TIP126: THE THIRD WAVE

A REVIEW OF BILLIONAIRE STEVE CASE’S BOOK

19 February 2017

In this week’s episode, Preston and Stig discuss what they learned from reading Steve Case’s book, The Third Wave. Case is a famous Internet billionaire who co-founded America Online (AOL).  His current net worth is $1.3 billion dollars.  Although Case’s high net worth is primarily due to his time at AOL, he does run a venture capital firm in Washington DC, and he’s actively involved in numerous political interests.  One of his more recent investments that have done quite well is a company called ZipCar, which was recently sold to Avis for a billion dollars.

Case’s book, The Third Wave, suggests that we are entering the “Third Wave” of the Internet. The first wave was when new companies were providing service for people to connect for the first time.  This might be referred to as the wild-wild west phase of connectedness.  The second wave occurred with companies like AOL laid the foundation for consumers to connect to the Internet.  For example, companies like Amazon and Facebook built on top of the Internet backbone to create massive online stores and social networking sites, while apps like Instagram took to smartphones to capture market share. Case argues the Third Wave is what we are about to experience online.  This is going to be a period where entrepreneurs transform sectors like health, education, transportation, energy, and food through increased connectedness and sharing. If you would like to read our five-page executive summary of The Third Wave, be sure to follow this hyperlink.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Why the story of AOL is really a story about the Internet.
  • How to negotiate with Microsoft when Bill Gates wants to crush you.
  • Why and how the Internet will be enabled on all devices in the future.
  • Why the biggest merger in the field of technology failed and what we can learn from it.

TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

Stig Brodersen  0:00  

We Study Billionaires and this is Episode 126 of The Investor’s Podcast. 

Preston Pysh  0:05  

Today’s episode is brought to you by freshbooks.com. If there’s one thing that all small business owners can agree on, it’s the idea of spending less time on your accounting and more time doing the work you love. That’s exactly what FreshBooks delivers. Join the 10 million other small business owners that handle their accounting by going to freshbooks.com/TIP and sign up for your free 30 day trial today. No credit card is required and you can cancel anytime. That’s freshbooks.com/TIP 

Intro  0:35  

Broadcasting from Bel Air, Maryland, this is The Investor’s Podcast. They’ll read the books and summarize the lessons. They’ll test the waters and tell you when it’s cold. They’ll give you actionable investing strategies. Your hosts, Preston Pysh and Stig Brodersen!

Preston Pysh  0:59  

Hey, how’s everybody doing out there? This is Preston Pysh. I’m your host for The Investor’s Podcast. And as usual, I’m accompanied by my co-host Stig Brodersen out in Seoul, South Korea. 

Today we have a book for you and the name of this book is “The Third Wave” by Steve Case. If you don’t know who Steve Case is, he is the CEO, and basically the main guy behind America Online, which was huge back whenever I was a kid. Ever since that time, really Steve Case, as far as I’m concerned, really hasn’t gone on and done any major deals kind of like we were talking about Reid Hoffman and how he just had one major hit after another.

Steve Case, really, his big hit was America Online and ever since that, he really hasn’t been too aggressive on the business scene. But this was a book that we had recommended to us. So people were curious. Steve Case’s current net worth is around $1.3 billion dollars and he personally wrote this book, so we gave it a try. 

I thought the book was okay. I wouldn’t say that I loved it. I didn’t hate it, but it was an oka read. It was interesting. It talked a lot about his time at AOL and kind of going through that whole development phase. I found that interesting. What’s also kind of interesting is I don’t think that he really wanted to talk about that much. I think he actually wanted to talk about other things. Right, Stig? 

Stig Brodersen  2:19  

Yeah, it was more like a nostalgic lookback, as you said, Preston. Like, “Oh, you remember back then when everyone was using AOL? Yeah, that was a good time.” 

I think it was more like a book like that. It was not like one of those, “Oh, now I really understand what will happen with the internet in the future.” I think he wanted to put it out like that. But it didn’t give us any revelations, or at least not on my end, I want to say.

Preston Pysh  2:45  

I think his intent was to talk about this new wave and the internet that he kind of sees happening. But for me when I was reading it, I was kind of like, this isn’t anything that for me is groundbreaking or something that everyone doesn’t already know. That was my take at least. So I was much more interested in the thing that he didn’t want to talk about, which was his time at AOL, because I enjoy hearing his conversation on his thought process as he was going through different key decision points. For me, that’s much more entertaining and something that I feel like I can learn from. 

Alright, so what we’re going to do is we’re just going to go chapter by chapter. There are 12 chapters in this book, and we’ll just kind of breeze through each one of them to kind of give you an overview. 

So the first chapter is titled “Opportunity.” In this, he talks a little bit about his background. He talks about when he was in college, he read this book by a gentleman named Toffler, and he wrote a book called “The Third Wave,” which Steve Case had read. This book was all about what was to come in the future and this book really captured his interest and had a huge impact on the way that Steve Case thought about things. So it’s kind of neat for him to basically write his own book years later as a billionaire and he titled it “The Third Wave” as well. 

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