Summary: AOL.com E-Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Herausgeber: Business Book Summaries
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 41

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The must-read summary of Kara Swisher's book: "AOL.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web".

This complete summary of the ideas from Kara Swisher's book "AOL.com" tells the story of Bill Von Meister and Steve Case and how they created AOL. In this book, the author explains how the company was built on the shaky foundations of the declining gaming industry, working fiercely against all odds and the technical slip ups which put them out of favor. But there was one thing they did exceedingly well, thanks to the guidance of their marketing executive Steve Case. AOL focused on communications, community and clarity – three areas which would enhance their users’ online environments and their interaction with each other. This summary concludes with a useful list of the factors that led to AOL's success, as well as providing an insight into the challenges that it faces in the current market.

Added-value of this summary:
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• Expand your knowledge

To learn more, read "AOL.com" and discover the story behind this breakthrough company.

Leseprobe

Book Presentation:Aol.com by Kara Swisher

Summary of Aol.com (Kara Swisher)

Book Presentation:Aol.com by Kara Swisher

Important Note About This Ebook

This is a summary and not a critique or a review of the book. It does not offer judgment or opinion on the content of the book. This summary may not be organized chapter-wise but is an overview of the main ideas, viewpoints and arguments from the book as a whole. This means that the organization of this summary is not a representation of the book.

Summary of Aol.com (Kara Swisher)

1.

In 1975, Bill Von Meister, a Washington based telecommunications entrepreneur and Alan Peyser started a company which they called TDX Systems Inc. TDX was in the process of developing a new technology for low cost routing of long distance telephone calls. Von Meister later lost control of the company, which, after being renamed Cable & Wireless PLC, rose to have annual revenues of more than $1 billion.

Being at somewhat of a loose end, Von Meister noticed that Compu-Serve and a number of other new companies were focusing on delivering information to business customers, and thought that a “home information utility” using the low-cost telephone routing technology he’d helped develop at TDX would be a good idea. He called the new company The Source and formed a partnership with Jack Taub, a Washington investor. That deal also went badly, and after burning through all their start-up capital, Taub ousted Von Meister and sued him for mismanagement.

Bill Von Meister next worked on a project called The Home Music Store, which proposed beaming studio-quality music via satellite and cable line to homes. One of the staff members he hired on this project was a programmer called Marc Seriff, who had worked on the government funded APRANET which was the precursor to the Internet. The Home Music Store concept failed when the major record companies refused to support the idea.

Von Meister then thought he could adapt the concept to deliver video games to homes rather than music. Bill Von Meister was ultimately able to interest a venture capitalist, a bank’s investment company, an investment banker and the founder of a computer games company to put up $100,000 each and in late 1982, Control Video Corporation (CVC) was formed to develop a video game delivery system for Atari computers.

By the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, CVC had developed the prototype of a new device called a “GameLine Master Module” by which video games could be delivered to consumers. This generated loads of interest at the show – both from potential customers and from venture capitalists. CVC looked to have a bright future as funding for the consumer release of the GameLine service was arranged. The only problem was timing -- unbeknown to CVC, the video game industry was just about to go cold, with Atari announcing huge losses and dozens of video game developers going out of business.

As a result, after burning through all of the available funding of $9 million, Bill Von Meister again lost control over a company he had founded as the major shareholders installed James Kimsey (one of CVC’s minority stockholders) as a replacement CEO and fired all but 12 employees. Fortunately, however, one of the CVC employees who kept his job at that time was Stephen Case, who was the brother of the investment banker who had provided $100,000 of the original seed capital. Stephen Case was initially employed in the marketing department of CVC.

Prospects looked rather bleak at that time, however, for all of the employees. It turned out that in addition to using up $9 million in equity funding, CVC also had outstanding bills for another $7 million. For all that, the company had sold only 2,400 GameLine modules.

“My job was to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

– Jim Kimsey on his new job at CVC

“A lot of companies are born from disaster, and since this is a first-class fiasco, maybe it’ll work out.”

– Citicorp’s George Middlemas’ comment to Jim Kimsey

In February 1994, CBS, Sears Roebuck and IBM announced a joint-venture to develop an online service for the users of personal computers. With this as a background, CVC approached Bell South and secured a $5 million line of credit to test market an at home subscription service for Apple II and Commodore computers, using some of the technology developed for the GameLine console to provide a specialized modem. The test was unsuccessful and Bell South asked for their money back, but it had already been spent keeping CVC afloat. Bell South joined the long list of CVC creditors.