At Aol, We Thought The Killer App

I Enjoyed High School And College, And I Think I Learned A Lot, But That Was Not Really My Focus. My Focus Was On Trying To Figure Out What Businesses To Start

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.

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.

And So The Idea Was, Well Maybe You Can Take An Atari Video Game Machine, Where People Plug In A Game Cartridge, And Plug In A Modem, And Tie That Into A Telephone, And Essentially Turn That Game In The Machine Into An Interactive Terminal.

The Real Magic In National Geographic Isn't How Much Money They Have Left At The End Of The Year. It's The Fact That Through Their Overall Focus They Are Reaching Hundreds Of Millions Of People And Educating People About The World. It Just Happens To Be Done In A Business-oriented Kind Of Way That Is More Sustainable.