The Third Wave: A Review of Steve Case’s (Founder of AOL) new book

Just finished Steve Case’s new book The Third Wave. Case was the founder of AOL in the 90’s and a serial entrepreneur with investments in companies like SweetGreen, OrderUp, and Living Social.

The Third Wave is what Case refers to as the next phase of the internet. The First Wave was building the pipeline and infrastructure to get people online. This was the period of the 80’s and 90’s when the Apple’s and Microsoft’s started to pop up and the PC became a household device. The Second Wave refers to connecting people together through the internet, which was the rise of social media sites and communities online. We are now about to enter the Third Wave which is where the internet becomes ubiquitous in everything around us and changes the way that we live our lives. This means the food we eat, education, healthcare, and energy sectors will all be disrupted by the integration of the internet.

Case outlines how entrepreneurs can leverage this shift to the “Internet of Things” to build businesses and how the internet will augment our physical lives in ways that may seem unimaginable today. Throughout the book, Case also chronicles the history of AOL from a small startup in the suburbs of Northern Virginia to the merger with Time Warner that seemed ill-fated from the start. He talks about the idea of shipping free AOL discs to every consumer to increase adoption and how AOL managed to stave off the competition for years like MSN to create a dominant share of the ISP market. He also emphasizes the importance of branded partnerships being critical for AOL’s success, he was well ahead of the game when it came to realizing that content was key in scaling a company and creating a lasting footprint.

I would recommend this book for not only entrepreneurs and business leaders looking to find out how their fields could be impacted by the Third Wave or how to create opportunity within it, but I would also recommend to those who grew up during this internet age and want to hear the inside story of how the biggest internet company at the time came to be. There are many management lessons to be found in how the eventual merger led to the demise of not only AOL but Time Warner as companies and how important creating a company culture was in giving AOL an identity.

Adi Raval is a marketing consultant, entrepreneur, and tech enthusiast in Baltimore, MD