Good day. Ready for a business book review?

‘The Third Wave’ written by AOL founder and former CEO Steve Case is 3 books in one. It’s kind of like Case’s autobiography, the story of AOL’s rise & demise, and about entrepreneurship in the future.

It appealed to me because I love to understand the back story in how companies evolve. It’s really interesting in AOL’s case, as back in the late 90’s AOL was the way most people did everything there was to do online.

The first time you sent an email, did a search, bought online, heard music online, watched a video online, shared pictures online and connected with friends, it likely happened on AOL.

AOL was the combined Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube, and Instagram of it’s time, and happened way before anybody even thought of these other services.

At its peak (before they bought Time Warner) AOL was worth a staggering $163 billion. But, due to a failed integration, they slowly began to demise, eventually being bought by Verizon Communication.

The constant theme running through the book is the 3 waves of the internet:

• The 1st between 1985 & 1999 was about building the internet.
• The 2nd between 2000 & 2015 was the app economy and mobile revolution.
• The 3rd is happening now, where entrepreneurs are transforming real world sectors.

Case spends the back end of the book discussing how in the 3rd wave entrepreneurs are disrupting large established institutions like health and education with ubiquitous connectivity solutions.

I loved it, as it’s right up my street. If you’re interested in tech company battles, entrepreneurship, and the future of the internet, you’ll love it too.

‘The Third Wave’ gets a 👍 and ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

…thank you, any questions please connect and message me.