Steve Case

“When I first got started in the late '70s, early '80s, and first was thinking about the interactive world, I believed so fervently that it was the next big thing, I thought it would happen quickly.”

“From a relatively early age I got interested in business.”

“And I'd say one of the great lessons I've learned over the past couple of decades, from a management perspective, is that really when you come down to it, it really is all about people and all about leadership.”

“My father still is a lawyer, and my mom was a teacher and then later a career counselor.”

“Most of the people who had PCs did not have modems and could not use those PCs as communicating devices. They really were using them for spreadsheets or word processing or storing recipes or playing games or what have you.”

“And what we did with this new company in 1985 is we did start focusing on PCs instead of video game machines, because we learned the hard lesson about bringing a product to market in a consumer world where it's very expensive to build a brand and get distribution and so forth.”

“If you're doing something new you've got to have a vision. You've got to have a perspective. You've got to have some north star you're aiming for, and you just believe somehow you'll get there, which kind of gets to the passion point.”

“So we believed that strategic alliances and partnerships were critical, and we did that for five years.”

“We don't want to turn the TV into a computer.”

“Nobody should have to be a systems integrator to make a convergence network work in their home.”

“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.”

“I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii.”

“One of the biggest challenges we had in the first decade was not that many people had personal computers. There weren't that many people to sell to, and it was hard to identify them.”

“The idea that maybe you don't have to own a car if you only need one occasionally may catch on, just like time-sharing caught on in real estate.”

“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.”

“Nowadays people seem to switch schools, either because they have to, and certain schools only serve certain grades, or because they move to a different place or have some particular interest, but I was in the same school for 13 years.”

“You have to get along with people, but you also have to recognize that the strength of a team is different people with different perspectives and different personalities.”

“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.”

“So you have to force yourself out of a comfort zone and really try to figure out what are the key ingredients, the key skill sets, the key perspectives that are necessary, and then figure out a way to attract the very best people to fill those particular roles.”

“Because I do think - not just in building AOL - but just the world in which we live is a very confusing, rapidly changing world where technology has accelerated.”