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.

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.

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.

My father and his brothers were all lawyers, so I think that the expectation was probably for me to grow up to be an attorney, but it never really fascinated me that much. I was more interested in building things.

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.

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.

One of the problems with computers, particularly for the older people, is they were befuddled by them, and the computers have gotten better. They have gotten easier to use. They have gotten less expensive. The software interfaces have made things a lot more accessible.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's stunning to me what kind of an impact even one person can have if they have the right passion, perspective and are able to align the interest of a great team.

For better or worse, that is true with any new innovation, certainly any new technological innovation. There's many good things that come out of it, but also some bad things. All you can do is try to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff.

I was not an outstanding student. I did a reasonable amount of work. I got generally good - pretty good grades, but I was not that passionate about getting straight A's.

From a relatively early age I got interested in business.

I do think actually in this case the government does get credit for funding some of the basic research.

I do think that a general liberal arts education is very important, particularly in an uncertain changing world.

I had an older brother who passed away recently, an older sister and a younger brother.

I think it took us nine years to get one million subscribers to AOL, and then in the next nine years we went from one million to 35 million.

I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii.