Case, Stephen M.

1958–

Co-founder, America Online

Stephen M. Case is chairman of the board of AOL-Time Warner. Before the AOL-Time Warner merger, Case was chairman and CEO of America Online (AOL). The phenomenal growth of AOL, the first Internet company to be included in the Fortune 500, is the stuff of legend, and much of it is attributed to Case. Since going public, AOL's annual revenues grew from $30 million in 1992 to more than $7.7 billion in 2000.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 21, 1958, to an elementary school teacher and a lawyer, Steve Case demonstrated his entrepreneurial spirit at a young age. Lore has six-year-old Case, the third of four children, joining up with an older brother to sell limeade; within a couple of years, the two created “Case Enterprises,” hawking everything from garden seeds to magazines. Case earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Williams College in Massachusetts, where he met his future wife Joanne Barker, a student at nearby Smith College. Case's entrepreneurial spirit was in evidence at college as well, where he started an airport shuttle business and sold fruit baskets. After graduating in 1980, he pursued a marketing career, working first at Procter & Gamble, then at PepsiCo, where he invented new pizza toppings for the Pizza Hut chain.

In 1983, he joined Control Video Corporation, a video-game specialist, first as a marketing manager and then, after a round of layoffs, as head of marketing. The company was in serious financial trouble, and Case, then 25, became an important player in its desperate attempt to become solvent. Opportunity finally arrived in the form of Commodore, a computer company looking to start an online service for its Commodore 64 users. Control Video offered its services, paid off its creditors, and changed its name to Quantum Computer Services. Quantum's “Q-Link” dial-up network for Commodore Business machines was launched in 1985, and its “PC-Link” network, a joint venture with Tandy, was launched in 1988. In October 1989, Quantum introduced the America Online service for Macintosh and Apple II computers; the DOS version was launched in February 1991.

When Apple pulled out of the deal, Quantum decided to rebrand its remaining online services under one name: Online America, later changed to America Online. The name was chosen when Case held a contest for a new name, and picked his own entry as the winner. In October 1991, Quantum Computer Services officially changed its name to America Online, Inc. The company went public shortly afterward, on March 19, 1992, under the symbol AMER.

In the years that followed, AOL's popularity grew: the company had 10 million subscribers by the [Page 57]end of 1997, 20 million in late 1999, and more than 31 million members by September 2001. The company itself also grew rapidly through a serious of strategic acquisitions, such as its purchase of CompuServe in 1998 and Netscape in March 1999. Today, America Online, Inc., operates a bevy of online services, browsers, and destinations, including America Online, CompuServe, the ICQ instant-messaging service, MapQuest (a resource for maps and directions), the Netscape Netcenter and http://AOL.COM portals, the Netscape Navigator and Communicator browsers, and AOL MovieFone. AOL acquired Time-Warner for $106 billion in 2001. The resulting company, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, includes established media companies such as Warner Music, Turner Broadcasting, HBO, Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, and Time.

...