Steve Case and America Online: A Perfect Combination

Steve Case is an American entrepreneur more popularly known for co-founding America Online (AOL). He was AOL’s former CEO and chairman until his retirement in 2003. Since then, Case has been into several business ventures through Revolution, his investment company. He also chairs the Case Foundation.

In 2011, Case worked for President Barack Obama’s government as Chairman of the Startup America Partnership. He was also a part of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. He was a guest at CNBC program Squawk Box where he was seen sharing his initiatives for job creation and entrepreneurship growth in American on behalf of the government agencies he represented.

Case was born as Stephen McConnell Case on August 21, 1958 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He finished his political science degree in 1980 at Williams College in Massachusetts. His first job was with Procter & Gamble as assistant brands manager. After two years with P&G, Case moved to Pizza Hut Inc. as new pizza marketing manager.

Case’s brother Dan introduced him to Bill von Meister in January 1983. At that time, von Meister was the CEO of Control Video Corporation. Control Video was doing a marketing drive for the video game console of Atari 2600 called GameLine. Case became the marketing consultant of Control Video after the meeting.

Some remnants of the ailing Control Video established Quantum Computer Services. Case became its Executive Vice President. In 1991, Case became Quantum’s CEO. While at the company, Case was responsible for the online service Quantum Link (Q-Link). Later, Quantum also developed AppleLink (for Apple PCs) and PC-Link (for IBM PCs). In 1991, Quantum was changed to America Online. The services of Apple and PC were merged and subscribers hit the 1 million mark in 1994.

AOL became the pioneer of the social media concept. Since day one, AOL featured chatrooms, forums and instant messaging. Case believed that the killer app is the community of people where there is interaction with each other. This became AOL’s main driver. In the years that followed, AOL’s user based increased in leaps and bounds and reached its peak in 2002 with 25.7 million subscribers.

Case resigned as AOL’s chairman in January 2003 following the failed merger of AOL and Time Warner. The failed merger became the subject of the book entitled Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner written by Nina Munk.

Dale Carnegie: Icon in Communication and Public Speaking

Dale Carnegie is arguably the most prominent communicator and public speaker. Carnegie’s devotion to public speaking started in his teenage years as a high school debater.

Carnegie studied at Warrensburg State Teachers College in Missouri. He worked with Nebraska’s Armour and Company as a salesman. He pursued his love for acting and moved to New York. He became a teacher in public speaking at the Young Men’s Christian Association.

Later on, Carnegie started to develop his own curriculum in public speaking. He published his public speaking lessons in pamphlets, which were eventually published in books. In his books, Carnegie claimed that public speaking is one of the quickest ways to develop self esteem.

In the 1930s, his book How to Win Friends and Influence People sold more than 10 million copies and instantly became a bestseller. In order to meet the demands for his lectures, Carnegie established the Dale Carnegie Institute for Effective Speaking and Human Relations.

Two maxims are attached to Carnegie. One is, “Believe that you will succeed, and you will.” The other is, “Learn to love, respect and enjoy other people.”

August Busch Jr.: America’s Greatest Brewer

August “Gussie” Busch Jr. was an American brewer who established the world’s largest brewery, Anheuser-Busch. At the time of the company’s fastest growth from 1946 to 1975, Busch was the company’s chairman. Busch was a baseball enthusiast. His love for the game ended in owning the franchise of the St. Louis Cardinals in the Major League Baseball since 1953 until he died in 1989.

Busch was born on March 28, 1899 in St. Louis, Missouri. He was exposed to brewery as a young man. His grandfather, Adolphus Busch, was a co-founder of a brewery. Busch started in his grandfather’s company in 1922. His job was to sweep the floors and clean the vats. He became the general superintendent for brewing operations in 1924. At his father’s death in 1934, Busch was given the opportunity to head the brewery department.  And in 1946, he assumed the company’s presidency when his older brother Adolphus Busch III died.

St. Louis saw several revivals in the 1950s. When the Busch Memorial Stadium was built, Busch donated $5 million to fund its construction. In 1953, Busch purchased the franchise of the St. Louis Cardinals. Although the Cardinals were a prominent team at that time, team owner Fred Saigh was financially broke. Busch’s acquisition of the Cardinals was a timely business deal for the team.

During the time of Busch with the Cardinals, the team won six championships with the National League and three with the World Series. At the playoffs, Busch made a mark by entering the stadium riding a Clydesdales-drawn wagon. The Clydesdales is attached to Budweiser’s beer wagons. The team retired jersey number 85 in 1984 to commemorate Busch’s 85^th birthday.

Grant’s Farm, the estate of the Busch family near St. Louis, was turned into a 281-acre wildlife preserve and historical site.

Busch died on September 29, 1989 at 90 years old. In 1966, the Cardinals was bought by William DeWitt Jr. along with several other investors.

Willis Carrier: Father of Cool

Willis Carrier is the pioneer of the world renowned air conditioning brand Carrier. He was born on November 26, 1876 in Angola, New York. He was a master’s degree holder in electrical engineering.

He worked with Buffalo Forge Company as engineer. His primary task was to design heating systems that would be used to dry coffee and lumber. He was able to innovate a new way to measure the heating systems’ capacity. Thus he was promoted to the position Director for experimental engineering.

In 1902, Carrier used his skill in air conditioning to devise a system that would control humidity and heat for the Brooklyn-based Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Company. In 1906, Carrier’s application to patent his method was approved.

Along with six other friends, Carrier organized the Carrier Engineering Company in 1915. Using the initial investment of $32,600, the company became the pioneer in design and production of refrigeration equipment that are capable of cooling large spaces. Carrier’s products started a revolution in America.

Chester Carlson: Birthing the Electrophotographic Process

Chester Carlson was an American inventor and physicist. He was more popularly known for inventing electrophotography (known today as xerography). His process produced dry copies rather than wet copies. As time passed by, his process was renamed as xerography which means “dry writing”.

Carlson was born on February 8, 1906 in Seattle, Washington. He showed interest in inventions early on. He read the biographies of Thomas Edison and other great inventors. For Carlson, inventions would not only alleviate his economic condition but would also awaken within him his interest in technical things.

His parents got very sick so Carlson was forced to work to support his family. He started working at 8. When he was 13, he would attend school in between his times of work. He was the family’s bread winner when he was in high school.

Carlson had an insatiable enthusiasm for printing. At 10, he created This and That, a hand-crafted newspaper he would circulate among friends. He did his newspaper using a typewriter and a rubber stamp printing set.

He worked for a local publishing house when he was in high school but got frustrated that traditional duplicating techniques could not get him through his desire to publish a science magazine. His frustrations remained his motivation until his invention of the eletrophotographic process.

Carlson was a student at Riverside Junior College where he took up physics. Three years into his studies at Riverside, Carlson moved to California Institute of Technology. His earnings could not pay off his tuition fee at Caltech so that he was in debt by $1,500 when he graduated. He applied to 82 companies but none gave him a job.

He worked for Bell Telephone Laboratories as assistant to the company’s patent attorney. While at Bell, Carlson wrote over 400 ideas for new inventions. Because of his work in the patent department, he continued his pursuit to develop a duplicating machine that would do away the carbon paper or mimeographs.

Carlson’s experiments were done in his apartment’s kitchen. The experiments were hard and would often leave the kitchen smelling like rotten eggs, Carlson did not stop. When it became apparent that he has developed his electrophotographic process, he filed for an application for patent on October 18, 1937.

During that time, many large companies were also experimenting on copying paper. But unlike Carlson’s process, these companies were experimenting on using photography to duplicate paper.