Ad Infinitum S2E11 - The Authors of Audio Branding

Transcript

The nation's favorite car buying site, Dundeele Motors, is home to the largest range of new and premium used cars from all of Ireland's trusted car dealerships. That's why you'll find Frank Keane BMW on Dun Dundeele. Visit the Frank Keane BMW showroom on Dundeele to find your next car. Dundeele Motors, for confident car buying and deals to feel great about from all of Ireland's trusted car dealerships. Visit dundeale.ie today. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger show on the choose yourself network. Today on the James Altucher Show. There's a lot of things happening. As you say, it's sort of a, here's what's gonna happen next, and you gotta figure this out for yourself irrespective of what you're doing. How do you position yourself for this future? What's the right way to think about it? But it starts with having a framework. But, you know, it's not just entrepreneurs that need to change their playbook. Everybody needs to change their playbook because company is about to go through massive transformations in the next 10 years. And so you're sitting there and you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, how can I get involved? How can I either start a company or how can I improve my life? What can I do listening to this, and what should I start looking at? You know, Steve Case was such a great podcast to do. I mean, I followed his career for well over 25 years ever since he first started running AOL, and he was such a genius at building AOL into an Internet empire. And then he made, essentially, the deal of the century when he sold it to Time Warner at the peak of, you know, the IPO Internet bubble. And his analysis of future, his ability to predict is just unprecedented, which is what we talked about on my podcast. Just such a great a great episode. I was so proud to be interviewing him. I remember, for instance, Steve telling me how Bill Gates wanted to buy AOL and how Steve said no. And then when I asked him why, he told me that the simple answer is I really believed in the idea of the Internet, and I believed in AOL, and I believed that it could change the world. I also remember him telling me how he struggled for a decade before he finally broke through. I think this is a really great podcast for anybody who wants to get into the mind of a true forward thinker, entrepreneur, billionaire. I'm proud to rerelease this episode. So I've got Steve Case right here in the studio. Steve Case, the cofounder of AOL. Steve, how's it going? It's going great. It's been a been a fun week. Now I just finished your new book, The 3rd Wave. It's excellent. I really like and we were just discussing this. I really like how you interwove kind of the past, the whole history of AOL, and really kind of the the the rise of the consumer Internet. But you you interwove that with what's coming next, which is what I'm really interested in. And, it was great to see both sides of that, particularly given your your history. But I'm just curious. Here we are in Manhattan. You're a block away from Time Warner, the company that you were the chairman of at one point. Do you feel any, nostalgia passing the building? Like, oh, man. I wish I was still chairman of the company. Oh, not really. It was a it was a it's similar to AOL when I visit them either in Dallas or or here in New York. There's it's always gonna be part of my life. I started, you know, AOL 31 years ago when, I was kind of a kid in my twenties. And, you know, so it was a great, you know, journey. But when we did the merger now 15, 16 years ago, I stepped aside as CEO. I was chairman for a couple of years and stepped aside. It was just it seemed like the right thing to do, and I've had a great time over the last 10 or 15 years kind of, kinda working both on the investment side, the investment firm we have called Revolution, and, well well, on the philanthropic side with the Case Foundation. So, no, I don't really go back and say woulda, coulda, shoulda, or or or or miss it. That was a great adventure. And the the team we had did a great job of kinda trying to take the idea of the Internet and make it part of everyday life. But, I'm I'm now happy to be, you know, focused on what's next, which is obviously part of the reason I wrote this book. Yeah. And I I want to, I wanna dive into the book and and into revolution because it's they're they're related because you're really investing a lot in the principles you describe in this book ranging from the Internet of Everything to Impact Investing and so on. I wanna, first talk a little bit about the the past just because you're I don't even know I mean, I'm sure you realize, but you're really a historical person. I mean, at one point, half of the Internet was going through AOL. Like and as you even mentioned in the book, AOL was Facebook, Twitter, you know, Google all rolled up into 1 as AOL at the time. Like, everybody was using it for everything. I mean, I was on AOL I'm for instance all day long every day. So so there is a history to be addressed here, and you you you were I think it kind of establishes your credentials as a visionary going forward, how, much of a visionary you were back in, like, 19 87, 88, 89, and so on before the consumer Internet was was really here. And I'll I just I'll mention one thing. I remember I was a grad graduate student at the time, using Usenet, which was the, you know, message boards before the World Wide Web. And I remember what a horrible thing it was when suddenly you released all of AOL's users onto Usenet. It really felt like, oh my god. We're we've been invaded. I mean, it even felt like we're all plotting to start an Internet too to just have our own place again. But, you know No. I remember that. Actually, Walter Isaacson is a friend. I know a friend of yours too and wrote the foreword for the book, talks about that in the foreword sort of when kinda AOL opened the doors to its customers to connect to the Internet. But our view then and and still my view now is we wanted to democratize access. We wanted everybody to be included. We wanted to level the the playing field. And so we recognize there are some, you know, Internet netizens as they oh, yeah. We're called. They were saying, oh, we're like, oh, we'll just keep our little neighborhood to ourselves. Thank you very much. We don't want the, you know, the the average folks coming in here, the riffraff. But we thought it was important that the Internet be available to everybody, which is why we worked so hard to make it easy to use and full and fun and affordable so everybody could use it. Everybody could connect. And it took us a while. As I say in the book, when we got started in 1985, only 3% of people were online, and they're only online 1 hour a week. So when we said we wanted to get America online, we're we're serious. And it was it was a hard struggle for for, you know, decade really before we finally, broke through. And, you know, telling some of those, you know, stories as part of this book, you know, was kinda fun to, you know, go back 30 plus years and remember where we were and to see how far we've come, but also to try to project where we might be going next. Well well and you were a classic David and Goliath story because there was there was CompuServe and Prodigi, and and you may or may not have seen kind of the the 1,000,000,000 Internet providers that were just coming 5 years later. Right. But and you were the small guy out of CompuServe Prodigi and and AOL. I mean, they were backed by huge, you know, companies like IBM, Sears, H&R Block. Right. So how did you what what were kind of the, a, reasons you thought, hey. We could overcome these guys and get bigger. And, b, what were you think were the critical decisions that allowed you to become bigger than them? Well, the first, when we first started looking at this in the in the early eighties, it was kinda dominated by the the big guy. Now dominated is kinda weird word because not many more people were online. But there was big companies, as you mentioned, Prodigi. IBM and Sears had committed a $1,000,000,000 to to launch that, which is pretty, you know, pretty scary. And And you had no big company behind you? No. And, you know, at the time, Copy Service you mentioned was owned by H&R Block. I'm called The Source. It was owned by Reader's Digest. Knight Ridder had a service called Futron, AT and T, and Citibank. Everybody was doing different, different tests. So there's a little company in in Tysons Corner, Virginia, originally called Quantum Computer Services and called, obviously, AOL, was kind of the, you know, the the David going up against the Goliath. And it it's funny to think back now given what's happened with startups and funding of startups. But our first round of venture capital, we raised $1,000,000. And over 7 years, we raised $10,000,000. We went public in 1992. It was the 1st Internet company to go public. We raised $10,000,000 in the IPO. And public at a $70,000,000 valuation and only what was it? Like, 9 years later, 8 years later, $163,000,000,000 valuation. Right. No. I would say I would say it was no other company in history has ever had Well, it was the best performing stock of a decade. And so it but it was funny because when we went public, it wasn't just that we didn't raise much money and the valuation was low. I remember the roadshow. We're talking to institutional investors, and they looked at us like we're crazy. Like, what are you talking about? You know, this this Internet thing. Why would why would normal people ever wanna get connected to this thing? So, of course, we take it for granted now. But in those early, you know, days that I think of as sort of the first wave of the Internet, it was tough. You know, most people were skeptical, and and it was kinda expensive to get online at the time, like, often $10 an hour. It was kinda hard to get online. The software was really complicated. Most people didn't have PCs. The few who did didn't have modems. Remember back then, you had to go to the peripheral section of the computer store to get this thing called the modem. It wasn't much once you got online, there wasn't much content there. There wasn't much community because there's nobody online to talk to. It it it took a while for that really to, you know, to take off. And, thankfully, the team we had at AOL, they really stuck with it and and persevered. And finally, after a decade, it we kinda became this kinda almost decade of making overnight sensation. Well, it really is kind of like that that whole notion of, oh, of course, AOL made it. They were in the right place at the right time. But it really was I mean, you see in the book all the issues and problems you had along the way that you had to solve. Right? Everything ranging from outages to marketing issues to all these to Bill Gates doing his classic summoning you to his office saying, you know, either join us or we're gonna crush you. Right. So how does it feel now? Intimidating. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so so you were going up against Bill Gates back then, and now you guys, I'm gonna call you elder statesman for lack of a better word, but now you're doing these charitable ventures together. Like, what do you guys talk about now? No. We haven't talked about it. On the phone like, hey, Tom. We have a very good relationship. But we did we did duke it out. There's no question that, that, it was a tough, you know, in particularly in that nineties time frame that Microsoft, very powerful company. Windows was a very powerful franchise. And when they said they were gonna integrate their own online service, that's what we called it back then, not the Internet. They're gonna integrate something called the Microsoft network with every copy of of Windows. It would be on every, you know, PC in the in in the in the world. It was kinda scary. And so, you know, we were nervous. Some of our investors, frankly, and board members thought we we shouldn't, you know, kinda fold our tent and and and sell the Microsoft, call it a day because they're pretty scared of what was coming. But, thankfully, we didn't you do that? Like, I feel like if someone offered me, I don't know what it would have meant to you, like, 10, $20,000,000 and I was a young guy, like, of course, I would've or even if I was an old guy, I I would take it. Like, why did you feel like, oh, I'm gonna go for the 1,000,000,000? Well, this was, well, the an simple answer is we really believed in the idea of the Internet, believed in in in AOL, believed that it could change the world, and believed we could build a significant, you know, valuable company. And so, we we we just felt like there was still we've been working hard for the better part of a decade. When we I was talking to Bill. I think it was probably 93 or 94. And so we've been at it, you know, since almost a decade. And, we've gone public in 92. So it was a public company. It was worth a few $100,000,000 at the time. And it never got to the point where he offered a a price, but it would have been something under $1,000,000,000. And and there were some investors that made sense. I didn't. And and and, thankfully, you know, I won that by one vote. It was you know, there was there was a close close call. And as you mentioned, 6, 7 years later, it had gone from a few $100,000,000 to, you know, tens and tens of 1,000,000,000 to then, you know, over a 100, 150, 160,000,000,000. And so, yeah, I think then the investors were board members were all glad that we hadn't sold. And and so, again, what do you think, what do you think that we're and this is of benefit to any entrepreneur listening. You know, MSN, of course, was the Microsoft network and had had the backing of the biggest company in the world, biggest software company in the world. It was on that desk very computer. What do you think were the critical factors that ultimately catapulted AOL beyond that and MSM was basically a failure? Well, it was it was a classic case of of sort of you called David Goliath, but also sort of this battle between attackers and defenders. And attackers and defenders. And and what I learned, particularly as they all got larger and even, after the merger with Time Warner, is we kinda shifted from being an attacker, the disruptor, to being more of the defender kinda protecting the the status quo. And and the bigger companies tended to, you know, to focus on how do you extend their current businesses. So companies like Prodigy, you know, the the Sears are a key partner, thought of it mostly around shopping, electronic shopping. Now we we call ecommerce. So, you know, a a company like AT and T thought about mostly about, you know, communications. And, and, you know, so everybody you know, Citibank was thinking the most about banking, and Night Rooter was thinking the most about content. And so they all came at this new opportunity, kind of looking at the rearview mirror, kind of a little bit, imprisoned by their own, you know, past. We had at AOL, you know, the opportunity as a start up to really look at it, you know, with a clean slate and say It was almost like the big companies were holding them back in some ways by their corporate culture being imposed on the smaller start up. They they were they were basically imposing a a large company culture on a small, you know, kind of startup team. That that was part of it. But also were imposing a set of presumptions and hypotheses based on their own experiences that this new thing would look sort of like their old thing. And so, you know, not surprisingly, if you're a newspaper company like, you know, New York Times or or Knight Ridder or something like that that or or or Time Inc, you you end up on the magazine side, you'd think of this as more like a electronic newspaper, and you'd presume that the the key thing that would drive adoption would be content. Well, we didn't have that view. We had the view that that the killer app was gonna be people, was gonna be what we called community. Now we think of it more as in social media. And so we kinda went all in on on community. We created things like like chat rooms, people connection. We created things like instant messaging and and buddy list and things like that, because we really believe that that was really kind of the soul of the medium and and, ultimately, would be the, you know, the the core of the of of the of the medium, and it turned out right. At at at at our our peak about almost half of all the Internet traffic in United States went through AOL, and more than half of our use was these community, you know, features. So having that startup mentality and really saying, you know, how do we break through? What's gonna really drive this? And, you know, and and sort of have a view of anything is possible and not be overly constrained by by the, you know, kind of the perspectives of a larger company. It was helpful. Part of the reason that I wrote the book was to provide some of those lessons for entrepreneurs, but, frankly, also some of those lessons for larger company executives. I think there are opportunities in this in this 3rd wave, for big companies to disrupt themselves. But if they bring a cautious conservative kind of, you know, view of it and and don't, you know, get the right people and empower them in the right ways, they are gonna be left left behind. Well, that's really interesting because as you saw through the nineties and even in the early o o's, like, the idea of a large company imposing their culture on the start up culture is it's almost like you can't get away from that. Like, when you and, well, I wanna talk about the 3rd wave and how companies can use that and and individual entrepreneurs can use that. But when you even merged with Time Warner I mean, technically, your market cap was bigger, so it was AOL absorbing Time Warner. But, ultimately, Time Warner did impose their culture on AOL. And and it was too much. Like, it was overwhelming, that that whole media centric culture, the Internet as a newspaper, and so on. And now, you know, you discussed the first wave as, like, Internet 1 point o, the nineties. Maybe the second wave was the social media go or and the app store and mobile and so on. Now I think there's a lot of questions of what about what's coming next, and you discussed it as as the Internet of everything, which which overrides what people call the Internet of things. Maybe discuss what is the Internet of everything. How did we kind of get to this point? We got to this point. The way I I think of it is the first wave really was about building the Internet, and then building awareness of the Internet. And it was hard. As I as I said, it was really a decade to, you know, get traction that were required building the networks, building the software, building the services, and, you know, a lot of stuff and a lot of different partnerships to kinda create it. You know, that is a consumer kind of phenomenon, and not just have the onramps, but educate people why they should get on, which again seems kinda crazy now to talk about it. But for the better part of a decade, it wasn't just about building it. It was about evangelizing wise people should be connected. So that really was the whole first wave, just building the Internet. The second wave has been building on top of the Internet. And it has, as you mentioned, been about apps and services, and Facebook and Twitter and and Snapchat, and Waze are kinda, you know, classic examples of that in the in the second wave. So it's really been about the software. It's really been about the app. It's really been about, you know, viral trying to drive viral adoption. And there will continue to be opportunities like that. But in the 3rd wave, it's it's gonna really be the next step, which is integrating the Internet in seamless, pervasive, ubiquitous ways across our lives. And in the process, I think, really revolutionizing things like how we learn and and how we stay healthy and how we move around and how we manage energy and even, you know, how we eat. And so big sectors of of our lives, big sectors of the economy are up for grabs. And and the question is how much of that comes from, you know, the the innovation comes from the entrepreneurs, the upstarts, the attackers, and how much comes from the larger companies, the incumbents, the the defenders. And I think time will tell, but I do think it's a it it's gonna require a different mindset for both an entrepreneurs and and corporate executives, and that's why I kinda lay out the framework in in this book. And and some of it builds on some of the lessons I I learned as both an entrepreneur in the first wave and an investor in the second wave. But historically, and and as you saw, it seems like, again, the large companies, they almost become bureaucracies unto themselves. Like, they get so, indoctrinated in their culture for better or for worse because focus was important for them at some point while they were building. And, you know, it's always start ups. Like, you have a a great, graphic in the book where job creation really comes from the start ups as opposed to the older companies. They're trying to now do find efficiencies and do layoffs and so on, whereas the start ups are all, by definition, are hiring people because they're starting up and hiring people. Right. So how do you, you know, how can a corporate CEO or or, let's say, even middle management executive, start to say, hey. We should try, I don't know, putting Internet chips on the food to keep track of, you know, the quality of the meat and so on. Like, who's gonna wanna sort of take that chance and and spend that money and do that? Well, I think the smart, large companies will recognize that if they don't lean into the future, they don't take some chances, they're gonna gonna lose their way. I remember one of the most iconic companies when I was growing up was Eastman Kodak. Everybody knew Kodak because it was so dominant in photography. Well, they're now bankrupt. And the reason they're bankrupt is they lost their way in the digital photography revolution. But the odd thing, the surprising thing, in some ways the shocking thing, is they actually invented digital photography, codec. But then the corporate executives were more focused on playing defense, selling chemicals and papers, and they were pretty lucrative at the time. So they didn't really invest in digital photography, didn't want it to happen quickly. And, you know, they got left behind with a whole, I mean, slew of new companies that emerged that not only led the way, but led the way to the point where Kodak went out of business. And so that is, I think, a a good lesson for, for these larger companies. How do you think about the, you know, the future? How do you kinda lean into the future? How do you attract people within your company and create the right culture environment around innovation collaboration within your company? But in particular, how do you build a network around your company? It's not so much the people within your company. It's the other people around your company, including entrepreneurs. So how do you partner with entrepreneurs? Instead of fearing them, embrace them and figure out ways to leverage some of their insights, some of their technology, some of their, you know, products and services. And I think in the 3rd wave, there'll be more of that opportunity. I think the bigger companies will be more in tune about the benefits of partnering with entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurs will start seeing the benefits of partnering with these larger companies because it's not like the 2nd wave about the software, it's about the app. You know, the Facebook didn't really need partners, and Snapchat didn't really need partners. They just needed to launch a cool app and and hope it struck a a chord with lots of people. Obviously, it did. But if you're really gonna revolutionize health care, you kinda have to partner with hospitals and and doctors. If you wanna revolutionize learning, you kinda have to partner with with schools. And so it's gonna require more more partnerships in the 3rd wave, which will kinda force the entrepreneurs to embrace the idea of partnership, but also force the large organizations, whether it be nonprofits or or or corporations, to figure out ways to embrace the entrepreneurs. And that dance is gonna be one of the important aspects of this 3rd wave. You know, it's interesting. You bring up the Kodak example, and you you bring up a quote that, I guess it was the CEO or, no, one of the main guys who the guy who discovered the digital camera said, oh, it'll be about 20 years before the digital photography is mainstream, which is, in retrospect now, was a short time because now they're bankrupt. But at the time, they probably were listening to that and figured, okay. We'll deal with this later. I think a lot of large companies don't see the exponential effect of these rising technologies, sort of the Moore's law effect that these techno like, digital photography might have started off small, but if something's doubling every year, it's gonna get big suddenly so fast at the it's gonna reach this tipping point where it'll be so big so fast, we'll be too late. And the entrepreneurs who are right there at that point won't be too late. And I think that's what happened with AOL versus, like, an H and R Block, say. I think that's right. And even with AOL, there were companies that we were talking to and partnering with, that were intrigued with what was happening, but thought the market was still kinda small, kinda niche y, kinda hobbyist y. AOL at the time was still, you know, pretty small. They said, let's keep an eye on this thing. And if it ever really gets real momentum, we'll go buy it. You know? It just seems like it's still kinda early stage. We we should, you know, we should monitor it, but we shouldn't, you know, be overly kind of, you know, focused on it. And, of course, once we did hit our stride, the growth accelerated so quickly and the valuation accelerated so quickly that was no longer an option. And so I think that is, I think, a lesson, you know, I've learned for, you know, in terms of big companies. How do you make sure you're we really are thinking about the future and don't presume it's gonna be, you know, you know, 20 years down the road? It may it may some of these things will take some time to kinda bake in the oven, but once there is clear evidence of momentum that a a new company, a start up has a better idea, the the support they'll get from investors and and employees and partners really can accelerate that. An example I I mentioned in the book is, you know, Airbnb is now a huge hospitality company with a with a market cap of it's private, but roughly $25,000,000,000 They didn't exist a decade ago. You know, Hilton and Marriott have both been around a half a century, and and they're now worth less than Airbnb. And I have no doubt that the executives at Hilton and and Marriott, when Airbnb came first came on the scene, they said, what's this? This is silly. You know? Who's really gonna rent out, like, an air mattress in their in their apartment or rent out a room in their apartment? This is, like, a ridiculous idea. And, of course, Airbnb struck a chord and expanded into other things. So, you know, you can rent your whole apartment or or in some, you know, vacation homes. And suddenly that went from a dumb idea that was never never had a shot to being a, you know, idea that really has significant, you know, momentum. And now, for example, Airbnb has far more hotel rooms or virtual hotel rooms, people places people can stay in Cuba, for example, than all the hotel companies combined. You know what I mean? Didn't exist a decade ago. So it's these things can happen faster than the larger, you know, kinda incumbent players, you know, think, and they have to be monitoring what's happening. And the best way to do that is to to partner with entrepreneurs in some kind of win win way. And yet and yet, like, the Airbnb is a great example. That's just in the past few years. So it's not like things have changed. They're still it's like the same old that you experienced in nineties that people experienced in the o o's, you know, of 1900. So so okay. So talk about the Internet of Everything. Like, what are what are some of the most what is it? What are some of the most amazing things you've seen with it? You have a lot of examples in the book, but I'd like to hear you talk about it. I think there are a bunch of different sectors, but the, you know, the core idea is that it's gonna the Internet and technology is gonna become really pervasive and ubiquitous. And so it's not gonna just be in a in a few places like we saw in the first wave and the second wave sectors like communications and media being being disrupted. It's gonna disrupted. It's gonna really impact, really, every aspect of our our lives. So it starts with that theme. And then so how does technology, how does the Internet improve the way we deliver health so that we have, kind of better health outcomes with more convenience at lower cost? If you go to a doctor's office now, it's, you know, about the same as what 20 years ago. You you would you would not know that there has been an Internet revolution if you if you walk into your your doctor. There's some examples in some places where that's not the case, but the vast majority of people, nothing is nothing is changed. Similarly You're right, though. Like like, paperwork is all over the place. They have the same Manila folders with my patient records. Why it seems like there have been a lot of companies that tried to kind of, consolidate all that into software and networking. Why has that not occurred yet? Like, why can't they part because doctors' offices maybe are so, segmented. Maybe that's why there's too many partnerships to happen. Well, I think that's part of the my, you know, whole theme of the 3rd wave. But, a, it's it's hard, and it's gonna take time. So perseverance is is important. You know, b, you can't go alone. You need to you need to partner. And for the start ups to partner with these larger organizations, they're gonna get their foot in the door with, UnitedHealth or or Cleveland Clinic or, Mayo or others. It's hard because, you know, it's hard to figure out a way to get in. It's hard to figure out a way to establish that partnership. There are a lot of interesting technologies, interesting product services that just don't get traction because they're not able to get those kind of partnerships. And those And partnerships is a key part of how an entrepreneur can succeed now in this 3rd wave as opposed to 2nd wave and first wave. Well, I'd say the the first wave partnerships were important. You know, the and part of part of what why reason I wrote the book is some of the I realized some of the things that were important in the first wave weren't important, particularly important in the in the second wave, but will be important again in the 3rd wave. So partnerships were critical for us. We wouldn't have not gotten off the ground without, partnerships. Perseverance was important. It took us, as I mentioned, a a a decade. And policy was important, engaging with with government because there the government helped to create and fund the Internet and and figured out when and how to commercialize the Internet and figured out how to break up the phone companies, unleash competition and telecommunications that enabled, you know, the Internet. You know, their government played an important role in getting that that going, not so much in the in the in the second wave when it was more about apps, but it's gonna become important again in the in the 3rd wave and ties back to your health care question. Even some of the things that were in the Affordable Care Act that was passed by by the congress is unleashing some of the innovation and and and and technology requiring, electronic medical records to be adopted and and pro providing some funding for doctors' offices to to do that. So I I I think that's the lesson to me is that that, you know, entrepreneurship in this 3rd wave is gonna require a different mindset and a different playbook. And things like perseverance are gonna matter more. Things like partnerships are gonna matter more. Things like perseverance are gonna matter more. And it wasn't that important, those 3 p's in the second wave. It was in the first wave, which is why, you know, some of the stories I tell about the early days with AOL, the early days of the first wave is I do that because I think it helps inform entrepreneurs, innovators thinking about the 3rd wave because they're, you know, Shakespeare ones wrote us the past as prologue, and I think that's true as we think about the 3rd wave. And so so, again, what do you see as some of the, I mean, you mentioned health care. What are some companies you've seen now that have just, like, blown your mind in terms of how they're using this next phase of the Internet? And, again, just to be clear, this next phase of the Internet is not just about connecting people. It's about connecting everything. It's like, for instance, I'll just give a basic example, a traffic light seeing that you're speeding and then sending that signal to the police headquarters, then you get mailed the ticket and so on. This is this is all now going through the Internet. It's not like these disparate, pieces of software. They're all it's all happening on one platform. And and, again, not just about connecting humans, but connecting things. Right. Exactly. And the whole Internet of Things is really about devices and sensors, both in terms of things consumers might have with them as well as things that are in enterprises and even things that are built into infrastructure in cities. The whole idea of smart cities that a lot of companies are What does a smart city mean? Smart city basically means you can figure out ways to know where people are and where people are going in a way that allows you to be smarter in terms of managing, you know, things like, you know, lights when people are driving their their their car or having a better planning in terms of how many, you know, people you need to be ready for on that, you know, subway or, you know, if you do have a a challenge, some kind of crisis and need to move people around, what are smarter ways to to move people around? And these things are are, you know, are tricky and actually sometimes a little scary. There can be a little bit of a big brother aspect to it and, and a privacy aspect to it. And I think that's why more dialogue is gonna be important in this in this 3rd wave between the innovators and sort of the policymakers. But going back to some specifics of the 3rd wave, in health care, there's really three parts of health care. You know, what do we do to stay healthy? You know, how do we manage chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes? And how do we deal with with life threatening disease. And there are dozens of startups in each of those three areas that are doing interesting things on this. How do we stay healthy? There's some some wearable devices. Fitbit, obviously, become popular now as successful, you know, public company, but there are dozens of people doing things like that. Dozens of of of new ideas that are out there in terms of the wellness side of things. How do you keep people healthy? Dozens of companies that are doing things around chronic managing chronic disease. The way most people manage things like diabetes hasn't really changed in in in decades. And there are a lot of innovative things that are happening, and a lot of accelerators, incubators just focused on on on that, including, you know, Rock Health. It's been one of the ones that's been, you know, quite successful. And similarly, on the on the on the third piece, how do you be more targeted about things? Right now, if you go to one of the most successful largest kind of cancer, you know, centers in the in the in the country, MD Anderson, they say 25% of all diagnosis are are wrong. You know? They they don't get it right the first time, not MD Anderson. But when people come to MD Anderson for a second opinion, you know, 25% of the time, they reverse the opinion that was originally given. That's amazing because, of course, basic advice is always get a second opinion. I didn't really know that you needed to get a second opinion. And and some of that is because, particularly, if you're in hospital in some, you know, rural area, they don't have a particular sophistication about brain cancer or something else. They're they're gonna take a shot at it. They're gonna obviously do the best they can, but they don't have the tools. They don't have the expertise. And so going to, you know, centers of excellence where they do have that, it it it changes. And then you can, you know, do some things with with, you know, DNA now that allow you to be more precise in terms of what drugs work and don't work. Most drugs most people take actually don't work for them. They work for some people, but they don't work for everybody. And we kinda have this kinda one size fits all kind of approach. So there's just gonna be enormous innovation in in in in health care. I also think there's gonna be enormous innovation in education. There are obviously a lot of things that have happened in the 1st wave and the 2nd wave around different learning and a lot of apps, and it all had a had a had a role in in in some of that. But the reality is for most kids in most classrooms and most parts of the country, despite the fact they have computers in the classroom in in in many places, The process of learning is about the same as it was. Yet most kids learn differently. They don't all learn the same. And teachers, if they have a better sense of how different kids are are doing in terms of different, you know, kind of lessons and and can customize things in a more personalized adaptive way using technology. I think that'd be helpful. Similarly, in universities, there are a lot of universities that are now, you know, testing the idea of flipped classrooms. And maybe instead of having the professor stand at the front and give the same lecture they've been giving for decades, they actually tape that, and you watch the video in your dorm the night before. When you come to class, you actually have a discussion with the professor and your and your, you know, fellow students. And so how do you have a much more interactive discussion around around the, you know, the topics and how to use technology to enable that more kind of adaptive personalized approach to to learning. So there's just there there are innovative things that have been happening around the edges, but most of these sectors of of the economy and, frankly, most of these important aspects of our lives haven't changed that much in the in the first wave or the second wave, but I think they are gonna change in in this 3rd wave. And the entrepreneurs are gonna lead the way as they always do, kinda challenging the status quo and and kind of, you know, pushing pushing ahead. But there's also role particularly in these sectors, for partnerships with some of the big companies already there and and dialogue with governments who are gonna be involved as as as regulators, in some cases, customers in of these sectors. I know some entrepreneurs don't wanna hear that because it's kinda scary to think about partnerships. It's hard to think about partnerships. It's scary to think about government that's slowing down. Talk to the government. Like, you can't That is very hard. You can't call them up and say, hey. I'd like to meet the czar of the Internet of everything like there is none. Correct. And and and so it's be frustrating. And then, again, this is part of the motivation to to write the book. It sort of lays out a framework for what I think will play out in the next, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, and some thoughts on why that will happen the way it will, but also some ideas on how entrepreneurs need to change their playbook, how corporate executives need to change their playbook, and how government regulators need to change their playbook. Everybody needs to dance a little different dance in this in this third wave. But, you know, it's not just entrepreneurs that need to change their playbook. It's basically everybody needs to change their playbook. Because if you're sitting in a cubicle listening to this, for instance, your company is about to go through massive transformations in the next 10 years. And so you're sitting there and you're listening to this, and you're thinking, well, how can I get involved? How can I either start a company, or how can I improve my life? What can I do listening to this, and what should I start looking at? What are kind of areas where maybe, entrepreneurs to be should start looking at? That's a great point. I think everybody kinda has to bring a kind of an entrepreneurial what's gonna happen next mindset, and everybody needs to really try to do the best they can to manage their own career. When I was, you know, kinda coming out of college, you know, the the history was, like, my dad had one job, worked for one company for 60 years. You know, I worked for several companies. You worked for Procter and Gamble and Pizza Hut. I worked for Procter and Gamble and Pizza, then Control Video startup that then kinda morphed into into into AOL. So I had 3 jobs in 3 years. My parents thought I would completely kinda, you know, gone nowhere fast. Well, now there's some people who have 3 jobs with 3 different companies in the same day, you know, the whole gig economy. They might work for Uber, then Lyft, and then, you know, Instacart or or or what have you. So the notion of work has changed. Now 34% of Americans are freelancers, either freelancing on specific projects for companies and and maybe they have a half a dozen different, you know, different organizations they work with, or some cases, like the gig economy, freelancing for, you know, Friday folks in the same week or even the in the same day. So the whole idea of work is is you know, even the even the the government reports job statistics every every month, but it's it hasn't really changed in a half a century even though the nature of work has changed in a half century. So there's a lot of things happening. As you say, it's not just about it's part you know, the book is not intended to be just a business book. It's sort of a here's what's gonna happen next, and you gotta figure this out for yourself irrespective of what you're you're doing. How do you position yourself for this future? What what what's the right way to think about it? But starts with having a framework. And I I should say that even the title of the 3rd wave, I didn't come up with. I I read a book when I was in college by Alvin Toffer called The 3rd Wave, in 1980, and I was mesmerized by it. He kinda laid out a framework for what's gonna happen next. And I I thought it made sense, and and he talked at the time about the electronic cottage and other things. Again, the Internet, it didn't exist then. It was not available to consumers. It took a decade after that book was written before. It even was legal to connect consumers or businesses to the Internet. So it was it was very futuristic. You know? But I read that Toffler 3rd wave, and I I I just knew it was gonna happen. And that then gave me a framework in terms of what was gonna happen over the next 10 or 20 years, which led me to want to not just kinda take the traditional corporate path, but do something that was more entrepreneur, which ultimately led me with with 2 others to cofound AOL in in 1985. I don't think that would happen without reading The Third Wave. So part of my goal with writing this book and part of my reason to even name it the, you know, the Third Wave was to, you know, show some appreciation for how Toffler inspired me. And I was, you know, was kind enough to read the book and provide some some comments on it and what they call in the publishing world is, you know, a blurb for it. So for me, it was a little bit of kinda closing that that that circle. But I'm hopeful there's somebody out there, maybe listening to this podcast, who who can get the same inspiration from my 3rd wave that I got from the Toffler 3rd wave now nearly 40 years ago. Well, it's interesting because AOL obviously was a was, you know, a great business. Like you said, half the Internet's traffic rose to a $150,000,000,000, valuation. But then what happened was many smaller companies using that and the Internet as a platform were created with, you know, with nice exits of 5,000,000, 10,000,000, 50,000,000, 100,000,000, and so on. And I kinda see what you're suggesting here is that there's gonna be the Internet of everything. The platform sort of created already in some sense just by the, you know, the fact that the networking is pervasive. The Internet is pervasive. But now there's lots of smaller opportunities to create these niche companies in these different spaces, health care, food, transportation, and so on. So and you you actually mentioned one company that I thought was fascinating because you don't need tech technological expertise to make money. It's the, company where teachers, pay for each other's curriculums. So what what was that? It was Teachers for Pay. What was that, the company? It was basically a a company that that had the idea that every teacher is is kinda making up their own curriculum, making up their own syllabus, making up their own own coursework. Why don't you create a platform where everybody can post their stuff, and then the other people can share it or, in this case, they actually pay something so that the lesson plan you created or the course material you created could be available by by to to other people? And so it was a it's the idea of creating essentially a marketplace for content for for teachers. It's it's an amazing way for teachers to get involved in this gig economy because teachers don't make these huge salaries. But you mentioned 4 millionaires have come out of this platform so far. And you're gonna see a lot more of those kind of things. There's enormous education innovation happening. A lot of, frankly, is coming from teachers. I saw this. I do these Rise of the Rest bus tours around the country because I I believe as well, there's great things happening in in Silicon Valley and New York and Boston and sort of the the usual places. There are also great things happening in cities all across the country, and that dynamic around the rise of rest will build steam, I think, in the in the in the 3rd wave for a whole host of reasons. But one of the cities that there's enormous innovation around education, is New Orleans. And the reason is 10 years ago, New Orleans, as everybody knows, got devastated by Katrina. It really almost wiped the city out. A lot of people have left. All the schools had to shut down. And and in some ways, it turned out to, in an odd way, to be a blessing because something like 70% of the schools at the time were had failing grades. But they had to restart them, and and they ended up putting charter schools in place. They got thousands of people coming to New Orleans, including from Teach For America. And many stayed, and having that experience of teaching now have a better sense of what teachers need and what students need. And there are dozens of EdTech startups now in in New Orleans. I talk about some examples in in in the book. So this is a great example of people who are close to the problem or they understand the problem, in this case, the environment with with Classroom, who are figuring out ways to be be their own entrepreneurs, create startups to solve some of those those problems. We're seeing that not just in New Orleans, but Detroit and Pittsburgh and Kansas City and Nashville and Minneapolis and and Des Moines. There's really innovation happening all across the country. I think that's gonna be one of the great phenomenons of this 3rd wave. Right. And it's not just Silicon Valley. In fact, even, even Mark Cuban has said the best thing you can do now is, invest outside of Silicon Valley and then sell your company to Silicon Valley because that's where the valuations are higher, but you can invest more cheaply outside of Silicon Valley. Correct. I think I think there's great things happening in Silicon Valley. There are great things happening, you know, here in New York, but there's so much money chasing those companies. Valuations do tend to be quite a bit higher. Yet when the companies are successful and either get, you know, acquired or go public, nobody says, oh, you're you're like ExactTarget, for example, is a company based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and and Salesforce bought them for $3,000,000,000. They didn't say, oh, you know, ExactTarget, you're only worth $2,000,000,000 because you're in Indianapolis. They said it's worth $3,000,000,000. We're Under Armour, now a very successful kinda athletic wear company using technology. You know, worth 20, $25,000,000,000 and and and going after Nike. They're in Baltimore, Maryland. You know, they're not they're not where would you think they would be? You know, nobody would guess they're in in Baltimore. But when and when they got started, Kevin Plank would would say it was really hard to get started, really hard to raise the capital because people weren't funding startups in in Baltimore. But now that they've been successful, there's a whole ecosystem, you know, building around Under Armour and other other companies. And and we're seeing this really all over the country. It's really something I'm very encouraged by because if people wanna be in Silicon Valley, go for it. But if people wanna be in Detroit because they wanna be part of the rebirth of Detroit, maybe they're from Detroit, now they can be in Detroit. And there's a start up scene in Detroit that didn't exist, you know, 10 years ago and capital focused on startups in Detroit that didn't exist, you know, 10 years ago. And the connection between this rise of the rest and the 3rd wave, I think, is gonna be quite interesting because many of the big sectors of the economy aren't in California and New York. Most of the 75% of Fortune 500 companies are in the middle of the country. And so partnerships matter, and you really wanna revolutionize, you know, farming, for example. You know, you wanna create an ag tech company. You know, you could do that in in San Francisco. You could do that in in here in Manhattan, but you also could do that in in Louisville, which has a great kind of farming ecosystem. Or in Saint Louis, companies like Monsanto are there. They have a 100,000 PhDs who understand agriculture. I'll bet there are a bunch of startups that in the 3rd wave of the next decade that that come out of Monsanto. It might be a 100 ag tech startups, you know, 10 years from now in in Saint Louis. And, they probably will be more successful because they have an understanding of that industry, and they potentially could be partners with, you know, existing players in the industry like Amanciano. Well, it's interesting. You know, you're a great example of someone who didn't have experience in the area you became successful in. I mean, you were at Procter and Gamble. You were, director of marketing at Pizza Hut, and then suddenly you became the biggest Internet guy out there. And what what should let's say, again, I'm listening to this. I'm thinking, my gosh. This is gonna be a $1,000,000,000,000 opportunity. How can I get involved? What should I start you know, obviously, they should read the 3rd wave of your book to kind of see the outline of what's happening. What else? What do you read? Like, how do you kind of do your research in these areas? What should somebody read to kind of say, okay. Now I'm I'm getting equipped with the resources to to go out there and do something? I think it's a mix of things. First, I think entrepreneurs are great, you know, pattern recognizers. They they they're paying attention to something, and they're seeing some trends develop, and they start connecting the dots. And they say, ah, I I see there's something there. So you have to be kinda looking at what's happening on the periphery. And it it depends what your passion is. It depends what your area of focus is. You know, some people might say, I just wanna be part of the the revolution in food. They they believe that big food companies are gonna come under pressure because they generally are offering unhealthy options to people. I wanna focus on that. Well, pay attention to what's happening in that sector. Follow the blogs. Go to the conferences. What you know, you have to follow people on Twitter that are doing innovative things in those in those places. Over time, you'll get a point of view about what's likely to happen, and you'll make some connections with people. Maybe some of those people could join you in in starting a company that can, you know, kinda take on that. And it could be true in any sector. So part of it is figuring out what what part of this you're most passionate about, you're most interested in, and then diving into it. And there is an interesting dynamic, and you kind of allude to it, that sometimes the benefit of of being an entrepreneur who doesn't have any experience in the industry is you can bring a fresh perspective. You don't have any kind of fixed ideas of what's gonna happen. And that is true, and that does enable a lot of different, innovation. But I think in the 3rd wave, ignorance is not gonna be as successful as a strategy, or naivete is not gonna be successful as a strategy. I do believe, you know, that that education, for example, there's a certain culture to it. If you don't understand what a teacher, you know, is dealing with, you probably aren't gonna be as successful in connecting with a teacher, similarly with a with a doctor, similarly with a with a chef. So there's some balance that's gonna be required where you bring that naivete, that energy, that sense of possibility, that somebody who doesn't understand the the industry would might have and and marry that with and balance that with some understanding of the people and the cultures and the and the perspectives. And so building the right teams in the 3rd wave, I think, is gonna be very important. I've I've learned entrepreneurship as a as a team sport. It's one of the themes I really focus on in the in in the book, and it's gonna require diverse perspectives. So you have some people who bring that technology engineering perspective. Some people bring that consumer marketing perspective. Some people bring that industry specific, whether it be health or learning or food or what have you, you know, perspective, and make sure your team really has a, you know, the right mix of skills, the right right mix of of perspectives. And so so what what, books would you recommend they read today, like, starting now? You know, what to inspire them to get them going? So, again, the 3rd wave, I highly recommend. It's a great Thank you. It's your story mixed with your the ideas of the future. What's next? I again, I think it really depends on your specific interest. There are a lot of great books on on on entrepreneurship and technology, trends, But I would encourage people to focus on some area of passion and and say, do you what what is the thing that over the next 10 or 20 years you really wanna focus on? Do you really have a sense that's gonna change? You have a perspective on how it might change and dig into the, you know, a more specific way into some of those. That might be reading books. That might be reading blogs. That might be, you know, talking to people. That might be going to conference. Whatever it takes to become more familiar with what's happening in that sector, what some of the trends are, what some of the patterns that are starting to coalesce are. And as I said earlier, I think if you're doing that, you will bump into people and ideas that will help give you, you know, clarity and give you some And like you said, give you a point of view. I think that's the critical thing. You have to have a point of view. And people you know, don't necessarily know on day 1 what that is because they they don't know enough to be smart about it. So they they, occasionally, you might just have a point of view that that you just get lucky on, but more often, it's informed by some, you know, interaction with other people and sometimes interaction with the marketplace, what we now call pivots. You think this is gonna work. It doesn't quite work. You try this, and eventually, you have a point of view of what's gonna, you know, gonna actually help. That was true with AOL. We it was like, it really was a decade of trying this and trying that. The first time we tried failed miserably. I remember the the I went to a board meeting. I was now 26 years old, something like that. One of the venture capitalists, actually, Frank Cofield, who helped found Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Buyers, one of the largest, you know, most successful venture firms in the, really, the last half century. He was in that boardroom and said, jeez. You would have thought they would have shoplifted more than that. You know, the sales were so bad. And so that company, you know, was was struggling. But from that, we created something where we were partnering with PC manufacturers, Commer, and Apple and Tandy and IBM to essentially create private label, what some people call kind of, you know, white label kinda online services. We did that for a few years. And then we had to pivot again in part because Apple pulled out of the deal we had with them to create Apple Inc, and we had to figure out what to do next. And that led us to kinda rename Apple Inc personal edition, America Online, and and and then AOL. And and then while we as we were talking about earlier, we said we're gonna focus more on not on on on the con on the community side, not just content and and commerce, and we really kinda doubled down on on that. And then we're gonna figure out a way to, you know, really attract lots of people, which is when we came up with the idea of a free trial, giving out lots of discs with a free month to get people you know, lower the barrier to get them to try. All those things were experiments over a decade. Some worked, some didn't work. We we just kept going. We kept persevering. And eventually, we had a point of view that this was now about to take off. And that's when we kinda slammed down the accelerator, ex you know, kind of, you know, expanded our investment in partnership, expanded our investment in marketing, and and went from a couple 100000, you know, subscribers after 7 or 8 years to 25,000,000 subscribers 7 or 8 years later. It was a point of view. When that growth was happening and, obviously, both the growth of the company and the growth of your wealth and success and so on were happening, how did your life change? Like, how did you kind of, deal with all this this growth that was happening in your life? It was it was a challenge, but I always, I think, bring a kind of a even keeled perspective to it. You know, people would would, kinda sometimes joke about me as being kind of the shock absorber in the company. I try to kinda kinda even things out a little bit. Sometimes people were overly optimistic. Sometimes even get c**ky about, you know, kind of our position, and I'd remind them of some of the, the, you know, competitive risks. And I'm sort of delegating paranoia in that sense. And there are some years where people were giving up on us, and and people were kinda down and and deflated. And I'd remind people, you know, why this is a journey. You know, it's important to battle worth worth fighting to try to bring them back up. So I tried to kinda, you know, both for the company and for myself, kinda have a more even keeled approach that wasn't quite as, you know, big highs, big lows, but a little little more, you know, steady as as you go. But as it got bigger and it's had, you know, more success, it was a mix of, you know, the challenge of running a company with thousands of people, not dozens of people, but also some, you know, real comfort and and and, and I felt great about the fact that we'd, for a decade, had been believing that someday would happen, that someday we'd break through, someday we'd people understand the benefits of of of getting connected. Finally, it was happening. And so this this dream we had that that it felt felt elusive for a decade. It just seemed like, you know, it was gonna happen someday, but, you know, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. But, boy, that light seemed flickering, and it seemed distant. Finally, you know, we had arrived. Finally, the Internet was becoming something that had mainstream success. So I think that that that the key lesson I try to communicate in this book is that perseverance matters. So there was many people that had this and similar ideas that we had and and tried different things, but gave up. They just said, this is not working. We we gotta go do something else. Maybe go back to working for a safer kind of big company. But we our team at AOL believed, and we we stuck with it. And, eventually, we broke through. And and then you made what is, in my view, clearly the smartest business transaction in history. I mean, you were understanding that the Internet was not peaking as a technology, but was clearly at that time, 1999, peaking as, the stock market phenomenon at that moment. And so you went out and essentially acquired the largest media company in the world. I mean, they had 10,000,000,000 in profits versus your 1,000,000,000 in profits. They dwarfed you in terms of revenues, but because of your market position, you were able to acquire them rather than vice versa. And you had looked at other Internet companies, but felt that was not diversification enough. But then people sort of took the reverse view that that it was the worst transaction history because they were looking at it from the Time Warner point of view and the short term thinking of the stock market then. How are you feeling then? Like, here you had been on top of the world a few years earlier, and then suddenly, the the media was, like, blasting you and AOL. It must have been painful at some point despite success. It was painful. We had we had a yeah. It was, as I say, a tough decade to get going. Finally, the 2nd decade, we had real traction, real momentum. I mean, it kind of had arrived. And then a few years later, you know, things were in decline again. And so it was it was frustrating, and I I learned a lot from that. And I think people learn from their challenges, their their their problems, their failures more than they do from their their their their wins and successes. So I was pretty candid in the book about kinda what happened and why I think it happened, what some of the the takeaways for me were, but it certainly was painful. It was it was, you know, frustrating that we had we had worked so hard to get to this point. And then, you know, kinda the air was coming out of the balloon, and and it was it was frustrating and disappointing. And what what do you think you you learned? Well, one is it's important to people and culture, that the idea of the merger with Time Warner, you mentioned sort of the financial diversification, which was true. I think we've gone from a, you know, $20,000,000,000 market cap to a $160,000,000,000 market cap over 2 or 3 years. And there was, you know, at that point, we thought more downside risk than upside potential. And so merging with a company that had a a much larger mix of businesses, I think, in in in in total, as I recall, it was about 40,000,000,000 of of revenue. And as you say, 10,000,000,000 of of of profit that that would create a diversity that you know, in terms of portfolio diversification would be good. But, also, strategically, we we thought it was valuable because it'd give AOL a path to broadband and give Time Warner a path to a strong digital future. So the idea of the merger made sense then. I I think it still made sense. The execution of the merger was terrible. And I I often have cited in doing a book a Thomas Edison quote from a century ago, vision without execution is hallucination. You know? The vision of the merger, you know, made sense. The execution didn't. And it ultimately came down to people and and and and culture, that different people are thinking about things in different ways. There was a lot of animosity about, you know, the Internet and and about AOL, a lot of frustration about it, a lot particularly after the market turned and the and the stock went went, went south and people were were mad. I understand that. But instead of doing something positive about it, which is to figure out how to capitalize on the assets under the, you know, the under one roof, you know, there was a lot of, you know, infighting and and people kinda talking past each other. So the to me, the key lesson is it goes back to, you know, kinda people and culture. And and I've tried to take some of those lessons and apply them to some of the companies we've invested in at Revolution, particularly as they scale. How do you make sure you get the the team culture right? How do you make sure you have the right people on the bus in the right seats working together in the right way, all driving, you know, in the in towards the same direction, which is easy to say, hard to do. Yeah. Because how do you get the culture right? Like, do you hire people different from you, sort of like Lincoln's team of rivals, or do do you hire people with similar vision to you? Like, what do you what do you do as you're kind of going from, like, 10 employees to a 1000 employees? It's a mix. I'd say it's sort of 10 to 50 to a 100 to, you know, 250 to to a1000 to you know, different there are different steps, and you do different things. And it is tricky because it is a balance. Just as you you sort of say, you you do need different perspectives. If you're just hiring people like you, you know, that don't really have different different views of things, and then you don't have a great team. At the same time, you have people that have violently different, you know, opinions and particularly just think about business and think about teamwork or think about, you know, strategy in a in a completely different way, and you can't really figure out a way to kinda bring them together and drive collaboration, that doesn't work either. So it's a tricky balance be between it. How do you continue to kinda lean in the future, figure out what the company might look like a couple years down the road, and try to get the right team in place before you get to that place, not after you get to that place? But do it with a sensitivity where you really want people that really are passionate about the, you know, the the idea and and have a shared vision of that idea, recognize that different skills, different perspectives are important, and and focus more on the team dynamic. Like, how do we win this together? The other thing that I mentioned in the in the book is the lesson I took away from now, it's over 2 decades ago, and the US Olympic team in basketball was these unbelievable athletes. And everybody said, you know, for sure, this dream team they called it was gonna end up, you know, winning the gold medal. And they lost relatively early to Lithuania. And the reason is while they each had great skills, great talents as individual performers, they didn't play well as a team. They just were used to being kind of the stars on the on on their own teams, and they weren't really focused on on the team dynamic and ultimately got crushed. And so to me, that's it's it was another example that you gotta get the right skills. You obviously gotta get the right perspectives, and I think diversity of perspective is gonna become more important in the in the third way. But you gotta figure out a way to bring them together as as one team that has has one mission and is working together in a in a aligned, kinda united way even though they bring different perspectives. Ultimately, when they lock into a plan, they all march ahead to execute that plan. You know, it's interesting because I there was a study done recently about company all the companies from the nineties and who survived into the o o's, you know, after the Internet crash. And some companies were identified as star culture companies, where they like, the dream team that hired stars, and others were identified as commitment cultures where the focus was more on not necessarily growth or stars, but, how do we make sure we how how do we focus on building a similar commitment like a family and to survive? A 100% of those companies survived, and almost a 100% of the star culture companies failed. Right. So it's interesting that the key thing was, you know, how do you build a a kind of common commitment even if it's a diverse set of values and and so on? And I think the the good example of the evolution of this is Apple, that Apple was is is a rare company that actually was a leader in the 1st wave and the 2nd wave and potentially will be again in in the 3rd wave. And, obviously, it was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak now 40 years ago. They were pioneers in in in the early early days of personal computers, kinda lost their way a little bit. You know, Steve Jobs got fired, and and and that was that was part of it. There's some other issues going on. And he was kinda walking in the wilderness for a bunch of years, kind of, you know, did, create another company next and, you know, acquired Pixar and some other things, and, and eventually came back to the company. When he came back to the company, he brought, you know, kind of a new perspective of of not just about the vision of where this is going, but a new appreciation for the dynamics around getting the right teams focused on the on the on the right products. And and I remember when he called me when he went back into Apple, must have been now 20 years or so ago. And at the time, Apple had a 2% market share, and most people were giving on for debt. And so Apple was a pioneer in the in the personal computer era, got left behind, is is now an irrelevant company and probably will go under. But he was able to take not just the the the Apple brand, but some of the initial products they had and then some of the people they had and figure out a way to focus them partly by doing stopping some things that they were doing on a new set of of products. And now Apple is one of the most valuable, technology companies in the world and has has really had an enormous kind of, you know, resurgence. But part of what he's tried to do, particularly in the last decade, which I think was critically important because, obviously, he got, you know, sick and and sadly passed away, is how do you create a company that's not so much about Steve Jobs? It's more about Apple. And that's tricky. And, you know, the jury's out in terms of where they'll be 5 or 10 years from now, but I think he did a great job of figuring out a way to institutionalize, some of the culture of Apple. So while, of course, you know, his his loss was a big loss to Apple, big loss to the world, but Apple is continuing to be an innovative company because it was beyond one person. But wait. You started this, anecdote by saying you remember when he called you. So why did Steve Jobs call you? Well, at the time AOL was the dominant Internet company, and he wanted a partnership with us. He wanted us to develop a new version of our Macintosh software for, for, you know, to be supportive of the Macintosh, which he was struggling, as I said, with with his 2% market share. And we ended up actually licensing our AIM technology to them to create a a a I think a server thing that's called iChat, which we've never done before. You know? So it was way to be you know, try to be supportive of the the rebirth of Apple. We I remember having, you know, lunch with him a year or 2 later, be you know, when he was talking, it was probably a year before they launched, the iPad and iTunes, talking about his view of digital music at a time, we were, you know, but we'd already done the merger with Time Warner and and Warner Music. And and some of the assets we had there were very important to that. And we talked about working together on on, basically having a a l do the the what became the iTunes store, which didn't end up happening. So, you know, we we I was I was I wanted to be as supportive as I could of of the of the, you know, of Steve's efforts to take this to turn the company around. To be honest, I I I I didn't expect him to have the success he did. It was much more of a of a turnaround than I than I would have imagined, and it just shows it's possible, but it's hard. You know, so so you've been kind of at the ground floor of all these historical events in in technology over the next 20 years. I think that's you know, not only did you call, let's say, the consumer Internet in the late eighties that was gonna happen over the next decade, But then you sort of, at the peak, made the right decisions for your shareholders and investors and customers to kind of keep AOL sustainable and alive. And with Revolution, you've done well. Now with this book, The 3rd Wave you've outlined, really, what you see as the next $1,000,000,000,000 opportunities and how people can get involved in it. I it was a great book because it interweaves, again, your personal story through it. So I I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and and talking about it. And, you know, are you are you happy now? You've you've been there, done it. You've people have trashed you, have have put you on the cover of Time Magazine, been across the whole spectrum. Are things good? How's life? Things are actually great. I I I love what I'm doing now. I have the opportunity to work with with dozens of entrepreneurs at Revolution. I meet thousands of entrepreneurs around the country, Buzzy's Rise the Rest efforts doing a lot of great things. To mention, like, I have a friend who went to a start up weekend. You organized all these start up weekends. So I learned he learned more in a weekend than 4 years of college education. So I do see, again, in terms of education, these types of do it yourself events are almost better than 4 years of reading and being lectured too. You know? So kind of is an interesting thing about education, but but but go on. No. I'm just enjoying what I'm doing, including what we're doing on the with the Case Foundation. We really care about things like impact investing, you know, care about, you know, inclusive entrepreneurship. How do you kinda level the playing field so everybody who has an idea has a has a shot? I have the you know, I'm gratified that people take my calls and listen to me in Washington, so I've been able to work together with Republicans and Democrats on some high school. You went to high school, Barack Obama. I did go to high school. I was a senior when he was a freshman, so we weren't really in class together. We played basketball a couple of times. But I've now lived in Washington for 30 years and, you know, with different administrations and different, you know, kinda, you know, kinda Republicans or Democrats kinda controlling the house or the the senate or the White House. And so I've tried to take a step back and not really focused on or engaged in on politics, just focused on on policy, and I I will continue to, you know, to do that. So through revolution, investing in the next generation of of entrepreneurs through the Case Foundation, trying to kinda level the playing field so that really opportunity is more broadly distributed. And through some of the work on the policy, doing what I can to try to make sure we remain the most innovative entrepreneurial nation. I I I have in a ball, and it's it's fun to do it, and it's fun to actually finally write a book and and have it out there that takes some of these ideas that I've been developing for the last 30 years, both the things that worked and and and why they worked and things that failed and why they failed. And, hopefully, that will be helpful, and instructive to the the next generation of entrepreneurs, the next generation of innovators who really wanna, you know, take the Internet to the next level in the in the third wave. Well, thanks again, Steve. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. It's fun. Yeah.