My father and his brothers were all lawyers, so I think that the expectation was probably for me to grow up to be an attorney, but it never really fascinated me that much. I was more interested in building things.

So my degree was in political science, which I think was - the closest I could come to marketing is politics.

Most of the people who had PCs did not have modems and could not use those PCs as communicating devices. They really were using them for spreadsheets or word processing or storing recipes or playing games or what have you.

Keep your eye on the prize and focus on your mission. Remember what you’re trying to do, what your value is, why it’s important, and at the same time, change course and direction. If the market’s telling you different things how are you going to adjust to that?

There are lots of cycles to markets - boom and bust - and also in perceptions of people. The conventional wisdom of Steve Case as genius or fool was highly cyclical. The truth was always in the middle.

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.

Think about this: It was illegal for most people to connect to the internet before 1992.