It's stunning to me what kind of an impact even one person can have if they have the right passion, perspective and are able to align the interest of a great team.- Steve Case
If you are doing something new you've got to have a vision. You've got to have a perspective. You've got to have some north star you are aiming for, and you just believe somehow you'll get there, which kind of gets to the passion point.
I was not an outstanding student. I did a reasonable amount of work. I got generally good - pretty good grades, but I was not that passionate about getting straight A's.
I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii.
I think the support of the other team at AOL and everybody's really shared passion and belief about this and - saying that some day everybody was going to be on line.
I think it took us nine years to get one million subscribers to AOL, and then in the next nine years we went from one million to 35 million.
I had an older brother who passed away recently, an older sister and a younger brother.
I enjoyed high school and college, and I think I learned a lot, but that was not really my focus. My focus was on trying to figure out what businesses to start.
I do think that a general liberal arts education is very important, particularly in an uncertain changing world.
I do think actually in this case the government does get credit for funding some of the basic research.
I continue to have a special pride and passion for AOL, and I strongly believe that AOL - once the leading Internet company in the world - can return to its past greatness.
From a relatively early age I got interested in business.
For better or worse, that is true with any new innovation, certainly any new technological innovation. There's many good things that come out of it, but also some bad things. All you can do is try to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff.
Five or ten years ago, when it was clear the Internet was becoming a mainstream phenomenon, it was equally clear that a lot of people were being left out and could be left behind.
But the idea that some day people would want to be able to interact and get stock quotes and talk with other people or all these different things, I just believed that was going to happen.
