of you know\n\n748\n00:34:02.950 --> 00:34:04.320\nkind of try new things\n\n749\n00:34:04.320 --> 00:34:07.850\nand so that was an example of kind of stumbling into an idea that ended up\n\n750\n00:34:07.850 --> 00:34:09.120\nbeing one of the defining\n\n751\n00:34:09.120 --> 00:34:13.290\naspects of very well and the and those days of the internet it's interesting\n\n752\n00:34:13.290 --> 00:34:14.000\nyou said you're\n\n753\n00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:17.960\nreally trying to improve the product and that was something that you were doing\n\n754\n00:34:17.960 --> 00:34:18.800\nat Pete's Hot\n\n755\n00:34:18.800 --> 00:34:22.980\nsomething you did at Procter and Gamble that improving the product is sort of\n\n756\n00:34:22.980 --> 00:34:24.080\nin your in your\n\n757\n00:34:24.080 --> 00:34:28.190\nDNA yeah you guys it's never good enough it always can be better and having\n\n758\n00:34:28.190 --> 00:34:28.880\nthat you know being\n\n759\n00:34:28.880 --> 00:34:32.480\nproud of what's been built and the team that built it is part of it but also\n\n760\n00:34:32.480 --> 00:34:34.160\nkind of you know always\n\n761\n00:34:34.160 --> 00:34:37.310\nyou know kind of leaning in the future thinking about what you can do next one\n\n762\n00:34:37.310 --> 00:34:38.000\nof the areas which\n\n763\n00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:43.150\nI'd said say most people who were there at the time would say I was not as good\n\n764\n00:34:43.150 --> 00:34:44.000\nat and I think they\n\n765\n00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:48.170\nwould be fair to say this is I I sometimes didn't celebrate our current\n\n766\n00:34:48.170 --> 00:34:49.760\nsuccesses I was more\n\n767\n00:34:49.760 --> 00:34:53.890\nsaying okay that's all fine but let's raise the bar what can we do next and I\n\n768\n00:34:53.890 --> 00:34:54.640\n've learned that you\n\n769\n00:34:54.640 --> 00:34:58.040\nneed to strike the right balance there and make sure you are you know you're\n\n770\n00:34:58.040 --> 00:34:59.360\nrewarding and and\n\n771\n00:34:59.360 --> 00:35:03.640\ncelebrating your your interim wins even if you're kind of focused on a you know\n\n772\n00:35:03.640 --> 00:35:05.200\nkind of a larger\n\n773\n00:35:05.200 --> 00:35:10.400\nyou know kind of larger picture a larger destiny see was there ever a time I'm\n\n774\n00:35:10.400 --> 00:35:12.000\nsure there was but\n\n775\n00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:16.640\nwhen was that time when it really hit you that hey man we are having a huge\n\n776\n00:35:16.640 --> 00:35:17.920\nimpact here this is\n\n777\n00:35:17.920 --> 00:35:22.360\nreally this is big I mean maybe bigger than I thought it was there were a lot\n\n778\n00:35:22.360 --> 00:35:23.200\nof examples of\n\n779\n00:35:23.200 --> 00:35:27.080\nthat to particularly in the late 90s you know the internet went from they said\n\n780\n00:35:27.080 --> 00:35:28.080\nbefore nobody knew\n\n781\n00:35:28.080 --> 00:35:31.410\nor cared about it to suddenly everybody wanted to be part of it it was it was\n\n782\n00:35:31.410 --> 00:35:32.240\nsort of this almost\n\n783\n00:35:32.240 --> 00:35:36.490\ngold rush mentality in terms of people wanting to become subscribers of AOL\n\n784\n00:35:36.490 --> 00:35:38.240\npeople wanting to become\n\n785\n00:35:38.240 --> 00:35:42.220\nemployees of AOL people wanting to invest in AOL people wanted to partner with\n\n786\n00:35:42.220 --> 00:35:42.640\nAOL so there are\n\n787\n00:35:42.640 --> 00:35:47.180\na lot of different different experiences you know one that I remember which was\n\n788\n00:35:47.180 --> 00:35:48.640\na real challenge but\n\n789\n00:35:48.640 --> 00:35:53.360\nalso kind of opened my eyes to you know how things had changed is we made a\n\n790\n00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:55.040\ndecision I think this was\n\n791\n00:35:55.040 --> 00:36:03.650\nprobably in '96 maybe 1997 to move to unlimited tracing you know we up until\n\n792\n00:36:03.650 --> 00:36:04.480\nthen it was you\n\n793\n00:36:04.480 --> 00:36:08.370\npaid per hour to be on the service and we decided to move to essentially a flat\n\n794\n00:36:08.370 --> 00:36:09.600\nfee $20 a month and\n\n795\n00:36:09.600 --> 00:36:13.600\nyou could use all you could want we and we knew when we did that that usage\n\n796\n00:36:13.600 --> 00:36:14.960\nwould would skyrocket\n\n797\n00:36:14.960 --> 00:36:19.230\nbut when we announced it skyrocketed far more than we had anticipated as a\n\n798\n00:36:19.230 --> 00:36:20.400\nresult we had huge\n\n799\n00:36:20.400 --> 00:36:24.050\nproblems with people getting online it was a busy signal you know kind of\n\n800\n00:36:24.050 --> 00:36:25.120\ndynamic effect then\n\n801\n00:36:25.120 --> 00:36:29.440\nbefore broadband and Wi-Fi things like that you had to dial up and connect to\n\n802\n00:36:29.440 --> 00:36:30.800\none of our modems\n\n803\n00:36:30.800 --> 00:36:36.380\nand it was a real problem at one point the entire AOL service was down for 23\n\n804\n00:36:36.380 --> 00:36:36.800\nhours\n\n805\n00:36:36.800 --> 00:36:42.240\nand it was the lead story of almost every newspaper in the country and almost\n\n806\n00:36:42.240 --> 00:36:42.480\nevery\n\n807\n00:36:43.120 --> 00:36:49.600\nbroad network broadcast you know news operation but the AOL down I was like wow\n\n808\n00:36:49.600 --> 00:36:50.640\nthat's kind of\n\n809\n00:36:50.640 --> 00:36:55.110\nembarrassing and and in some ways got we told people to trust us and we're\n\n810\n00:36:55.110 --> 00:36:56.320\nletting them down so\n\n811\n00:36:56.320 --> 00:36:59.870\nit was frustrating we did a lot of things to deal with but it I also took a\n\n812\n00:36:59.870 --> 00:37:01.600\nstep back and said wow\n\n813\n00:37:01.600 --> 00:37:06.240\nyou know even a few years ago nobody would have known or cared if we were down\n\n814\n00:37:06.240 --> 00:37:07.520\nnow suddenly it\n\n815\n00:37:07.520 --> 00:37:11.810\nlooks like the world is coming to a halt because we're down for 23 hours that\n\n816\n00:37:11.810 --> 00:37:12.960\nwas really a sign\n\n817\n00:37:12.960 --> 00:37:16.640\nthat I think the internet had arrived AOL had arrived and we went from being\n\n818\n00:37:16.640 --> 00:37:16.880\nkind of\n\n819\n00:37:16.880 --> 00:37:21.600\nyou know irrelevant to being central yeah and you were right there at the\n\n820\n00:37:21.600 --> 00:37:22.240\nbeginning you saw\n\n821\n00:37:22.240 --> 00:37:25.690\nthis massive growth and here we are today you know people are using the\n\n822\n00:37:25.690 --> 00:37:27.040\ninternet all the time\n\n823\n00:37:27.040 --> 00:37:32.410\nso much so that the internet is being criticized in the sense that you know\n\n824\n00:37:32.410 --> 00:37:33.440\npeople are spending\n\n825\n00:37:33.440 --> 00:37:38.540\ntoo much time on the internet how do you what's your what's your response to\n\n826\n00:37:38.540 --> 00:37:39.600\nthat that's that\n\n827\n00:37:39.600 --> 00:37:44.070\nargument I understand that and there are with I've seen this with really every\n\n828\n00:37:44.070 --> 00:37:45.200\nnew innovation\n\n829\n00:37:45.200 --> 00:37:49.100\ncertainly every technology there's there's always a bunch of positives that\n\n830\n00:37:49.100 --> 00:37:50.080\ncome with it but also\n\n831\n00:37:50.080 --> 00:37:53.720\nsome negatives some unintended consequences if you will and in the case of the\n\n832\n00:37:53.720 --> 00:37:54.640\ninternet one of them\n\n833\n00:37:54.640 --> 00:37:57.980\nis how much time people spent on that but another is the way things like social\n\n834\n00:37:57.980 --> 00:38:00.080\nmedia have developed\n\n835\n00:38:00.080 --> 00:38:04.440\nand and one of the things I thought was super powerful I mentioned it before\n\n836\n00:38:04.440 --> 00:38:05.360\nwas the idea of\n\n837\n00:38:05.360 --> 00:38:08.960\nleveling the playing field so there could be more voices but we now have an\n\n838\n00:38:08.960 --> 00:38:09.680\nenvironment where there's\n\n839\n00:38:09.680 --> 00:38:13.740\nso many voices and sometimes some of them are accurate but others are not\n\n840\n00:38:13.740 --> 00:38:14.960\naccurate and people\n\n841\n00:38:14.960 --> 00:38:19.040\nare getting news from lots of different sources and that's creating some some\n\n842\n00:38:19.040 --> 00:38:20.560\nchallenges in our\n\n843\n00:38:20.560 --> 00:38:24.640\nsociety and one of the things I hope would happen which was if you have access\n\n844\n00:38:24.640 --> 00:38:25.680\nto all these voices\n\n845\n00:38:25.680 --> 00:38:29.860\nyou'd have more of a sense of both sides of the argument you know what turns\n\n846\n00:38:29.860 --> 00:38:30.640\nout not just with\n\n847\n00:38:30.640 --> 00:38:34.850\nthe internet but cable television other kind of thing people tend to you know\n\n848\n00:38:34.850 --> 00:38:35.760\nkind of listen to\n\n849\n00:38:35.760 --> 00:38:38.900\nthe people that are saying the things they like to hear and not listening to\n\n850\n00:38:38.900 --> 00:38:39.680\npeople that have\n\n851\n00:38:39.680 --> 00:38:44.210\nopposing viewpoints so it's become much more of a dynamic on on a really both\n\n852\n00:38:44.210 --> 00:38:45.280\nsides of people kind\n\n853\n00:38:45.280 --> 00:38:48.780\nof living in their own what some people call filter bubbles so that's been\n\n854\n00:38:48.780 --> 00:38:50.160\nanother aspect of it that's\n\n855\n00:38:50.160 --> 00:38:54.420\nbeen you know disappointing overall I think that obviously it's had a profound\n\n856\n00:38:54.420 --> 00:38:55.360\nimpact on\n\n857\n00:38:55.360 --> 00:38:58.700\nsociety it's opened up opportunities for lots of different things it's now\n\n858\n00:38:58.700 --> 00:39:00.080\nreally starting to\n\n859\n00:39:00.080 --> 00:39:03.830\nyou know revolutionize in pretty fundamental ways all kinds of things that\n\n860\n00:39:03.830 --> 00:39:04.720\nmaybe we didn't think\n\n861\n00:39:04.720 --> 00:39:07.780\nwe're going to we're going to change healthcare for example I can improve\n\n862\n00:39:07.780 --> 00:39:08.880\ndramatically I think we\n\n863\n00:39:08.880 --> 00:39:13.440\nwere on a path to you know much more precise medicine you know better outcomes\n\n864\n00:39:13.440 --> 00:39:15.200\nbetter convenience\n\n865\n00:39:15.200 --> 00:39:19.260\nyou know lower costs a bunch of things are possible enabled by technologies\n\n866\n00:39:19.260 --> 00:39:20.080\nlike the internet as\n\n867\n00:39:20.080 --> 00:39:23.080\nwell as other things like AI and other other other technologies so\n\n868\n00:39:23.080 --> 00:39:24.400\noverwhelmingly it's a\n\n869\n00:39:24.400 --> 00:39:27.190\nmight be a positive story but I certainly understand there are a lot of\n\n870\n00:39:27.190 --> 00:39:28.320\nnegatives as well and the\n\n871\n00:39:28.320 --> 00:39:31.210\nchallenge with every new technology and we're dealing with this as a society\n\n872\n00:39:31.210 --> 00:39:32.880\nnow with AI is how do we\n\n873\n00:39:32.880 --> 00:39:37.310\nmaximize the benefits while also minimizing trying to hedge reduce some of the\n\n874\n00:39:37.310 --> 00:39:38.320\npotential risks\n\n875\n00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:43.950\nwith the Stanley Cup finals now underway between the Panthers and the Oilers it\n\n876\n00:39:43.950 --> 00:39:44.720\n's a great time to\n\n877\n00:39:44.720 --> 00:39:50.480\nrevisit one of my earliest episodes with Hall of Fame legend the captain Mark\n\n878\n00:39:50.480 --> 00:39:51.680\nMessier who many\n\n879\n00:39:51.680 --> 00:39:57.280\nregard is one of the best sports leaders of all time and hey with insights like\n\n880\n00:39:57.280 --> 00:39:58.400\nthis it's easy to\n\n881\n00:39:58.400 --> 00:40:04.870\nsee why I knew that I needed people around to meet to have success and the only\n\n882\n00:40:04.870 --> 00:40:06.400\nway in a team sport\n\n883\n00:40:06.400 --> 00:40:11.690\nto have success is to try to maximize the performance of each and every one of\n\n884\n00:40:11.690 --> 00:40:12.880\nthe people that around\n\n885\n00:40:12.880 --> 00:40:18.610\nyou and make them believe that their contributions are absolutely necessary for\n\n886\n00:40:18.610 --> 00:40:21.120\nany team success and\n\n887\n00:40:21.120 --> 00:40:26.000\nand so that's I think that's one element the other element for me would be that\n\n888\n00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:26.160\nyou got\n\n889\n00:40:26.160 --> 00:40:31.180\nestablished relationships that go further than just the game itself which takes\n\n890\n00:40:31.180 --> 00:40:32.000\ntime and it's\n\n891\n00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:36.830\nharder and harder and harder and our world where players change teams more\n\n892\n00:40:36.830 --> 00:40:37.840\nrapidly than they used\n\n893\n00:40:37.840 --> 00:40:42.250\nto be but as a leader I think you have to be you know very very conscious of\n\n894\n00:40:42.250 --> 00:40:43.120\nthe fact that\n\n895\n00:40:43.120 --> 00:40:47.760\nin order to give anybody well John you know well first of all Abe Lincoln said\n\n896\n00:40:47.760 --> 00:40:48.240\nno man can\n\n897\n00:40:48.240 --> 00:40:53.600\ngovern other without his consent and the great coach John wouldn't used to say\n\n898\n00:40:53.600 --> 00:40:54.640\ngive a good coaching\n\n899\n00:40:54.640 --> 00:40:58.740\nas being able to give correction without resentment and so if you really think\n\n900\n00:40:58.740 --> 00:40:59.680\nof those two quotes\n\n901\n00:40:59.680 --> 00:41:04.090\nwhich I kind of really are the pillars of my of my beliefs and leadership is\n\n902\n00:41:04.090 --> 00:41:05.040\nthat in order to\n\n903\n00:41:05.040 --> 00:41:09.110\nlead someone they have to give you their permission and that permission has to\n\n904\n00:41:09.110 --> 00:41:10.080\nbe earned and I think\n\n905\n00:41:10.080 --> 00:41:12.880\nyou earn it through developing your relationships so you can tell them the\n\n906\n00:41:12.880 --> 00:41:13.760\ntruth and they don't\n\n907\n00:41:14.400 --> 00:41:18.320\ntake it take it personally and so then you just start to foster those\n\n908\n00:41:18.320 --> 00:41:19.600\nrelationships and the other\n\n909\n00:41:19.600 --> 00:41:23.760\nthing I guess what I would say is that you got to be willing to be completely\n\n910\n00:41:23.760 --> 00:41:26.400\nopen completely\n\n911\n00:41:26.400 --> 00:41:31.190\ntransparent and who you are and what you stand for and your consistency and\n\n912\n00:41:31.190 --> 00:41:32.320\nyour personality\n\n913\n00:41:32.320 --> 00:41:36.590\nyou don't waver in good times and bad I mean you're completely exposed and\n\n914\n00:41:36.590 --> 00:41:37.520\nvulnerable and you\n\n915\n00:41:37.520 --> 00:41:41.250\ngot to be doing the right things consistently but I think when you do that it\n\n916\n00:41:41.250 --> 00:41:42.240\ngives everybody a\n\n917\n00:41:42.240 --> 00:41:46.360\nsense of calm around you. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with\n\n918\n00:41:46.360 --> 00:41:47.920\nMark episode 13\n\n919\n00:41:47.920 --> 00:41:53.360\nhere on How Leaders Lead. I love to get inside the heads of leaders like\n\n920\n00:41:53.360 --> 00:41:54.480\nyourself and how you\n\n921\n00:41:54.480 --> 00:41:58.560\nmake decisions and you have this enormous success and then you obviously become\n\n922\n00:41:58.560 --> 00:41:59.840\nattractive to other\n\n923\n00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:05.680\nother companies and as I understand it Bill Gates made an offer to buy your\n\n924\n00:42:05.680 --> 00:42:06.480\ncompany\n\n925\n00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:11.640\ntake us through how you made the decision not to do it. Well it was a tough\n\n926\n00:42:11.640 --> 00:42:12.960\ntime this is not too long\n\n927\n00:42:12.960 --> 00:42:17.920\nafter we'd gone public so it was still the mid 1990s maybe 1994 or something\n\n928\n00:42:17.920 --> 00:42:18.480\nlike that\n\n929\n00:42:18.480 --> 00:42:24.100\nand AOL was the leader of the pack but other big companies including Microsoft\n\n930\n00:42:24.100 --> 00:42:24.640\nwere about to\n\n931\n00:42:24.640 --> 00:42:28.560\nenter the market and we knew it'd be pretty tough to compete with Microsoft you\n\n932\n00:42:28.560 --> 00:42:29.520\nknow significant\n\n933\n00:42:29.520 --> 00:42:33.760\ncompanies significant resources you know had you know windows which is sort of\n\n934\n00:42:33.760 --> 00:42:34.640\nthe monopoly\n\n935\n00:42:34.640 --> 00:42:38.170\noperating system at the time so it was sort of daunting that we might compete\n\n936\n00:42:38.170 --> 00:42:39.760\nwith them so when\n\n937\n00:42:39.760 --> 00:42:43.580\nyou know Bill expressed an interest in buying AOL and having able to be part of\n\n938\n00:42:43.580 --> 00:42:44.240\nMicrosoft and\n\n939\n00:42:44.240 --> 00:42:48.560\nhaving it really power the Microsoft's internet strategy it had a lot of appeal\n\n940\n00:42:48.560 --> 00:42:50.560\nbut you know and\n\n941\n00:42:50.560 --> 00:42:54.890\nit was a pretty good price versus it was you know versus what we'd gone public\n\n942\n00:42:54.890 --> 00:42:56.000\nfor but you know I\n\n943\n00:42:56.000 --> 00:42:59.620\nfelt and others on our team felt that it was still kind of the bottom of the\n\n944\n00:42:59.620 --> 00:43:00.720\nfirst inning that you\n\n945\n00:43:00.720 --> 00:43:05.520\nknow we the inning may have taken a long time to play but it was still early in\n\n946\n00:43:05.520 --> 00:43:05.920\nterms of the\n\n947\n00:43:05.920 --> 00:43:10.510\nadoption of the internet and we were just leaving a lot on the table if we sold\n\n948\n00:43:10.510 --> 00:43:11.760\nthe company kind of\n\n949\n00:43:11.760 --> 00:43:16.570\nsold out at this particular price so it was close even with the board it was I\n\n950\n00:43:16.570 --> 00:43:17.600\nprevailed by one\n\n951\n00:43:17.600 --> 00:43:20.780\nvote you know with some people who thought we definitely should sell but but\n\n952\n00:43:20.780 --> 00:43:21.440\nwhile we're had\n\n953\n00:43:21.440 --> 00:43:25.440\ntake the money and run and others said you know that ultimately agree with me\n\n954\n00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:26.400\nthat it was it was\n\n955\n00:43:26.400 --> 00:43:29.330\njust you know premature but it was tough because it wasn't just we're turning\n\n956\n00:43:29.330 --> 00:43:30.320\ndown an offer from\n\n957\n00:43:30.320 --> 00:43:35.200\nMicrosoft that we knew that they were going to then throw the full force of\n\n958\n00:43:35.200 --> 00:43:36.400\nMicrosoft against\n\n959\n00:43:36.400 --> 00:43:40.570\nthis market opportunity and become a very significant threat so and they\n\n960\n00:43:40.570 --> 00:43:42.000\nultimately have crushed us\n\n961\n00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:46.420\nso it was it was you know not just as I said turning down the offer is also\n\n962\n00:43:46.420 --> 00:43:49.120\nthen realizing we were in\n\n963\n00:43:49.120 --> 00:43:52.610\nfor the battle of our lives yeah it took a lot of confidence to to hang in\n\n964\n00:43:52.610 --> 00:43:53.680\nthere and say we could\n\n965\n00:43:53.680 --> 00:43:58.020\nwe could take on a giant like that now in the year 2000 you negotiated the\n\n966\n00:43:58.020 --> 00:43:59.280\nlargest merger and\n\n967\n00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:04.370\nbusiness history at that time you brought AOL together with Time Warner now\n\n968\n00:44:04.370 --> 00:44:05.120\nwhen you look back\n\n969\n00:44:05.120 --> 00:44:08.830\nat that what were the biggest leadership lessons you took away from that\n\n970\n00:44:08.830 --> 00:44:09.520\nexperience\n\n971\n00:44:09.520 --> 00:44:13.520\na lot of it is things you focus on it you know really around culture that we\n\n972\n00:44:13.520 --> 00:44:14.000\nknew there were\n\n973\n00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:17.160\ntwo different companies with two different histories AOL was a young relatively\n\n974\n00:44:17.160 --> 00:44:18.320\nyoung company focused\n\n975\n00:44:18.320 --> 00:44:23.520\njust on the internet Time Warner it was a mix of companies that had been built\n\n976\n00:44:23.520 --> 00:44:25.440\nby acquisition of\n\n977\n00:44:25.440 --> 00:44:29.490\nWarner Brothers studios and you know Ted Turner's you know kind of Turner\n\n978\n00:44:29.490 --> 00:44:30.800\nBroadcasting and Henry\n\n979\n00:44:30.800 --> 00:44:34.690\nLoose's Time Inc and you know basically all these you know kind of you know\n\n980\n00:44:34.690 --> 00:44:36.000\ncompanies that were at\n\n981\n00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:39.930\none point independent and became part of broader media conglomerate so we knew\n\n982\n00:44:39.930 --> 00:44:41.120\nit would be complicated\n\n983\n00:44:41.120 --> 00:44:44.170\nthey had different different cultures different dynamics but we just believed I\n\n984\n00:44:44.170 --> 00:44:44.960\nbelieve at least\n\n985\n00:44:44.960 --> 00:44:49.090\nthat the power of the internet would force them all to be more digital first\n\n986\n00:44:49.090 --> 00:44:50.400\nand that the digital\n\n987\n00:44:50.400 --> 00:44:54.700\nplatform the internet platform could really be a unifying force that would\n\n988\n00:44:54.700 --> 00:44:56.000\nresult in them focusing\n\n989\n00:44:56.000 --> 00:44:59.390\non the digital opportunities more as an opportunity and less as a threat\n\n990\n00:44:59.390 --> 00:45:00.800\nbecause you know once you\n\n991\n00:45:00.800 --> 00:45:04.820\nin big companies people are often focused on minimizing risk you know as\n\n992\n00:45:04.820 --> 00:45:06.320\nopposed to maximizing\n\n993\n00:45:06.320 --> 00:45:09.440\nopportunity so that was the hope and that was the expectation going in that\n\n994\n00:45:09.440 --> 00:45:10.400\njust didn't happen\n\n995\n00:45:10.400 --> 00:45:13.100\nthat people were we're focused on their own things we're a little bit\n\n996\n00:45:13.100 --> 00:45:15.120\nthreatened by these new technologies\n\n997\n00:45:15.120 --> 00:45:19.760\nnew business models you know instead of embracing it they kind of generally ran\n\n998\n00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:21.280\nfrom it also the\n\n999\n00:45:21.280 --> 00:45:26.400\nmarket reset we went from the dot com boom in the late 90s when internet stocks\n\n1000\n00:45:26.400 --> 00:45:27.280\nwere going like\n\n1001\n00:45:27.280 --> 00:45:33.050\ncrazy to sort of a bust and violations you know sunk and stock options for\n\n1002\n00:45:33.050 --> 00:45:34.400\nemployees you know\n\n1003\n00:45:34.400 --> 00:45:37.470\nobviously were worth a lot less that led to a lot of you know frustration as\n\n1004\n00:45:37.470 --> 00:45:38.800\nwell but at the core\n\n1005\n00:45:38.800 --> 00:45:43.400\nthe lesson is it really is about people you know the the strategy we laid out\n\n1006\n00:45:43.400 --> 00:45:44.560\n25 years ago is\n\n1007\n00:45:44.560 --> 00:45:48.320\nbasically what's happened today unfortunately you know one time Warner didn't\n\n1008\n00:45:48.320 --> 00:45:49.360\ncapitalize on that\n\n1009\n00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:54.170\nother companies Google and Facebook and Amazon and you know Apple and and many\n\n1010\n00:45:54.170 --> 00:45:54.960\nothers have\n\n1011\n00:45:54.960 --> 00:45:59.050\ncapitalized on it it wasn't because we didn't know where the world was going we\n\n1012\n00:45:59.050 --> 00:45:59.760\nkind of did it\n\n1013\n00:45:59.760 --> 00:46:03.710\nwasn't because we didn't lay out a strategy to head in that direction we kind\n\n1014\n00:46:03.710 --> 00:46:04.400\nof did it was\n\n1015\n00:46:04.400 --> 00:46:07.660\nbecause we didn't get organized and have the right people focused on the right\n\n1016\n00:46:07.660 --> 00:46:08.560\npriorities working\n\n1017\n00:46:08.560 --> 00:46:13.280\ntogether in the right way and as a result it would end up being a failed merger\n\n1018\n00:46:13.280 --> 00:46:13.840\nso it's\n\n1019\n00:46:13.840 --> 00:46:19.120\nreminded by of the quote I think it was a Thomas Edison quote a century ago\n\n1020\n00:46:19.120 --> 00:46:20.560\nvision without execution\n\n1021\n00:46:20.560 --> 00:46:24.140\nas hallucination and when I think of that merger that's what I think about I\n\n1022\n00:46:24.140 --> 00:46:25.280\nthink the vision was\n\n1023\n00:46:25.280 --> 00:46:30.250\ncompelling the execution was terrible and as a result that ended up being a you\n\n1024\n00:46:30.250 --> 00:46:31.600\nknow a real debacle\n\n1025\n00:46:31.600 --> 00:46:34.800\nis there anything you would have done differently as a leader to get that\n\n1026\n00:46:34.800 --> 00:46:36.240\nexecution up front in the\n\n1027\n00:46:36.240 --> 00:46:40.080\nin it or is this I've already obviously thought about it yeah I did think\n\n1028\n00:46:40.080 --> 00:46:40.960\nstrategically it was\n\n1029\n00:46:40.960 --> 00:46:45.880\nan important deal we considered other potential acquisitions because our stock\n\n1030\n00:46:45.880 --> 00:46:46.800\nhad become quite\n\n1031\n00:46:46.800 --> 00:46:51.680\nvaluable there were some that would be easier to execute but we really believe\n\n1032\n00:46:51.680 --> 00:46:52.400\nwe needed to\n\n1033\n00:46:52.400 --> 00:46:55.790\npass the broadband that time Warner provided it would at all in time Warner\n\n1034\n00:46:55.790 --> 00:46:56.560\ncable which is the\n\n1035\n00:46:56.560 --> 00:47:00.100\nlargest broadband provider and that was sort of we didn't have a yet to bet we\n\n1036\n00:47:00.100 --> 00:47:00.800\n're the leader in\n\n1037\n00:47:00.800 --> 00:47:04.320\nnarrow ban we didn't have a path abroad ban so we really needed that so I don't\n\n1038\n00:47:04.320 --> 00:47:05.040\nreally in retrospect\n\n1039\n00:47:05.040 --> 00:47:09.850\nthink that the decision was was was flawed it was more the execution and as\n\n1040\n00:47:09.850 --> 00:47:10.960\npart of the deal the\n\n1041\n00:47:10.960 --> 00:47:14.840\nproperty even the first call I made when I when I suggested to the CEO then\n\n1042\n00:47:14.840 --> 00:47:15.920\nJerry Levin that\n\n1043\n00:47:15.920 --> 00:47:19.920\nthat we consider merging our companies I said you in the first minute and I'll\n\n1044\n00:47:19.920 --> 00:47:21.200\nstep aside a CEO\n\n1045\n00:47:21.200 --> 00:47:24.950\nyou can run the combined company I believe so much in this idea that I'll let\n\n1046\n00:47:24.950 --> 00:47:26.000\nyou run the combined\n\n1047\n00:47:26.000 --> 00:47:29.890\ncompany so I think it's as I think back it was we were a little bit ahead of\n\n1048\n00:47:29.890 --> 00:47:30.800\nthe game you know\n\n1049\n00:47:30.800 --> 00:47:34.670\nit's somebody took some of these things a little while to bake in the oven if\n\n1050\n00:47:34.670 --> 00:47:35.200\nyou will\n\n1051\n00:47:35.200 --> 00:47:39.250\nand we didn't really get things right in terms of creating the right team\n\n1052\n00:47:39.250 --> 00:47:40.240\ndynamic creating the\n\n1053\n00:47:40.240 --> 00:47:43.990\nright you know culture around collaboration and obviously it was a big\n\n1054\n00:47:43.990 --> 00:47:45.440\ndisappointment I think I've\n\n1055\n00:47:45.440 --> 00:47:48.180\nbeen able to take some of those lessons into some of the work whether it be\n\n1056\n00:47:48.180 --> 00:47:49.360\nworking with entrepreneurs\n\n1057\n00:47:49.360 --> 00:47:52.740\nor even some of the work I've done on the policy front I think I'm probably a\n\n1058\n00:47:52.740 --> 00:47:53.600\nlittle bit more\n\n1059\n00:47:53.600 --> 00:47:57.440\nsympathetic a little bit more empathetic you know a little bit more emotional\n\n1060\n00:47:57.440 --> 00:47:58.240\nintelligence if you\n\n1061\n00:47:58.240 --> 00:48:02.560\nwill trying to put myself and somebody else's issues so it was a hard lesson to\n\n1062\n00:48:02.560 --> 00:48:03.680\nlearn but hopefully\n\n1063\n00:48:03.680 --> 00:48:07.520\nsome of the things I've done in the last couple of decades have benefited from\n\n1064\n00:48:07.520 --> 00:48:08.800\nthat the challenges\n\n1065\n00:48:08.800 --> 00:48:12.210\nI had back then oh absolutely you've built a hell of a business and you've\n\n1066\n00:48:12.210 --> 00:48:13.040\ncreated lots of\n\n1067\n00:48:13.040 --> 00:48:17.750\nbusinesses in our country they're continuing to improve the world just like AOL\n\n1068\n00:48:17.750 --> 00:48:18.960\ndid and you know\n\n1069\n00:48:18.960 --> 00:48:24.400\nyou know having exposure to so many different businesses what have you learned\n\n1070\n00:48:24.400 --> 00:48:25.280\nit's the most\n\n1071\n00:48:25.280 --> 00:48:29.390\nare the are the most important things a company should have as a part of its\n\n1072\n00:48:29.390 --> 00:48:30.000\nculture\n\n1073\n00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:33.120\nwell I'll go back to my understanding the collaboration you need a team that\n\n1074\n00:48:33.120 --> 00:48:34.000\nhas diverse\n\n1075\n00:48:34.000 --> 00:48:38.000\nperspectives and skills because that's you know required to embrace these\n\n1076\n00:48:38.000 --> 00:48:38.960\nopportunities in a big\n\n1077\n00:48:38.960 --> 00:48:43.690\nway but that works together in a seamless way as a team and so getting that as\n\n1078\n00:48:43.690 --> 00:48:45.120\nyou well know you know\n\n1079\n00:48:45.120 --> 00:48:50.600\nkind of right is tricky you also have to couple with that a passion around the\n\n1080\n00:48:50.600 --> 00:48:52.000\nidea and a willingness\n\n1081\n00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:57.120\nto fight on and persevere the persistence aspect is really really important\n\n1082\n00:48:57.120 --> 00:48:58.240\nalmost every company\n\n1083\n00:48:58.240 --> 00:49:02.870\nthere's a few overnight successes but very very few most of them are you know a\n\n1084\n00:49:02.870 --> 00:49:04.000\nstruggle and a\n\n1085\n00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:06.960\nslog and there are times where it doesn't look like it's even going to be\n\n1086\n00:49:06.960 --> 00:49:08.400\nsuccessful and just being\n\n1087\n00:49:08.400 --> 00:49:12.490\nable to punch through that power through that stick with it I think is\n\n1088\n00:49:12.490 --> 00:49:13.680\nincredibly important\n\n1089\n00:49:13.680 --> 00:49:18.400\notherwise people do tend to you know quit when the you know times get tough and\n\n1090\n00:49:18.400 --> 00:49:19.760\nyou know miss out on\n\n1091\n00:49:19.760 --> 00:49:23.710\nthe opportunity if they if they stuck with it a little bit you know this has\n\n1092\n00:49:23.710 --> 00:49:24.720\nbeen so much fun\n\n1093\n00:49:24.720 --> 00:49:28.360\nSteve and I want to have a little bit more with you here with my lightning\n\n1094\n00:49:28.360 --> 00:49:29.280\nround of questions\n\n1095\n00:49:29.280 --> 00:49:35.140\nare you ready for this sure okay the three words that best describe you curious\n\n1096\n00:49:35.140 --> 00:49:35.840\nbuilder\n\n1097\n00:49:35.840 --> 00:49:39.930\npersistent although some would call that stubborn okay if you can like\n\n1098\n00:49:39.930 --> 00:49:41.760\npersistent I like persistent\n\n1099\n00:49:41.760 --> 00:49:46.640\nthe positive way flip that script you know if you could be one person for a day\n\n1100\n00:49:46.640 --> 00:49:47.760\nbeside yourself\n\n1101\n00:49:47.760 --> 00:49:50.960\nwho would it be I guess I could just do it for one day I mean like President\n\n1102\n00:49:50.960 --> 00:49:51.840\nUnited States would be\n\n1103\n00:49:51.840 --> 00:49:55.490\ngood right could you know talk about entrepreneurship and innovation issue some\n\n1104\n00:49:55.490 --> 00:49:56.400\nexecutive orders\n\n1105\n00:49:56.400 --> 00:50:00.110\nhave been to retire that that evening that wouldn't be bad the one day\n\n1106\n00:50:00.110 --> 00:50:02.880\npresident what's your biggest\n\n1107\n00:50:02.880 --> 00:50:08.390\npet peeve probably arrogance what's the best part about life in an RV which I\n\n1108\n00:50:08.390 --> 00:50:09.600\nunderstand you enjoy\n\n1109\n00:50:09.600 --> 00:50:13.040\nthe simplicity of my wife and I just enjoy kind of traveling along the country\n\n1110\n00:50:13.040 --> 00:50:14.000\njust the two of us\n\n1111\n00:50:14.000 --> 00:50:17.200\nyou know kind of people don't necessarily know we're gonna go next nobody knows\n\n1112\n00:50:17.200 --> 00:50:17.920\nreally where we\n\n1113\n00:50:17.920 --> 00:50:21.820\nare we end up bumping into people and visiting communities we otherwise wouldn\n\n1114\n00:50:21.820 --> 00:50:22.800\n't have seen so it's\n\n1115\n00:50:22.800 --> 00:50:28.720\nsort of a kind of an unplugged view of of life and you know obviously if had\n\n1116\n00:50:28.720 --> 00:50:29.840\nopportunity to be a\n\n1117\n00:50:29.840 --> 00:50:32.790\nlot of interesting people and do a lot of interesting things and we're grateful\n\n1118\n00:50:32.790 --> 00:50:34.000\nfor that but sometimes\n\n1119\n00:50:34.000 --> 00:50:38.980\nthe simple aspects of life are also great and also allows us to be kind of\n\n1120\n00:50:38.980 --> 00:50:40.160\nreally connected because\n\n1121\n00:50:40.160 --> 00:50:45.230\nit's good it's just the two of us on our on our road trips what's something\n\n1122\n00:50:45.230 --> 00:50:46.720\nabout Hawaii most\n\n1123\n00:50:46.720 --> 00:50:51.360\npeople don't know you know it's a it's a great melting pot of different people\n\n1124\n00:50:51.360 --> 00:50:52.080\ncome from different\n\n1125\n00:50:52.080 --> 00:50:55.910\nplaces and bring different perspectives and it's all always perfect there are\n\n1126\n00:50:55.910 --> 00:50:56.960\nalways challenges\n\n1127\n00:50:56.960 --> 00:51:01.040\nlike with any any particular community I think that probably was an interesting\n\n1128\n00:51:01.040 --> 00:51:04.810\nlesson as well as well maybe being a little disconnected the growing up in\n\n1129\n00:51:04.810 --> 00:51:06.640\nHawaii you know that the\n\n1130\n00:51:06.640 --> 00:51:10.610\nsitcoms on television we'd see a week later because we didn't have satellite\n\n1131\n00:51:10.610 --> 00:51:11.840\nback then so they'd take\n\n1132\n00:51:11.840 --> 00:51:14.940\nthe tapes and put them on a plane and fly them to Hawaii so we watched\n\n1133\n00:51:14.940 --> 00:51:16.240\neverything a week after\n\n1134\n00:51:16.240 --> 00:51:20.210\neverybody else did it what are you in Barack Obama having common well we went\n\n1135\n00:51:20.210 --> 00:51:21.360\nto same high school we\n\n1136\n00:51:21.360 --> 00:51:24.680\nwere at when I was I was a senior when he was a freshman so we didn't know each\n\n1137\n00:51:24.680 --> 00:51:25.600\nother super well\n\n1138\n00:51:25.600 --> 00:51:29.950\nbut we both had that shared experience of being born and raised in in Hawaii\n\n1139\n00:51:29.950 --> 00:51:30.960\nand going to the same\n\n1140\n00:51:30.960 --> 00:51:36.430\nsame school you get two front road tickets to see anything you want where are\n\n1141\n00:51:36.430 --> 00:51:37.520\nyou going and who\n\n1142\n00:51:37.520 --> 00:51:41.670\nare you going to take with you well probably a concert I enjoy sports as well\n\n1143\n00:51:41.670 --> 00:51:42.560\nbut I'm always\n\n1144\n00:51:42.560 --> 00:51:46.790\nloved music and in high school I thought I'd actually be in the music you know\n\n1145\n00:51:46.790 --> 00:51:48.080\nbusiness so\n\n1146\n00:51:48.080 --> 00:51:51.530\nI have to decide which concert would it be we we've had seen a lot of concerts\n\n1147\n00:51:51.530 --> 00:51:52.400\nover the years so I\n\n1148\n00:51:52.400 --> 00:51:55.170\nhave to figure out who would be the one we haven't seen yet and I would go with\n\n1149\n00:51:55.170 --> 00:51:56.400\nmy wife Jean what's\n\n1150\n00:51:56.400 --> 00:52:01.150\nthe one thing you do just for you walking I tend to enjoy disconnecting a\n\n1151\n00:52:01.150 --> 00:52:02.560\nlittle bit so just when I\n\n1152\n00:52:02.560 --> 00:52:06.760\nwhen I'm just by myself and kind of am able to you know collect my thoughts\n\n1153\n00:52:06.760 --> 00:52:07.760\nmaybe sometimes\n\n1154\n00:52:07.760 --> 00:52:11.380\nlisten to some music or listen to a podcast or something but but it's you know\n\n1155\n00:52:11.380 --> 00:52:12.320\nit's more of a\n\n1156\n00:52:12.320 --> 00:52:17.680\nkind of quiet time me time besides your family what's your most prized position\n\n1157\n00:52:17.680 --> 00:52:18.160\nI'm not sure I\n\n1158\n00:52:18.160 --> 00:52:22.040\nhave one I would say it's you know the relationships to people it's certainly\n\n1159\n00:52:22.040 --> 00:52:23.120\nmy family I don't think\n\n1160\n00:52:23.120 --> 00:52:28.700\nof anything that I own that I like you know couldn't live without if I turned\n\n1161\n00:52:28.700 --> 00:52:30.000\non the radio what would\n\n1162\n00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:36.200\nI hear in your car depends on my mood probably more more rock and rolling else\n\n1163\n00:52:36.200 --> 00:52:37.520\nbut I like different\n\n1164\n00:52:37.520 --> 00:52:41.440\nyou John Rose I love some of the recommendation engines like Spotify radio\n\n1165\n00:52:41.440 --> 00:52:42.560\nwhere you're playing\n\n1166\n00:52:42.560 --> 00:52:46.700\none song and you ask them to create essentially a station with similar songs so\n\n1167\n00:52:46.700 --> 00:52:47.680\nI've learned a lot\n\n1168\n00:52:47.680 --> 00:52:52.240\nabout new artists that way I basically say well that sounds pretty good who is\n\n1169\n00:52:52.240 --> 00:52:53.440\nthat and end up\n\n1170\n00:52:53.440 --> 00:52:56.290\nlistening to more of the music sometimes going to one of their concerts is a\n\n1171\n00:52:56.290 --> 00:52:57.280\ngood way to you know\n\n1172\n00:52:57.280 --> 00:53:01.000\nexplore what's something about you a few people would know probably that I\n\n1173\n00:53:01.000 --> 00:53:02.000\nworked for pizza had\n\n1174\n00:53:02.000 --> 00:53:06.600\nwas a director to pizza development that's the best that has the best title I\n\n1175\n00:53:06.600 --> 00:53:07.680\never had there you\n\n1176\n00:53:07.680 --> 00:53:12.650\ngo what's one of your daily rituals something that you never miss it's probably\n\n1177\n00:53:12.650 --> 00:53:13.680\nthe walking you know\n\n1178\n00:53:13.680 --> 00:53:16.900\nthat I try to think there's a lot of things I do every day that are pretty you\n\n1179\n00:53:16.900 --> 00:53:17.760\nknow pretty consistent\n\n1180\n00:53:17.760 --> 00:53:22.330\nthat but I would say that would be probably probably one of them I also tend to\n\n1181\n00:53:22.330 --> 00:53:23.120\nyou know we back to\n\n1182\n00:53:23.120 --> 00:53:27.650\ncompany in your world after after being at working at pizza hut we back to a\n\n1183\n00:53:27.650 --> 00:53:29.040\ncouple of companies\n\n1184\n00:53:29.040 --> 00:53:33.200\nSweet Green and Kava that are both in the fast casual restaurant space both now\n\n1185\n00:53:33.200 --> 00:53:33.760\nit's successful\n\n1186\n00:53:33.760 --> 00:53:39.160\npublic companies and so I have a almost every single day a Sweet Green you know\n\n1187\n00:53:39.160 --> 00:53:40.560\nlunch occasionally\n\n1188\n00:53:40.560 --> 00:53:44.640\nI supplement it with Kava just to be equal opportunity that'd be another thing\n\n1189\n00:53:44.640 --> 00:53:45.440\nthat people\n\n1190\n00:53:45.440 --> 00:53:49.520\nprobably wouldn't expect great concept you know and you're out of the lightning\n\n1191\n00:53:49.520 --> 00:53:50.400\nround great job\n\n1192\n00:53:50.400 --> 00:53:53.610\nI've got a few more questions here we'll wrap this up and you know I know you\n\n1193\n00:53:53.610 --> 00:53:54.480\n're a humble guy you\n\n1194\n00:53:54.480 --> 00:53:58.790\ndon't really like to talk about yourself but you know I'm curious you know what\n\n1195\n00:53:58.790 --> 00:53:59.920\nwould you say your\n\n1196\n00:53:59.920 --> 00:54:04.480\nyour leadership superpower is I think leaning into the future and having the\n\n1197\n00:54:04.480 --> 00:54:05.440\nconfidence or\n\n1198\n00:54:05.440 --> 00:54:12.880\npersistence to pursue it you know the curiosity observing listening kind of\n\n1199\n00:54:12.880 --> 00:54:13.920\nalmost like a radar\n\n1200\n00:54:13.920 --> 00:54:17.870\nkind of giving you some sense of what might be happening next I spent a lot of\n\n1201\n00:54:17.870 --> 00:54:18.720\ntime thinking\n\n1202\n00:54:18.720 --> 00:54:23.660\nabout that and then you know not just you know think about it or look around\n\n1203\n00:54:23.660 --> 00:54:24.720\ncorners but then do\n\n1204\n00:54:24.720 --> 00:54:27.930\nsomething about it so whether it be starting a company like AOL or backing\n\n1205\n00:54:27.930 --> 00:54:28.720\nentrepreneurs or\n\n1206\n00:54:28.720 --> 00:54:32.880\nstarting you know companies you know helping do what I can to help usher in\n\n1207\n00:54:32.880 --> 00:54:34.080\nthat future and help\n\n1208\n00:54:34.080 --> 00:54:40.180\nthem be successful and you have an incredible life partner with your wife Jean\n\n1209\n00:54:40.180 --> 00:54:40.320\nyou know\n\n1210\n00:54:40.320 --> 00:54:45.200\nwhat makes that that that relationship work I mean how do you how do you lead\n\n1211\n00:54:45.200 --> 00:54:45.920\nat home\n\n1212\n00:54:45.920 --> 00:54:48.800\nwell she leads it home so that's my starters and knowing your\n\n1213\n00:54:48.800 --> 00:54:53.840\nanswer no knowing your place and now we've worked together now for three\n\n1214\n00:54:53.840 --> 00:54:55.280\ndecades and it's been a\n\n1215\n00:54:55.280 --> 00:54:59.680\nobviously a great kind of relationship and partnership and you know we've kind\n\n1216\n00:54:59.680 --> 00:55:01.040\nof see\n\n1217\n00:55:01.040 --> 00:55:04.400\nsee things eye to eye on most issues at the same time I think one thing that's\n\n1218\n00:55:04.400 --> 00:55:05.120\nbeen helpful is we\n\n1219\n00:55:05.120 --> 00:55:09.760\nhave complementary strengths and skill sets she's kind of taking the lead on\n\n1220\n00:55:09.760 --> 00:55:11.600\nthe giving side of our\n\n1221\n00:55:11.600 --> 00:55:15.670\nlives for the you know past you know several decades and I continue to focus on\n\n1222\n00:55:15.670 --> 00:55:16.560\nwhere I probably\n\n1223\n00:55:16.560 --> 00:55:20.640\ncan be most effective which is more on the investment backing entrepreneur side\n\n1224\n00:55:20.640 --> 00:55:21.200\nof things so\n\n1225\n00:55:21.200 --> 00:55:25.330\nunderstanding having shared a shared vision kind of having alignment but at the\n\n1226\n00:55:25.330 --> 00:55:26.880\nsame timing having\n\n1227\n00:55:26.880 --> 00:55:31.040\nyour own lanes if you will I think have been been helpful what do you see as\n\n1228\n00:55:31.040 --> 00:55:32.400\nyour unfinished business\n\n1229\n00:55:32.400 --> 00:55:36.240\nSteve um still you know more work to do on some of the things we're currently\n\n1230\n00:55:36.240 --> 00:55:36.800\nyou know kind of\n\n1231\n00:55:36.800 --> 00:55:40.940\nworking on I'm also spending a lot of time outside of the tech entrepreneurship\n\n1232\n00:55:40.940 --> 00:55:41.440\nside on\n\n1233\n00:55:41.440 --> 00:55:47.020\non building physical communities I've done a lot of work on the early stage of\n\n1234\n00:55:47.020 --> 00:55:47.920\nthe internet building\n\n1235\n00:55:47.920 --> 00:55:51.190\ndigital communities and then building entrepreneurial communities now in both\n\n1236\n00:55:51.190 --> 00:55:52.240\nHawaii and Costa Rica\n\n1237\n00:55:52.240 --> 00:55:56.350\nother places building some you know different things just open a resort and\n\n1238\n00:55:56.350 --> 00:55:57.680\nCosta Rica for example\n\n1239\n00:55:57.680 --> 00:56:02.170\nthat's anchored by a 600 acre peninsula anchored by a Waldorf Astoria trying to\n\n1240\n00:56:02.170 --> 00:56:03.360\nmaster plan that\n\n1241\n00:56:03.360 --> 00:56:06.800\nkind of have a canvas how do we build a terrific community there I've done a\n\n1242\n00:56:06.800 --> 00:56:07.840\nlot of things over\n\n1243\n00:56:07.840 --> 00:56:12.560\nthe years in Hawaii built thousands of homes for affordable housing as well as\n\n1244\n00:56:12.560 --> 00:56:14.000\nsome resorts like\n\n1245\n00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:17.490\nCoppaloa on the Maui side so there's something about that I'm finding\n\n1246\n00:56:17.490 --> 00:56:20.080\ninteresting it's sort of a new\n\n1247\n00:56:20.080 --> 00:56:24.530\na new chapter if you will but after being more the digital guy having something\n\n1248\n00:56:24.530 --> 00:56:24.880\nthat's a little\n\n1249\n00:56:24.880 --> 00:56:28.270\nbit more physical a little bit more tangible I think makes sense and the last\n\n1250\n00:56:28.270 --> 00:56:29.200\nthing that I feel\n\n1251\n00:56:29.200 --> 00:56:32.270\nfeel like is a unfinished business I'm not sure it's something I'm really going\n\n1252\n00:56:32.270 --> 00:56:33.200\nto take on but for\n\n1253\n00:56:33.200 --> 00:56:36.910\nfor quite some time 20 30 years I've been quite concerned about the hyper\n\n1254\n00:56:36.910 --> 00:56:38.240\npartisanship in the\n\n1255\n00:56:38.240 --> 00:56:41.440\nin the country and trying to look for ways to bring people together indeed I'm\n\n1256\n00:56:41.440 --> 00:56:42.240\ngoing to a dinner\n\n1257\n00:56:42.240 --> 00:56:46.270\ntonight that on that on that very topic I think it's how do we make sure we\n\n1258\n00:56:46.270 --> 00:56:48.000\nhave a stable democracy\n\n1259\n00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:52.170\nwhich means you know we have to figure out ways to kind of come to come\n\n1260\n00:56:52.170 --> 00:56:54.560\ntogether and focus on\n\n1261\n00:56:54.560 --> 00:56:58.430\non the next 250 years for the country I was the chair of the Smithsonian\n\n1262\n00:56:58.430 --> 00:56:59.840\nInstitution for\n\n1263\n00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:03.650\nfor several years and they've been planning next year which with America turns\n\n1264\n00:57:03.650 --> 00:57:04.800\n250 and I'm hoping\n\n1265\n00:57:04.800 --> 00:57:09.970\nthat 250th celebration is a time to look back at the great progress we made\n\n1266\n00:57:09.970 --> 00:57:11.200\nover the last 250\n\n1267\n00:57:11.200 --> 00:57:16.760\nyears but also kind of set the path you know forged the path for the next 250\n\n1268\n00:57:16.760 --> 00:57:18.000\nyears and trying to\n\n1269\n00:57:18.000 --> 00:57:21.420\nmake sure that we're doing everything we can to position our country both\n\n1270\n00:57:21.420 --> 00:57:22.880\nexternally and internally\n\n1271\n00:57:22.880 --> 00:57:27.450\nto do that successfully I think is quite important you said earlier that you'd\n\n1272\n00:57:27.450 --> 00:57:28.080\nyou'd like to be\n\n1273\n00:57:28.080 --> 00:57:32.640\npresident for a day because you could get to issue those executive orders\n\n1274\n00:57:32.640 --> 00:57:33.520\nrunning for high\n\n1275\n00:57:33.520 --> 00:57:37.220\noffice like that do you have any interest in doing that someday I consider that\n\n1276\n00:57:37.220 --> 00:57:38.640\neven 20 2030 years\n\n1277\n00:57:38.640 --> 00:57:43.940\nago and but no I don't think it's my my strength I think my there's other ways\n\n1278\n00:57:43.940 --> 00:57:44.720\nI can contribute\n\n1279\n00:57:44.720 --> 00:57:50.010\nso I think I'm I'm playing to my my strengths and I also recognize at this\n\n1280\n00:57:50.010 --> 00:57:51.760\npoint in my life I\n\n1281\n00:57:51.760 --> 00:57:56.060\nyou know we have five kids we know up five grandchildren up from zero five\n\n1282\n00:57:56.060 --> 00:57:57.040\nyears ago with\n\n1283\n00:57:57.040 --> 00:58:00.890\nwith that we think more to come and and having the time to focus on that side\n\n1284\n00:58:00.890 --> 00:58:01.600\nof my life is\n\n1285\n00:58:01.600 --> 00:58:05.010\nimportant as well so I'll do what I can on these topics to try to be\n\n1286\n00:58:05.010 --> 00:58:06.640\nconstructive but no I have no\n\n1287\n00:58:06.640 --> 00:58:11.600\nplans to to jump into anything in a more more fundamental way indeed I kind of\n\n1288\n00:58:11.600 --> 00:58:12.400\ntake my step back\n\n1289\n00:58:12.400 --> 00:58:16.270\nsometimes and say you know should I be spending time on this or should I be rep\n\n1290\n00:58:16.270 --> 00:58:17.520\nrioritizing my life\n\n1291\n00:58:17.520 --> 00:58:21.170\ntowards other things so why do I always need another mountain to climb maybe it\n\n1292\n00:58:21.170 --> 00:58:21.680\n's time to\n\n1293\n00:58:21.680 --> 00:58:27.080\nto stay at the base camp but but uh I'll keep struggling all right last\n\n1294\n00:58:27.080 --> 00:58:28.080\nquestion what's one\n\n1295\n00:58:28.080 --> 00:58:31.580\npiece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader it's all\n\n1296\n00:58:31.580 --> 00:58:32.800\nabout people you\n\n1297\n00:58:32.800 --> 00:58:35.770\nknow it's not about you it's about them and so you're only going to be as\n\n1298\n00:58:35.770 --> 00:58:36.560\nsuccessful as the\n\n1299\n00:58:36.560 --> 00:58:40.160\nas the people you attract you know Steve it's been a lot of fun to have this\n\n1300\n00:58:40.160 --> 00:58:41.360\nconversation with you\n\n1301\n00:58:41.360 --> 00:58:46.490\nand you know I want to congratulate you on on on having two characteristics\n\n1302\n00:58:46.490 --> 00:58:47.840\nthat not everybody has\n\n1303\n00:58:47.840 --> 00:58:52.530\nboth of you are a tremendous dreamer and you're a doer you've been able to\n\n1304\n00:58:52.530 --> 00:58:53.920\ndream and do not many\n\n1305\n00:58:53.920 --> 00:58:57.760\npeople can do that and and I take my hat off to you for everything you've done\n\n1306\n00:58:57.760 --> 00:58:59.360\nfor a country\n\n1307\n00:59:00.160 --> 00:59:04.510\nby changing the world and how you're supporting entrepreneurs today that are\n\n1308\n00:59:04.510 --> 00:59:05.040\ntrying to do the\n\n1309\n00:59:05.040 --> 00:59:08.710\nsame thing that you did you really make any difference and I thank you very\n\n1310\n00:59:08.710 --> 00:59:09.200\nmuch for it\n\n1311\n00:59:09.200 --> 00:59:12.710\nwell thank you very kind and thank you for focusing on leadership I was happy\n\n1312\n00:59:12.710 --> 00:59:13.440\nto be part of this\n\n1313\n00:59:13.440 --> 00:59:16.460\nand I appreciate everything you're doing to try to help you know the next\n\n1314\n00:59:16.460 --> 00:59:18.080\ngenerational leaders lead better\n\n1315\n00:59:18.080 --> 00:59:28.240\nsomewhere between dial-up internet and you've got mail Steve Case built one of\n\n1316\n00:59:28.240 --> 00:59:29.280\nthe biggest business\n\n1317\n00:59:29.280 --> 00:59:34.550\nstories of a generation but it took time more time actually than people realize\n\n1318\n00:59:34.550 --> 00:59:35.840\nand it's a good\n\n1319\n00:59:35.840 --> 00:59:41.340\nreminder success can be slow going which is why I love Steve's calm and steady\n\n1320\n00:59:41.340 --> 00:59:42.880\npersistence it's about\n\n1321\n00:59:42.880 --> 00:59:47.480\nstaying grounded in your purpose staying curious about what's next and\n\n1322\n00:59:47.480 --> 00:59:48.880\nsurrounding yourself with\n\n1323\n00:59:48.880 --> 00:59:53.690\npeople who bring different strengths and perspectives to the table that's how\n\n1324\n00:59:53.690 --> 00:59:54.960\nyou keep going when\n\n1325\n00:59:54.960 --> 00:59:59.750\nprogress feels like waiting through molasses and it's how you build something\n\n1326\n00:59:59.750 --> 01:00:00.800\nextraordinary\n\n1327\n01:00:00.800 --> 01:00:05.360\nso here's something to think about this week what part of your own success is\n\n1328\n01:00:05.360 --> 01:00:06.240\ntaking longer than\n\n1329\n01:00:06.240 --> 01:00:10.800\nyou thought and what keeps you going is it your sense of purpose your team\n\n1330\n01:00:10.800 --> 01:00:13.200\nsomething else entirely\n\n1331\n01:00:13.200 --> 01:00:17.990\nwhatever it is take a moment to connect with it because here's the truth\n\n1332\n01:00:17.990 --> 01:00:19.360\nsuccess takes time\n\n1333\n01:00:19.920 --> 01:00:25.650\nbut if you stay steady focused and fueled by the right mindset I'm telling you\n\n1334\n01:00:25.650 --> 01:00:26.240\nyou'll get there\n\n1335\n01:00:26.240 --> 01:00:30.380\nso do you want to know how leaders lead what we learned today is the great\n\n1336\n01:00:30.380 --> 01:00:31.360\nleaders know that\n\n1337\n01:00:31.360 --> 01:00:36.630\nsuccess takes time coming up next on how leaders lead is Sanjit Biswas the co-\n\n1338\n01:00:36.630 --> 01:00:38.000\nfounder and CEO of\n\n1339\n01:00:38.000 --> 01:00:42.760\nSamsara so be sure to subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast so\n\n1340\n01:00:42.760 --> 01:00:43.840\nyou don't miss it\n\n1341\n01:00:43.840 --> 01:00:48.000\nthanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every\n\n1342\n01:00:48.000 --> 01:00:49.040\nThursday you get to\n\n1343\n01:00:49.040 --> 01:00:53.680\nlisten in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world I make\n\n1344\n01:00:53.680 --> 01:00:54.480\nit a point to give\n\n1345\n01:00:54.480 --> 01:00:58.740\nyou something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so\n\n1346\n01:00:58.740 --> 01:00:59.600\nthat you will become\n\n1347\n01:00:59.600 --> 01:01:01.040\nthe best leader you can be.\n","

Steve Case 0:00

Almost every company, there's a few overnight successes, but very, very few, most of them are a struggle and a slog. And there are times where it doesn't look like it's even going to be successful, and just being able to punch through that power, through that stick with it, I think, is incredibly important.

David Novak 0:22

You everybody loves the success story, but not enough people talk about what it takes to stay in the game long enough to build one. Welcome to how leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader you can be my guest today is Steve Case, the co founder of America Online. These days, he's the chair and CEO of revolution, a firm that backs entrepreneurs from all across the country, including companies like kava and framebridge. Now the internet might feel like the air we breathe today, but in 1985 when Steve co founded AOL, that sure as heck was not the case, Steve and his team had to persist through years of doubts and setbacks and chaos before America really did get online and make AOL the top performing stock of the 90s. So what do you do when progress is slow, like that? In today's episode, you'll see how Steve built the resilience to keep going when success felt like a slog, and how the good news is for us, that same mindset he used to grow his business is one you can learn from too. So let's see how it's done and hear how that iconic You've Got Mail line came to be. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Steve, case,

you know, Steve, I was thinking about, you know, here we are doing this interview right now, completely online from two different locations. I'm in Louisville, Kentucky. You're in Washington, DC, and this is impossible. This isn't possible without all that you built. You know, what's it feel like to have changed the world like you did with American online? Well,

Steve Case 2:14

you're kind to say that, obviously, there's a lot of people, a lot of companies all came together to kind of make the internet part of everyday life, but I'm certainly proud of the role our team played when we got started. To your point, 40 years ago, we started the company in 1985 only 3% of people were online. Those 3% were online an hour a week. Nobody knew what the internet was, nobody cared what the internet was. And even those people who got online were using very, very, very, very slow modems that could barely send texts and let alone sending photos, and certainly couldn't send video. So we have come a long way from nobody being connected and essentially everybody being connected, and most people not believing in the idea of the internet and everybody recognizing it is a pretty fundamental aspect of everyday life. So it's been a remarkable journey. I'm just honored to be have had a seat seat on that bus,

David Novak 3:06

yeah. Well, you certainly did. I think you're at the you're the driver, you know. And I got to ask you, you know, what's the best AOL username you ever had?

Steve Case 3:16

Steve?

David Novak 3:18

And it

Steve Case 3:19

pays to get in early. I got Steve I got Steve C I got Steve Case, and Steve worked pretty well. We only had, like, hundreds, even 1000s of members, but we had millions and 10s of millions of this didn't work so well because people would would end up I also sent a welcome email to every new member of AOL, particularly the early days. They were kind of pioneers, joining us on this journey, joining us on this mission, and we wanted to feel part of the community. And I felt part of my job would not just to be CEO, but almost be mayor of the community, kind of setting the tone. So I would send those out, which is no big deal in the early days, you know, some people would click on reply, but later on, and we were getting 10s of 1000s of emails every day. At one point, you have like 30 people full time who were part of the Steve Case email team. So that's a case of what seemed like a good idea when we were small. Didn't scale so well. What

David Novak 4:14

would be the most embarrassing username you ever had? Or did you have one in that category?

Steve Case 4:19

I couldn't. I had one, but if I partly because I'd have been embarrassed to have it, everybody, everybody on our team would have known about it, therefore wouldn't have been fun.

David Novak 4:29

Well, we're going to talk more about AOL in a bit, but these days, you're partnering with entrepreneurs through your investment firm revolution. Tell us about what's really driving that passion that you have. Well,

Steve Case 4:44

it goes back to, you know, the AOL internet journey, you know, was about a 20 year journey from the time I first, you know, kind of learned about it, time we started the company, time we scaled the company that we merged with, with Time Warner and I stepped aside as CEO, and then a couple later, stepped a. Side as chair. It was about a two decade kind of journey. And when I did step aside as CEO, I was only, like, four years old, 41 something like that. So I was like, Okay, what am I going to do next? I decided what my real passion was was on building things and backing entrepreneurs and assembling teams and climbing mountains that people didn't think were climbable. And so that led to revolution being more of a kind of a venture capital firm, but with a bias towards backing people and ideas that can change the world, and also doing that in areas of people's lives that were important. So attacking some of the biggest industries in the world, healthcare and financial services and things like that. And also doing it from by backing entrepreneurs in places that often feel left out and left behind, so like where you are in Louisville, not just backing people in Silicon Valley or New York City, backing people everywhere. And so that kind of became, sort of the passion it was, partly being able to as venture capitalists get to do, kind of live in the future, get a sense of what's going to happen next, and be part of making it happen by investing in companies and mentoring entrepreneurs and doing what I could to take them to the, you know, the next level, but also with this bias towards kind of leveling the playing field and trying to create more opportunity for more people in more places, which frankly, was the same idea that drove my interest in AOL the internet was like leveling the playing field so everybody had access to these tools, or media would be more distributed, not just a few big TV stations, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's not that surprising, as I've now looked back over the past 40 years, 20 focused more on internet 20 focus more on backing entrepreneurs. That in some ways it's the same idea, kind of backing people, backing ideas, and trying to do it in a way that's a little bit more inclusive of people who otherwise might be left out, left behind. So

David Novak 6:56

you go into different cities, you don't just go into Silicon Valley or New York, or places where you might think, are these hubs, you know, how do you, how do you get the word out that this is this, this is what you're trying to do. Well, early

Steve Case 7:07

on, it was a little more difficult. We when we started this effort. Initially, I started revolution, the venture firm, then started doing some things like bus tours and to visit different different cities. And remember the first one we did over a decade ago, we went to Detroit and Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Nashville, I think, through the first cities now we've gone to 5060, other cities. We've now made over 200 investments in companies located over 100 different cities. So it's been a fairly broad kind of, kind of outreach. In the process, we built a fairly significant network, really, really all across the country. And so we had a team that would kind of advance these cities, find out what's happening in those each of the particular cities, and identify interesting companies that we might want to visit, or people we might want to invite to different events. And we coordinate with the mayor, sometimes, the governor, senators, others, to try to kind of shine a spotlight on what's happening in the city, try to drive more collaboration in the city. So the first few might have been a little more challenging. Over time, we started building some momentum. It got visibility. We then started getting university presidents and mayors writing to us, saying, Come to my city. Come to my city. We want to show you everything that's happening. And so it got a little bit easier as we progressed, but it's really been a gratifying journey to see these cities up close and personal. See essentially most of the country, not by plane but by bus, driving between these different cities, when in these cities, driving around the cities, and really kind of getting a sense of it, and seeing a new sense of, I think, hope and possibility in parts of parts of all, really, all parts of America that don't get much attention. The data you probably know this, but maybe not everybody does that. Over the last decade, about 75% of venture capital has gone to just three states, you know, California, New York and Massachusetts do really well. The other 47 states you know got to struggle. States like Kentucky get less than 1% California alone gets 50% so how do we, the entrepreneurs in places like Kentucky or Ohio or Michigan or many other other states, often feel they kind of have to leave, leave where they are, to go to the coast to have an opportunity, and that, I think that's tragic. We want to make sure people can start and scale anywhere. So that's really driven a lot of this passion. It's not just about backing companies to generate a return on investment. Of course, that's what venture capital is all about. There's this higher calling, if you will, higher purpose around backing entrepreneurs in these what we call rise to the rest cities. You know,

David Novak 9:34

I always say, show me a good leader, and I'll show you good business. And you've been picking leaders for a long time. As you pick companies that you want to invest in. And you obviously think about the entrepreneur, and I'm sure you have a perspective on that. What do you look for in a leader? What do you think makes a great entrepreneur? Well,

Steve Case 9:51

we back at revolution. We have three separate groups, very, very early stage, seed investment group, when you're really just investing in. A very small team, or more, more backing of the idea of venture group, where it's invests in companies that have a little bit more scale. Maybe there's a couple dozen employees at that point, they started to figure out what business they're in and what the business model might look like. We also have a later stage growth team that focuses on companies that really have kind of broken through, but really have, we think significant potential. And the way, one way to think about it, from an investor standpoint, that seed fund generally, is writing $500,000 checks for these companies, the venture fund maybe $5 million checks, and the growth fund maybe $25 million check. So it's scaling. So the way we think about your your question, differs at each stage, because at that earliest stage, you're really betting on that person, and that particular idea, as you head towards more of the growth stage, these really are starting to be real businesses. They might have 1020, $30 million of revenue, and we get convinced that they can be a billion dollar plus of revenue. So those are some of the differences. There are some things that are pretty common, which is, obviously, this is about people, and it's not just about the entrepreneur. It's about the team the entrepreneur is able to assemble. Do they have the right mix of skills, whether they're tackling healthcare or tackling, you know, sports, tech or FinTech or whatever it might be, having the right mix of skill sets that really bring to bear is critically important at every stage. And really having people that are thinking big, you know, we entrepreneurship is hard, you know, startups are hard. Many, many, obviously fail. We really want people that are super passionate about what they're doing, and therefore we'll stick with it when times are tough with my experience with AOL, eventually it broke through, but it really took us a decade before we became kind of an overnight sensation, and we've seen that time and time again with other companies. So having people that are really driven by the pursuit of that idea, that pursuit of that vision, pursuit of that mission, is critically important. And last thing I make is a little bit of humility. You know, confidence in entrepreneurship is critical. You have to really believe. You got to get a lot of other people to believe, to join your team, to invest alongside you, to partner with you, to be your customers. And so you've got to be super confident, but you also have to have a degree of humility, because, you know, these are challenging situations, and you know, nobody knows exactly what's going to happen next. There's a lot of ambiguity. And so have bringing a balance between, you know, being quite confident, but also having a certain understanding that you don't necessarily have all the answers, maybe you don't even have all the questions. And so you're on a on a learning journey. As these things develop, you know, it's always

David Novak 12:44

speaking a journey. It's always fun to really hear about the journey that someone like yourself has taken to get to where you are today. And I, I like to take people way back. Can you share a story from your childhood that really shaped the kind of leader you are today? Sure. Well,

Steve Case 12:58

my I grew up in Hawaii, you know, so, which is kind of interesting, actually, I was born when Hawaii wasn't you Hawaii wasn't yet a state. It became a state on my first birthday, which is kind of, kind of interesting. Both my parents were born and raised in Hawaii. They went to the mainland to get education. My mom in Berkeley, in California. My dad went to Williamson, Massachusetts, and then went to law school in Colorado, and then both moved back to Hawaii. That's when they met, and thankfully they did, because they decided to get married, and they had me and three other siblings. And so that's a little bit of the backstory. The other part, I think it's interesting there is my dad was a lawyer, and he worked for the same firm for 60 years time he got out of law school to the time he retired well into his 80s, worked for the same firm, so there was a modeling of hard work, but also of a certain kind of loyalty to a certain organization. In my case, it was my journey has been all different, because I did in the early days bounce around a little bit. I kind of knew what my destination I thought I knew what my destination was, which I wanted to play a role in building the internet, but I know quite how to get there, so I had to jump around a little bit to finally position myself to do it. And the other aspect I remember growing up is I was always interested in business, starting things. I didn't know what the word entrepreneur meant at the time, but I knew I liked to come up with ideas and turn them into businesses. None of them really amounted to much, but some of the experiences I got at a relatively young age, 810, 12, I think, were super kind of formative, and ultimately led me on this pursuit of entrepreneurship. Curiously,

David Novak 14:32

what was the first idea you had that you tried to make some money on? Well,

Steve Case 14:37

of course, my first idea, like everybody's first idea, is a lemonade stand. I did learn a lesson there, which is, we had a recept lemonade stand. And the first couple of times we did it, it was, it was great, because we basically would get all these ingredients, you know, free from my mom's kitchen, and then go out and make it and sell it and get 100% of the revenue. After, after a couple of times, my parents decided this was not. The right lesson to learn. And they said, Okay, now, now you actually have to pay for, like, the lemons, and pay for the sugar and so forth. And then I realized, oh, it's, you know, it's not 100% margin. There actually is this thing called cost of goods, and business suddenly became much less interesting when I when I the profits diminished when I had to actually pay the real cost. But it was a good lesson in terms of building something, and also a good lesson in terms of learning some of the cost structure. I also sold things like Christmas cards, door to door, cable television, door to door. There I learned that, you know, you know, you have to be get used to a lot of no's. You just keep knocking, and eventually you'll get to a yes. So yeah, those were some of the those early experiences that ended up have, you know, kind of implanting on me. I think some lessons that have been helpful and you

David Novak 15:47

wanted to work your way into building the internet. But one of the, one of the things that you and I have in common is that we both lived in Wichita, Kansas, and we both had roles at Pizza Hut. What's a leadership lesson you you picked up working at a company like pizza

Steve Case 16:02

Well, obviously you got better lessons, because you ended up being, you know, and the CEO of Yum, which is Pizza Hut, and a whole lot of other other other things. But one of the lessons I learned at two things ties in what I said earlier, when I graduated from college in 1980 I actually, by then, kind of knew what I wanted to do this idea. The internet was just beginning, emerging, and I wanted to jump into it. But when I was graduating, there was no internet companies to go to, so I couldn't, like, find a job at an internet company. It was still more of a concept than a reality. And back then, venture capitalists were not backing, you know, 21 year olds with harebrained ideas, so I didn't have the ability to start something. So then I said, Well, what am I going to do? How am I going to get learn some skills, maybe build some a little bit of a track record, some credibility, some momentum that will ultimately enable me to kind of do what I really want to do, which was this internet thing. So the first job I worked for was in Cincinnati, Ohio for Procter and Gamble and their brand management program. And learned a lot there. I was just there a couple of years, but learned but learned a lot about, you know, testing things, and they're, as you know, very diligent about how they come go to market with products, and very thoughtful around using technology. Also learned an important lesson there around succinct communications. Their, you know, their one page memo was every you know, you learn that it takes much more time to write a short memo than it does to write a long memo, and it really forces you to crisp up your thinking, which is, I think served me well. So I did that for a couple of years. And I did work for for about a year for pizza when I was owned by PepsiCo, and I was, you know, kind of moved to Wichita to become the director of pizza development, which seemed like a pretty good title when I was 2324 and a pretty good jump in salary. But the lesson I wanted to learn there, and did learn there, was Procter and Gamble, as you know, is a very centralized, top down company. Pizza was, again, you know, it better than I, but was much more of a bottoms up, franchisee led company, and a lot of the innovations happened at the periphery and either through franchisees, or even part of my job as director of new peace field, and I travel around the country, or something like 50,000 pizzerias. I said, rather than sit here in our test kitchens in Wichita, why don't I hit the hit the road and find out what other people are doing that might lead to some interesting ideas. So that that that was, I think, helpful, both in terms of understanding that ideas can be found anywhere kind of ties in what we're now doing with the with Rise of the rest, as well as a bias towards kind of getting out of the office and hitting the road. Hey,

Koula Callahan 18:33

everyone, it's Kula from how leaders lead. And if you've watched our podcast for any number of episodes, you probably know that a common theme from all of the great leaders we interview is that they are active learners. They have this commitment to continuing to learn and grow so that they don't stay stagnant, and so that they continue to see success in their leadership and in their life. This theme of active learning is so important, and it's what David's latest book, how leaders learn is all about it's all about helping you develop that skill of active learning so that you too can continue to see success in your leadership and in your life. The book is really entertaining. It pulls stories from some of our greatest podcast guests and pairs those stories with insights that you can incorporate into your leadership and into your life right away. Grab how leaders learn on Amazon or wherever books are sold. And I think you're really going to love it. You feel David's personality through the pages and through his storytelling. And it's a really powerful way to level up your leadership.

David Novak 19:31

You know, you end up starting AOL, and it seems so obvious now why it was such a big, big idea, but, you know, take us back to those early days. Give us a little bit of a history lesson on, on, you know, how AOL was born, and how you convinced yourself that it was such a breakthrough idea because you were heading that way it seems, you know, take it. Take us through that.

Steve Case 19:54

Well, the reason I thought it was an interesting idea when I was still in college, this is 7879 1980 I was reading about these experiments that different companies were doing in France, or something called Minitel in the UK, something called press tell these interactive services. There even were some in the United States. And also, while I was in college, read the book The third wave by Alvin top of the futurist, and he basically laid out, you know, what was going to happen in terms of the internet, talking about electronic cottage and different ways people could get information and connect with people and so forth. And I read this, this is definitely going to happen. I want to be part of making it happen. So that idea became something I was pretty passionate about relatively early on the way I got to it was, as I said a little earlier, a little bit circuitous. At first, a little bit of PNG, then a little bit at pizza. And I moved to the Washington, DC area to join a startup that was doing something in this internet space. But a few months after I joined, the company was nearing bankruptcy. They raised a bunch of money. The product was having some some challenges, and so that was a little bit my lesson around entrepreneurship, a little like, welcome to the NFL. It's not so not so easy, and so we struggled for a couple of years just trying to keep that company alive. But thankfully, two of the people I met there, Jim Kimsey and Mark serif, ended up being my co founders of America Online AOL in 1985 so it was a, you know, a strange journey. My parents were a little worried about my, my trajectory, having again, my dad, having been at one place for six years, I was at P and G for two years, pizza for one year. Then, you know, at this new startup for about a year before it stumbled, and then was starting something else. So I think they were, you know, you know, I know they were quite concerned about, you know, my trajectory. But eventually we were able to break through. But the reason it took so long for the Internet to take off, in retrospect, it's more obvious at the time I was pretty frustrated by it, is most people didn't see a reason to be online. There wasn't any digital content, there was not any e commerce. Yet we had to create all that infrastructure, all those services. Most people didn't have personal computers. The few people that did have personal computers didn't have communication modems to connect their computer to the these networks. The cost of the time was something like $10 an hour. So it was kind of for, you know, pretty, pretty scary to be online. You'd only want to be on for brief periods of time. There was nobody to talk to because there was nobody else on. So there were a whole host of reasons, and it just took us a while to really create a service that was easy to use and useful and fun and affordable, and convince people they wanted it, and convince PC manufacturers to build those modems in and work with the telecommunications companies to lower the cost of communications and work with the government to commercialize access the internet and open access to the telephone network. There's a whole bunch of things that needed to happen, and it just took a decade. So that was why, as I said earlier, one of my lessons is, is revolutions sometimes happen. In fact, often happen in more evolutionary ways. You're where it really is a slog, where sometimes you may even think you should give up, but eventually, you know, the sun comes out and you start seeing some real momentum. Yeah, the sun

David Novak 23:00

definitely came out and, you know, and I've heard you say that, you know, we always believe the killer app of the internet was, was people not content, not commerce, people, you know, say more

Steve Case 23:14

Well, the reason we felt that, and even from the earliest days in 1985 the majority of the usage of AOL was communications, features community features, things like people connection, where you can chat with people, or instant messaging now texting or bulletin boards, or just a whole variety of ways that connect people to people they already know and just are trying to stay connected with. Obviously, email and things like that are pretty, pretty fundamental, as well as connecting to people, to communities they care about. So they meet some new people that they they extend their their their network. And so we knew that was a powerful idea that people have always wanted to be connected. That's part of the reason why people go to restaurants, part of the reason why, you know, people historically, use the telephone to make, you know, phone calls. So there was always this, this human desire for connectivity with other people, and we wanted to use this technology to do that. We also wanted to humanize the technology, because people take it for granted now, but we started 40 years ago. The internet was kind of scary. It was, it was sort of felt like it's sort of a weird, you know, kind of, kind of hacker world, and can have we wanted to put a friendly face on it. And one way to do that was to, you know, to focus on people. There also was, frankly, a pragmatic reason that, that some of the bigger players out there own significant content, you know, come, you know, publishers like Knight Ridder and, you know, Time Inc and, and, you know, or owned, you know, commerce, one of the big competitors was prodigy, which is backed by IBM and Sears. Obviously, Sears was the major commerce kind of company, and prodigy had committed $1 billion to launch. So we knew we couldn't compete with them head to head in terms of how much money we had versus how much money they had, and we couldn't compete by trying to do a better. Job of what they did well. So we said, let's focus on what really is unique for us and differentiates for us. And that was focused on people and community. And even today, if you look at the popular services, whether it be Facebook or Tiktok or many other things, they're really showing that continuing that power of community, absolutely.

David Novak 25:17

And I have to ask you, how'd you, how'd you come up with the name American, America Online?

Steve Case 25:24

Well, like many things, a little bit accidental and little bit actually of a crisis, creating an opportunity that our strategy in those early days, because we didn't have much money, we only raised $1 million in venture capital, was to partner with the PC manufacturers and create custom kind of what some would call now white label online services. So we partnered with the Commodore, which had the Commodore 64 computer, and created something called Q link. And partnered with Radio Shack Tandy, which at the time was a big PC manufacturer, created something called PC Link, partnered with IBM to create something called promenade, and partnered with Apple to create something called Apple, Inc, we got Apple to agree to license the Apple brand name to us to launch this service, and we launched the service. And then about a year into it, Apple said, Come to think of it, we don't really like the fact that you are using our Apple brand name. You know, we regret we did that deal. We want to tear up that deal. And that was a little bit of a crisis, because that was what we thought would be our biggest growth driver. So we kind of negotiated a transition, and a settlement wasn't a lot of a couple million dollars, but that gave us the ability to relaunch the service, and we didn't know what to call it. Couldn't call it Apple Inc anymore. Couldn't afford a branding agency, so we basically had an internal contest to decide what to name. There are three or four names that were explorer and promenade and some others, but one of them was online America as well. That sounds interesting and also has the benefit of kind of describing what we're doing. Since we don't have money to spend on building a brand, we need to have something that's pretty descriptive, but I thought it would sound better if it was America Online. So we just flipped the words and and that suddenly became our brand. So it was an internal contest. I think somebody got 100 bucks for suggesting that, and the rest is history,

David Novak 27:07

and you end up being the first internet company to go public back in 1992 What was it like going into unchartered territory like that, and what did you learn as a leader doing something that hadn't been done before.

Steve Case 27:23

Well, a couple of things. One thing that was a little bit of a negative when we were going public, as you said, it was 1992 but as we're planning for it, in 1991 the board was concerned that the public markets, Wall Street, if you will, was not necessarily going to easily embrace this idea of the internet, and decided that it would be even harder if the CEO of the company was just 3132 years old. So they actually decided that I should step aside as CEO, have the other co founder, Jim Kimsey, was 20 years older, come back as CEO, and that was pretty frustrating. Obviously, I didn't think it was fair, but I almost quit, frankly, and even some of our team threatened to quit, and I said, No, we believe in this company. We believe in this idea. Let's like, hang in there. Let's play the long game. So I stuck it out. We did go public. Six months later, I became CEO again. So that was one interesting kind of story, because obviously things have changed. Now, many companies are going public with CEOs in their in their in their 20s, and it's obviously worked. You know, I worked pretty well. The other is, I viewed it as an opportunity to sell the idea of the internet. If we could sell the idea of the internet, people would then see that America Online as a company, as an investment might make sense. So it was really more evangelizing the idea of the internet, and that's, you know, I did for a lot of years, and just trying to kind of put the internet on the map and then position AOL within the internet. So it was long and hard and a struggle. We we our road showed. We ended up raising $10 million in our IPO. The value of the company when we went public, that day, was $70 million you know, yeah, nobody really knew or cared what we're doing. But then, frankly, seven years later was it was $160 billion and it turned out to be the best performing stock of the decade. So a lot of those skeptical institutional investors on our IPO roadshow regretted not taking the meeting or at least paying a little bit more attention, because it turned out we really were onto something.

David Novak 29:24

Well, you know? And you said your your first decade was really tough, and then, then, then, then it started to take off. How do you know when to stick with something, or whether you you pivot? And what did you learn about that? Well,

Steve Case 29:37

it ties in a lot of your focus on on leadership, what I learned was that context matters, circumstances matter, and the leader I needed to be as CEO, when the company had 50 employees was different than when it had 5000 employees, and when we were a small private company that was different than a larger public company, and as the company. Scaled. It had a I had a broader set of responsibilities, a broader set of constituents. Was including governments around the world, again, trying to educate them about the internet. So, you know, my my leadership styling changed. I went from, like most entrepreneurs, being involved in everything, to trying to really build a team and delegate as much as possible and empower and trust the people that work for me so I didn't have to be involved in everything, and just had to reassess pretty much every year, what changes should we make to the organization? What new perspectives do we need? Maybe somebody who's done a great job in marketing or finance or whatever it might be, maybe they're not going to be able to, you know, make the next, you know, take the next lap for us. Maybe we need to bring in somebody else with a broader set of experiences. Or maybe we need to launch a new effort in some new area, like mobile or something else, and we need to bring in somebody that had that experience. So it was, it was constantly trying to kind of look in the future, two, three years, to kind of understand what the overall market might look like then, what our company might look like then, and start putting in place before we needed to the structure and the team that would enable us to get to that next, next stop on the on the journey. So it was a constant reassessment. And the last point I'll make is part of what I was doing, traveling around a lot, was constantly on the outlook for people. They was called the Chief Executive Officer, but I really was more like the chief recruiting officer, because I was constantly on the lookout for talent, even when I remember meeting you in the late 90s, when you came to the office with Bob Pittman, I was thinking, Oh, this guy seems like he's pretty good, pretty good operator, and we could pull him into the orbit. I was not successful there, but I was always on the lookout

David Novak 31:43

You've Got Mail became one of the most iconic phrases of of its time. It's practically the soundtrack of the early internet. Can you tell us the story of You've got mail?

Steve Case 31:56

Yeah, again, that's it's really a function of being a very small company. I think at the time, we had maybe 30 or 40 employees, and I was trying to figure out ways to, again, make the service friendlier, more approachable. At the time, because the modem speeds, the communication speeds were so low, we couldn't send, you know, kind of any audio over the phone lines, but we could put on the physical disk, the floppy disk, you know, kind of messages. So I said, Why don't we add to the add to our software some friendly, welcoming, you know, voices like welcome and you've got mail and things like that. That would seem like a we just implant on our disk, and when somebody signs on, basically, the network says, Welcome, you've got mail. I thought that would be another way to make it seem more friendly, more more approachable. And somebody in our Customer Service Center, Karen Edwards, heard me say that, and she so, you know, my husband, Elwood, is a radio guy. He does, he does work at a radio station. Has a pretty good radio voice, if you just write down what you want you know, to put on the software. I'll, I'll see if he'll. I'll go home tonight and see if he'll. He'll do it. So I got a little post it note and wrote down three, four things. And, you know, gave it to her. And you know, next morning shows up, a little cassette tape, plays it. And, you know, Elwood, his voice was perfect. So I told our our engineers, you know, add this to the software, and went out in the next version of the software. And a year or two later, Elwood had one of the most famous voices in the world. So again, kind of an accident, more just, you know, kind of musing about some way to improve the product. And somebody happened to overhear me, and she happened to have a husband who had a good radio voice and and it was, you know, it was, and that's the story of a lot of the companies. We back the entrepreneurial journeys that we've we've seen that you have a plan, you have a sense of your where you want to go, but you always have to be flexible and agile and curious and kind of trying new things, and experimenting new things, talking to new people, just to kind of, you know, kind of try new things. And so that was an example of kind of stumbling into an idea that ended up being one of the defining aspects of AOL and the in those days of the internet.

David Novak 34:12

It's interesting. You said you're really trying to improve the product. And that was something that you were doing at Pizza, something you did at Procter, and gamble that improving the product is sort of in your in your DNA.

Steve Case 34:24

Yeah, you guys, it's never good enough. It's always gonna be better. And having that, being proud of what's been built, and the team that built it, is part of it, but also kind of always, you know, kind of leaning in the future, thinking about what you can do next. One of the areas which I'd said, say, most people who were there at the time, would say I was not as good at and I think they would be fair to say, this is I sometimes didn't celebrate our current successes. I was more saying, Okay, that's all fine, but let's raise the bar. What can we do next? And I've learned that you need to strike the right balance there and make sure you are rewarding and celebrate. Using your your interim wins, even if you're kind of focused on a, you know, kind of a larger, you know, kind of larger picture, a larger destiny.

David Novak 35:07

Steve, was there ever a time,

Steve Case 35:10

I'm sure there was. But when was that time when it really hit you that, hey, man, we are having a huge impact here. This is really, this is big, I mean, maybe even bigger than I thought it was. There were a lot of examples of that. Because, particularly in the late 90s, you know, the internet went from they said before, nobody knew or cared about it, to suddenly, everybody wanted to be part of it. There was, it was sort of this almost Gold Rush mentality in terms of people wanting to become subscribers of AOL, people wanting to become employees of AOL, people wanting to invest in AOL. People wanted to partner with AOL. So a lot of different, different experiences, you know, one that I remember, which was a real challenge, but it also kind of opened my eyes to how things had changed, is we made a decision, I think this was probably in 96 maybe 1997 to move to unlimited pricing. You know, we up until then, it was paid per hour to be on the service, and we decided to move to essentially a flat fee, $20 a month, and you could use all you could want. We and we knew when we did that, that usage would would skyrocket, but when we announced it, it skyrocketed far more than we anticipated. As a result, we had huge problems with people getting online. It was a busy signal, you know, kind of dynamic that back then, before broadband and Wi Fi, things like that, you had to dial up and connect to one of our modems. And it was a real problem. At one point, the entire AOL service was down for 23 hours. And it was the lead story of almost every newspaper in the country and almost every broadcast network, broadcast news operation that the AOL down. I was like, wow, that's kind of embarrassing and and in some kind of we told people to trust us, and we're letting them down. So it was frustrating. We did a lot of things to deal with, but I also took a step back and said, Wow. You know, even a few years ago, nobody would have known or cared if we were down. Now suddenly, it looks like the world is coming to a halt because we're down for 23 hours. That was really a sign that, I think the internet had arrived, AOL had arrived, and we went from being kind of, you know, irrelevant, to being central, yeah.

David Novak 37:20

And you were right there at the beginning. You saw this massive growth, and here we are today. You know, people are using the internet all the time, so much so that the internet is being criticized in the sense that people are spending too much time on the internet. How do you what's your what's your response to that? That's that argument. No,

Steve Case 37:40

I understand that, and I've seen this with really every new innovation, certainly every technology there's, there's always a bunch of positives that come with it, but also some negatives, some unintended consequences, if you will. And in the case of the internet, one of them is how much time people spend on that, but another is the way things like social media have developed. And one of the things I thought was super powerful I mentioned it before, was the idea of leveling the playing field so there could be more voices. But we now have an environment where there's so many voices, and sometimes some of them are accurate, but others are not accurate, and people are getting news from lots of different sources, and that's creating some some challenges in our society. And one of the things I hope would happen, which was, if you have access to all these voices, you'd have more of a sense of both sides of the argument, you know, what? Turns out, not just with the internet, but cable television, other kinds of things, people tend to, you know, kind of listen to people that are saying the things they like to hear, and not listening to people that have opposing viewpoints. So it's become much more of a dynamic on really, both sides of people, kind of living in their own, what some people have called filter bubbles. So that's been another aspect of it that's been disappointing overall. I think the internet, obviously, it's had a profound impact on society, has opened up opportunities for lots of different things. It's now really starting to revolutionize in pretty fundamental ways, all kinds of things that maybe we didn't think we're going to we're going to change healthcare, for example, and can improve dramatically. I think we're on a path to, you know, much more precise medicine, you know, better outcomes, better convenience, you know, lower costs. A bunch of things are possible, enabled by technologies like the internet, as other things like AI and other other other technologies. So overwhelmingly, it's, in my view, a positive story, but I certainly understand there are a lot of negatives as well. And the challenge with every new technology, and we're dealing with this as a society now with AI, is, how do we maximize the benefits while also minimizing trying to hedge reduce some of the potential risks

David Novak 39:39

with the Stanley Cup Finals now underway between the Panthers and the Oilers. It's a great time to revisit one of my earliest episodes with Hall of Fame legend the captain, Mark Messier, who many regard as one of the best sports leaders of all time. And hey, with insights like this, it's easy to see why you.

Mark Messier 39:59

I knew that I needed people around me to have success, and the only way in a team sport to have success is to try to maximize the performance of each and every one of the people that are around you and make them believe that their contributions are absolutely necessary for any team success and and so that's, I think that's one element. The other element for me would be that you got to establish relationships that go further than just the game itself, which takes time, and it's harder and harder and harder in our world, where players change teams more rapidly than they used to be. But as a leader, I think you have to be, you know, very, very conscious of the fact that in order to give anybody Well, John, you know, well, first of all, Abe Lincoln said, No man can go another without his consent. And a great coach, John wouldn't used to say, give good coaching is being able to give correction without resentment. And so if you really think of those two quotes, which I kind of, really are the pillars of my of my beliefs and leadership is that in order to lead someone, they have to give you their permission, and that permission has to be earned. And I think you earn it through developing relationships so you can tell them the truth, and they don't take it, take it personally. And so then you just start to foster those relationships. And the other thing, I guess, what I would say is that you got to be willing to be completely open, completely transparent, and who you are and what you stand for, and your consistency and your personality. You don't waver in good times and bad. I mean, you're completely exposed and vulnerable, and you got to be doing the right things consistently. But I think you when you do that, it gives everybody a sense of calm around you. Go

David Novak 41:44

back and listen to my entire conversation with Mark episode 13 here on how leaders lead. I love to get inside the heads of leaders like yourself and how you make decisions. And you have this enormous success, and then you obviously become attractive to other other companies, and as I understand it, Bill Gates made an offer to buy your company. Take us through how you made the decision not to do it. Well, it

Steve Case 42:11

was a tough time. This is not too long after we'd gone public. So it was still the mid 1990s maybe 1994 something like that. And AOL was the leader of the pack, but other big companies, including Microsoft, were about to enter the market, and we knew it'd be pretty tough to compete with Microsoft, significant companies, significant resources, Windows, which is sort of the monopoly operating system at the time, so it was sort of daunting that we might compete with them. So when Bill expressed an interest in buying AOL and having AOL be part of Microsoft, and having it really power the Microsoft Internet strategy. It had a lot of appeal, but, you know, and it was a pretty good price versus it was, you know, versus what we'd gone public for. But, you know, I felt, and others on our team felt that it was still kind of the bottom of the first inning that, you know, we the inning may have taken a long time to play, but it was still early in terms of the adoption of the internet, and we were just leaving a lot on the table if we sold the company, kind of sold out at this this particular price. So it was close, even with the board. It was a prevailed by one vote. It was some people thought we definitely should sell. Quit. Quit while we're ahead. Take the money and run. And others said, you know that ultimately, agree with me that it was, it was just, you know, premature, but it was tough, because it wasn't just we're turning down an offer from Microsoft that we knew that they were going to then throw the full force of Microsoft against this market opportunity and become a very significant threat. So, and they ultimately have crushed us. So it was, it was not just as I said, turning down the offer is also then realizing we were in for the battle of our lives.

David Novak 43:50

Yeah, it took a lot of confidence to hang in there and say we could take on a giant like that. Now, in the year 2000 you negotiated the largest merger in business history. At that time, you brought AOL together with Time Warner. Now, when you look back at that, what were the biggest leadership lessons you took away from that experience?

Steve Case 44:10

A lot of it is things you focus on. You know, really around culture that we knew there were two different companies with two different histories. AOL was a young, relatively young company focused just on the internet. Time Warner. It was a mix of companies that had been built by acquisition of Warner Brothers Studios, and, you know, Ted Turner's, you know, kind of Turner Broadcasting, and Henry Luce's Time, Inc, and you know, basically all these, you know, kind of companies that were at one point independent and became part of broader media conglomerate. So we knew it'd be complicated. They had different, different different cultures, different dynamics, but we just believed, I believe, at least, that the power of the internet would force them all to be more digital first, and that the digital platform, the internet platform, could really be a unifying force that would result in them focusing on the digital opportunities, more as an opportunity and less as a threat. Because, you know. Once you in big companies, people are often focused on minimizing risk as opposed to maximizing opportunity. So that was the hope, and that was the expectation going in that just didn't happen, that people were were focused on their own things were a little bit threatened by these new technologies, new business models. Instead of embracing it, they kind of generally ran from it, also the market reset. We went from the.com boom in the late 90s, when Internet stocks were going like crazy to sort of a bust and valuations sunk, and stock options for employees obviously were worth a lot less. That led to a lot of frustration as well. But at the core, the lesson is, it really is about people. The strategy we laid out 25 years ago is basically what's happened today. Unfortunately, one time, Warner didn't capitalize on that. Other companies, Google and Facebook and Amazon and Apple and many others, have capitalized on it. It wasn't because we didn't know where the world was going. We kind of did. It wasn't because we didn't lay out a strategy to head in that direction, we kind of did. It was because we didn't get organized and have the right people focused on the right priorities, working together in the right way, and as a result, it would end up being a failed merger. So I'm reminded by of the quote I think was a Thomas Edison quote a century ago, vision without execution as hallucination. And when I think of that merger, that's what I think about. I think the vision was compelling, the execution was terrible, and as a result, that ended up being a real debacle. Is there

David Novak 46:32

anything you would have done differently as a leader to get that execution up front, in the in it, or is this

Steve Case 46:37

I've already obviously thought about it? Yeah, I did think strategically. It was an important deal. We considered other potential acquisitions because our stock had become quite valuable. There were been some that would have been easier to execute, but we really believed we needed to path the broadband that Time Warner provided it owned Time Warner Cable, which is the largest broadband provider, and that was sort of we didn't have yet to bat we're the leader in narrow band. We didn't have a path to broadband, so we really needed that. So I don't, in retrospect, think that the decision was, was was was flawed. It was more the execution. And as part of the deal, the proposed even the first call I made when I when I suggested to the CEO, then Jerry Levin, that we consider merging our companies, I said in the first minute, and I'll step aside as CEO. You can run the combined company. I believe so much in this idea that I'll let you run the combined company. So I think it's as I think back it was. We're a little bit ahead of the game. Some of the took some of these things a little while to bake in the oven, if you will, and we didn't really get things right in terms of creating the right team dynamic, creating the right culture around collaboration. And obviously it was a big disappointment. I think I've been able to take some of those lessons into some of the work, whether it be working with entrepreneurs, or even some of the work I've done on the policy front, I think I'm probably a little bit more sympathetic, little bit more empathetic, a little bit more emotional intelligence, if you will, trying to put myself in somebody else's issues. So it was a hard lesson to learn, but hopefully, some of the things I've done in the last couple of decades have benefited from that, the challenges I had back then, Oh, absolutely.

David Novak 48:09

You built a hell of a business, and you've created lots of businesses in our country that are continuing to improve the world, just like AOL did. And you know, you know, having exposure to so many different businesses, what have you learned is the most are the are the most important things a company should have as a part of its culture? Well,

Steve Case 48:29

it goes back to what you're just saying, the collaboration you need a team that has diverse perspectives and skills, because that's, you know, required to embrace these opportunities in a big way, but that works together in a seamless way, as a team. And so getting that as you well know kind of right is tricky. You also have to couple with that a passion around the idea and a willingness to fight on and persevere. The Persistence aspect is really, really important. Almost every company. There's a few overnight successes, but very, very few, most of them are, you know, a struggle and a slog. And there are times where it doesn't look like it's even going to be successful, and just being able to punch through that power, through that stick with it, I think, is incredibly important. Otherwise, people do tend to quit when that, you know, when times get tough and, you know, miss out on the opportunity if they, if they stuck with it a little bit. You

David Novak 49:23

know, this has been so much fun, Steve and I want to have a little bit more with you here with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Sure? Okay, the three words that best describe you, curious,

Steve Case 49:33

builder, persistent, although some would call that stubborn,

David Novak 49:40

persistent. I like, persistent, yeah, the positive way flip that script. You know, if you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be?

Steve Case 49:48

I guess I could just do it for one day. Being like President United States would be good where I could, you know, talk about entrepreneurship and innovation, issue some executive orders, retire that that evening. That wouldn't be bad. Yeah? For one day, President, what's

David Novak 50:01

your biggest pet peeve? Probably, arrogance. What's the best part about life in an RV which I understand you enjoy the simplicity

Steve Case 50:09

of my wife and I just enjoy kind of driving around in the country just the two of us. You know, kind of people don't necessarily know where we're gonna go next. Nobody knows really where we are. We end up bumping into people and visiting communities we otherwise wouldn't have seen. So it's sort of a kind of an unplugged view of life. Obviously, have had opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people and do a lot of interesting things, and we're grateful for that. But sometimes the simple aspects of life are also great, and it also allows us to be kind of really connected, because it's just the two of us on our on our road trips.

David Novak 50:44

What's something about Hawaii? Most people don't know. You

Steve Case 50:47

know, it's a it's a great melting pot of different people come from different places and bring different perspectives. And it's not all always perfect. They're always challenges, like with any any particular community. I think that probably was an interesting lesson as well, as well maybe being a little disconnected. When I was growing up in Hawaii, you know, the sitcoms on television we'd see a week later because we didn't have satellite back then, so they'd take the tapes and put them on a plane and fly them to Hawaii, so we watched everything a week after everybody else did. What do you and Barack Obama have in common? Well, we went to same high school we went to when I was I was a senior when he was a freshman. So we didn't know each other super well, but we both had that shared experience of being born and raised in Hawaii and going to the same same school.

David Novak 51:32

You get two front row tickets to see anything you want. Where are you going and who you going to take with you?

Steve Case 51:38

Well, probably a concert. I enjoy sports as well, but I'm always loved music, and in high school, I thought I'd actually be in the music business. So have to decide which concert would it be. We've had seen a lot of concerts over the years. I have to figure out who would be the one we haven't seen yet. And I would go with my wife, Jean. What's the one thing you do just for you walking? I tend to enjoy disconnecting a little bit. So just when I'm when I'm just by myself and kind of am able to, you know, collect my thoughts, maybe sometimes listen to some music or listen to a podcast or something, but, but it's, you know, it's more of a kind of quiet time, me time,

David Novak 52:14

besides your family. What's your most prized possession? I'm not sure I have one.

Steve Case 52:18

I would say it's, you know, the relationships, the people and certainly my family. I don't think there's any thing that I own that I like you know, couldn't live without.

David Novak 52:28

If I turned on the radio, what would I hear in your car?

Steve Case 52:32

Depends my on my mood. More rock and roll anything else. But I like different genres. I love some of the recommendation engines, like Spotify radio, where you're playing one song and you ask them to create, essentially a station with similar songs. So I learned a lot about new artists that way. I basically say, Well, that sounds pretty good. Who is that? And end up listening to more of the music. Sometimes going to one of their concerts is a good way to explore

David Novak 52:58

what's something about you. A few people would know, probably, that I worked for Pizza Hut. I was the director of pizza development. That's still the best title I ever had. There you go. What's one of your daily rituals? Something that you never miss? It's probably

Steve Case 53:12

the walking, you know, that trying to think, there's a lot of things I do every day that are pretty, you know, pretty consistent that. But I would say that would be probably, probably one of them. I also tend to, you know, we back the company in your world after, after being working at Pizza Hut, we backed a couple of companies, Sweetgreen and Cava that are both in the fast casual restaurant space, both now successful public companies. And so I have a almost every single day, a sweet green lunch. Occasionally I supplement it with kava, just to be equal opportunity. That'd be another thing that people probably wouldn't expect. Great concept,

David Novak 53:47

you know, and you're out of the lightning round. Great job. I've got a few more questions here. We'll wrap this up. And you know, I know you're a humble guy. You don't really like to talk about yourself, but you know, I'm, I'm curious, you know, what would you say your your leadership superpower is, I

Steve Case 54:02

think, leaning into the future and having the confidence or persistence to pursue it, the curiosity, observing, listening, kind of almost like a radar, kind of give me some sense of what might be happening next. Spend a lot of time thinking about that, and then, not just, you know, think about it or look around corners, but then do something about it. So whether it be starting a company like AOL, or backing entrepreneurs or starting companies, you know, helping do what I can to help usher in that future and help them be successful, and

David Novak 54:35

you have an incredible life partner with your wife, Jean, you know, what makes that, that, that relationship, work. I mean, how do you, how do you lead at home? Well,

Steve Case 54:46

she leads at home. So starters, knowing that, knowing your place. And now we've worked together now for three decades, and it's been a, obviously, a great kind of relationship and partnership. And, you know, we've kind of. See things eye to eye on most issues at the same time. I think one thing that's been helpful is we have complementary strengths and skill sets. She's kind of taken the lead on the giving side of our lives for the past several decades, and I continue to focus on where I probably can be most effective, which is more on the investment backing, entrepreneur side of things. So understanding having shared a shared vision, kind of having alignment, but at the same timing, having your own lanes, if you will, I think have been helpful.

David Novak 55:30

What do you see as your unfinished business? Steve, still,

Steve Case 55:33

you know, more work to do on some of the things we're currently, you know, kind of working on. I'm also spending a lot of time outside of the tech entrepreneurship side on on building physical communities. I've done a lot of work on the early stage of the internet and building digital communities, and then building entrepreneurial communities now in both Hawaii and Costa Rica and other places, building some different things. Just open a resort in Costa Rica, for example, that's anchored by a 600 acre Peninsula anchored by a Waldorf Astoria trying to master plan that kind of have a canvas. How do we build a terrific community there? I've done a lot of things over the years in Hawaii, built 1000s of homes for affordable housing, as well as some resorts like Kapalua on the Maui side. So there's something about that I'm finding interesting. It's sort of a new, chapter, if you will. But after being more the digital guy, having something that's a little bit more physical, a little bit more tangible, I think makes sense. And the last thing that I feel feel like is unfinished business. I'm not sure it's something I'm really going to take on. But for for quite some time, 2030, years, I've been quite concerned about the hyper partisanship in the in the country, and trying to look for ways to bring people together. Indeed, I'm going to a dinner tonight on that, on that very topic. I think it's, how do we make sure we have a stable democracy? Which means, you know, we have to figure out ways to kind of come, to come to come together and focus on on the next 250 years for the country. I was the chair of the Smithsonian Institution for for several years, and they've been planning next year which America turns 250 and I'm hoping that 250th celebration is a time to look back at the great progress we've made over the last 250 years, but also kind of set the path, you know, forge the path for for the next 250 years, and trying to make sure that we're doing everything we Can to position our country, both externally and internally, to do that successfully, I think is quite important.

David Novak 57:25

You said it earlier that you'd, you'd like to be president for a day, because you could get issue those executive orders running for high office like that. Do you have any interest in doing that someday? I consider

Steve Case 57:36

that even 2020, 30 years ago and but no, I don't think it's my, my strength. I think my there's other ways I can contribute. So I think I'm playing to my my strengths. And I also recognize at this point in my life. I, you know, we have five kids. We now have five grandchildren, up from 05 years ago, with, with, we think more to come and and having the time to focus on that side of my life is important as well. So I'll do what I can on these topics to try to be constructive. But no, I have no plans to jump into anything in a more, more fundamental way. Indeed, I kind of take a step back sometimes and say, you know, should I be spending time on this or should I be reprioritizing my life towards other things? So why do I always need another mountain to climb. Maybe it's time to stay at the base camp, but I'll keep struggling. All right,

David Novak 58:26

last question, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? It's all

Steve Case 58:31

about people. You know, it's not about you, it's about them. And so you're only gonna be as successful as the people you attract.

David Novak 58:37

You know, Steve, it's been a lot of fun to have this conversation with you, and you know, I want to congratulate you on, on, on having two characteristics that not everybody has. Both of you are a tremendous dreamer, and you're a doer. You've been able to dream and do not many people can do that. And I take my hat off to you for everything you've done for our country by changing the world and how you're supporting, uh, entrepreneurs today that are trying to do the same thing that you did. You're really making a difference, and I thank you very much for it.

Steve Case 59:09

Well, thank you. You're very kind, and thank you for focusing on leadership. I was happy to be part of this, and I appreciate everything you're doing to try to help you know, the next generation of leaders lead better. You

David Novak 59:23

Steve somewhere between dial up internet and you've got mail, Steve Case built one of the biggest business stories of a generation, but it took time, more time actually, than people realize, and it's a good reminder, success can be slow going, which is why I love Steve's calm and steady persistence, it's about staying grounded in your purpose, staying curious about what's next, and surrounding yourself with people who bring different strengths and perspectives to the table. That's how you keep going when progress feels like wading through molasses, and it's how you build something extra. Ordinary. So here's something to think about this week. What part of your own success is taking longer than you thought? And what keeps you going? Is it your sense of purpose, your team, something else entirely? Whatever it is, take a moment to connect with it. Because here's the truth, Success takes time, but if you stay steady, focused and fueled by the right mindset, I'm telling you, you'll get there. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders know that success takes time. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Sanjit Biswas, the co founder and CEO of Sam Sarah, so be sure to Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader you can be.

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