Hi, this is Dr. Willie Jolly and I want to welcome you to the new and improved Willie Jolly Wealthy Ways podcast. After many years of interviewing the best and brightest thought leaders around the world on my SiriusXM show, I am excited to now have those interviews available to people around the globe on this podcast. So many people would write us and say, 'I love what I've been hearing about your interviews with these great people. Where can I access them? I live in this country or that country or I don't have access to that technology. How can I get the information?' Well, I'm so excited now that we are able to offer the information and the interviews free on this podcast. So, we want you to sit back and enjoy this message and let me know how you like them. And then do me a favor. If you like them, send a review. Write a review and post it. And if you like it, hit like on here and share it and tell everybody you know about it. And then subscribe to this podcast so you'll get the alerts when we post a new interview episode. Thank you for listening and enjoy the Willy Jolly Wealthy Ways podcast.
Well, yes. I have only just a minute. Only 60 seconds in it. Forced upon me. Can't refuse it. Didn't seek it. Didn't choose it. But it's up to me to use it. I must suffer if I lose it, give account if I abuse it. Just a tiny little minute. But our eternities are wrapped up in it. Welcome to the Willy Jolly Wealthy Ways Show and I want to thank you for tuning in and I want to thank you for sharing this with everybody. You know, we have been getting such great responses from people around the world. Not because of me, but because of you sharing this message with your connections, your network, your friends, your family members, your co-workers. Please continue to do that. Share it, like it, and put it out to all your network. Well, you know, I start with that one minute, God's Minute from Dr. Benjamin Mays. And then I take a moment to give God some glory, to give him some praise because I'm grateful. And so I am grateful and I take time to give God glory. Now I want to invite you all to my happily married Mondays with the Jollies. Every Monday night, my wife and I, we wrote a book called Make Love, Make Money, Make It Last. And it's a very popular marriage book. You can get a free chapter at jollymarriage.com. We have a marriage seminar coming up real soon. So, make sure you go to jollymarriage.com for more information. Now, you can hear me every day, Monday through Friday on Radio One Network every day across America. But if you're not in the area where Radio One is airing, you can also go to winwithwilly.com and sign up for my newsletter to get a daily free minute of motivation. We'll send it to you every day to inspire you. Finally, Saturday mornings, 10:00 a.m. Eastern time, join me for the Jolly Good News Report. In times of bad news, sad news, depressing news, you need some good news. And every week I give you 30 minutes of powerful messaging to help you win more with some good news. You can reach me on that Saturday morning program on the Jolly Good News Facebook page.
Well, today we have a world-class show for you, a barn burner. My guests are two world-class entrepreneurs, two world-class philanthropists. The first one, you all know his name and the second one, you might know his name, but you definitely know his results. Look, first is Steve Case. That's right. Chairman and CEO of Revolution and co-founder of America Online, AOL. He is one of America's best-known and most accomplished entrepreneurs and philanthropists and a pioneer in making the internet part of everyday life. He co-founded AOL in 1985 and under his leadership and vision, AOL became the largest and most valuable internet company, driving the worldwide adoption of a medium that has transformed us all in business, society, and life. He's now the chairman and CEO of Revolution LLC, a Washington DC-based investment firm that now backs entrepreneurs at every stage of their development. They have invested nearly 1 billion in growing growth-stage companies including Sweetgreen, Tempus, Tala, DraftKings, and Clear. And they have just been growing and going and going around the country looking for and trying to find the new upstart entrepreneurs to help them grow. David Hall is our other guest. He's the managing partner of Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. He's responsible for investment, sourcing, execution, and oversight of the fund's portfolio companies. He was an executive with the Washington Post as director of planning and development. And then he went on to become an entrepreneur extraordinaire. So to have the two of them on this show today is really a coup for me. And I just wanted to invite you all to pull out a pen, a pad, a piece of paper, an iPhone, iPad, take notes. We're ready to grow your wealth and your winning. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Great to be with you, Willie.
Thanks a lot, Willie. Great to be here.
It's a joy to have you both. Well, I guess you know, I got this book in my hand right now. My son bought it for my wife, The Third Wave, and he gave it to her for her birthday, and I've just been going through it and just scouring all the great ideas. But most of all, what I am most impressed with, Steve, I'll start with you, is that we know you for AOL, for creating this world-renowned company. But there's a big but. You didn't start at the top. From what I've read and what I've heard, you had a few setbacks along the way. Talk a little bit about the journey from being Case Enterprises in Hawaii with your brother to being able to make it to AOL and all the setbacks, all the failures, all the disappointments and how you stayed the course to be able to become a world-renowned entrepreneur.
Yeah, as you say, like a lot of entrepreneurs, it's sort of you stumble a little bit before you finally kind of find your way. And that was the case with me. I did a number of businesses that didn't work out. And then I got interested when I was still in college, graduated in 1980, so 40 years ago, and the idea of the internet, wanted to do that. But back then it didn't really exist as a consumer phenomenon. It was really more of a technology platform. And frankly back then, venture capitalists weren't really backing kids coming out of school. They were looking for more seasoned executives with more of a track record. So I bounced around a little bit, worked with some big companies, Procter and Gamble and PepsiCo, the pizza division for a while, and then actually moved to Washington DC in 1983 to join a startup. I thought I finally found my way into this world. And within a few months it kind of hit the wall. It was in free fall. And so I then had to once again kind of take a step back before I could take a step forward and luckily two of the people I met there ended up starting with me America Online in 1985. So it was a somewhat circuitous journey even as AOL was scaling it over the next decade. It's often two steps forward, one step back. And one of the lessons I learned, what I talked about in that book, was how persistence, perseverance, passion really matters because when you're building a business there are a lot of challenges, there are a lot of setbacks, sometimes it's breaking against you and you're worried about whether you're going to make it and you just got to believe and you got to keep fighting.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you both have been longtime investors and David, give us a little background about how you came to this journey as well.
Yeah, sure. Thanks Dr. Willie. I came to Washington DC after business school to work at the Washington Post company and it was a fantastic organization then run by the Graham family and one of the best things about the Post is you can sit at your desk all day and read the newspaper and not get fired because that's the sort of company's product, right? And one day while reading the newspaper, and Steve I don't know if you know this story, I read one of the first articles about Steve Case's post-AOL next act and I remember reading that article and I read it again and I cut it out because I was like what he's doing sparked something in me and I was like how do I get to there and it started a long case of a little bit of stalking, a little bit of googling, or I guess at the time it was probably Ask Jeeves or something like that to try to find my way to Revolution and through a mixture of a little bit of serendipity and a little bit of stalking and a lot of good fortune, I got the interview into Revolution and it's been such an eye-opening change for me because I never saw myself as being on the career path of being an investor, a venture capitalist but partnering up with Steve and now having invested in over 100 companies it's just been a fantastic journey of consistent challenge and leveling up sort of both my resume and my acumen for issue spotting and deal sourcing and now being one of the handful of African-Americans in a capacity to invest money into the next generation of startup entrepreneurs. So, it's been a fantastic journey that I'm incredibly grateful for and just grateful to Steve, grateful for the opportunity and really looking forward to the future.
I mentioned offline that I some years ago had been invited by the Washington Post. I don't even know how they thought of me. I guess because they said I was quietly building a media empire. I don't know if that's true or not, but they had me on a board of entrepreneurs with Christina Berrey from Reston Limo and Ralph Fernandez from Monumental Sports with Ted Leonsis. And as I read the book, I thought about the fact that you and Ted were major players in creating AOL and kind of navigating the ups and downs of being able to survive and thrive in a challenging time. Tell me one thing, Steve. As y'all went through the ups and downs, the challenges, what was the vision that kept you going when things got tough?
Well, the vision was really that the internet was going to change the world and we wanted to create an on-ramp and make it as easy and affordable as possible for everybody to get online. That really was the founding idea. When we started in 1985, which was 35 years ago this summer, only 3% of people were online and those 3% were online an average of one hour a week. So, it really was a kind of a niche hobbyist phenomenon. It was not very mainstream and we wanted to get America online. We wanted to get the world online. So, that really was what drove it. The reason it was so hard and took so long, it really took us a decade before we finally broke through, is most people back then didn't see any reason to get on the internet. Most people back then didn't own personal computers to connect. Most people who did own personal computers didn't have the communications technology called a modem to connect, right? If you actually had all that stuff and you got online, it was $10 an hour typically to be connected, which is sort of intimidating. And since it was still early days, there was really not much to do and nobody to talk to. So it just took a while to finally build the foundation and finally break through. But Ted and I have been great partners now for nearly three decades. AOL went public in 1992, was the first internet company to go public, and a year later we acquired Ted's company and he joined us and obviously played a pivotal role in building AOL. We're now partnering still at Revolution.
Wow. Wow. I remember AOL. I think I was one of the early adopters and I remember, you know, getting on, like some people thought that was a screechy modem sound. For me, that was ching ching.
Well, now y'all have both moved to Revolution, and I want to focus on that because what you have done is now made a commitment to help entrepreneurs, a lot of them African-American entrepreneurs, to grow entrepreneurial ventures to create wealth in our communities. And you also have been going around the country on, I think you went on a bus tour, I think I saw on television one day where you went to different cities. Now, one of the things I love in the book is how you talk about the fact that early on we only thought of entrepreneurism or investment or startups in California, New York or a few other cities. And you said with the Rise of the Rest, I love that part of it. As long as you got internet access, you can be in Des Moines, you can be in Albemarle County, Virginia, you can be anywhere if you got a good idea and you're willing to do the work. Talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, it's really the belief that innovation will disperse and opportunity will disperse and job creation will disperse over the next 10 or 20 years. But we have to change some of the paradigm because the data right now is pretty sobering. If you look at place, last year 75% of venture capital went to just three states, California, New York, and Massachusetts.
So, Steve, let's make sure I got all the pearls you've been dropping in this last part of this segment. One, you started with nothing. You had an idea. You had some of your ventures that did not succeed, but you were passionate and you were persistent and you kept going. You turned those setbacks into comebacks. Everybody know I wrote a book called A Setback is a Setup for a Comeback and I hope you all got a copy of that book. But it is exactly the principles I teach in that book that you got to be persistent, you have to have a vision, you have to have decisions made and then you got to take action and you have to have great desire. You can turn your setbacks into comebacks. Look, we got to take a quick break. This is Dr. Willie Jolly on the Willy Jolly Wealthy Ways Show and for sure your best is yet to come. We'll be right back.
Hi, this is Dr. Willie Jolly and I have a question for you. Have you ever wondered why some people can make a million dollars, lose it, make a second million, lose that, then make a third million while other people can't even make ends meet? Well, the reason is that those people know the recipe for success. And that recipe is available to everyone. If you will do what they did, they made a habit of getting positive motivational resources of great thinkers and great learners. And I want to offer those same kind of resources to you. We've developed a free page on my website. It's wjspeaks.com/gift. On that site, we've got resources, books, audios that help you to grow and they're free. So, go to wjspeaks.com/gift and get some of those resources and then share that page with your friends and your family members. We want to impact and inspire millions of people. And remember, if you enjoy this message on this podcast, like it, share it, and post a review about it, and make a difference in the lives of others by letting them know about it. Have a great day. This is Dr. Willie Jolly.
And we're back with Dr. Willie Jolly on the Willy Jolly Wealthy Ways Show and podcast with my special guest. We've got two world-class, world-renowned entrepreneurs, extraordinary. We got the one and only founder of AOL, Steve Case, and we've got also David Hall, who is the managing partner of Revolution Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. And we were talking about how the world has changed. Steve, where you used to have to be in a certain city to be able to be in a startup or growth entrepreneurial activity or many people thought DC is a government town or this place is a certain kind of town and then you helped us realize that that's not the case anymore, isn't it? Would you share on that please?
Yeah, no, even with AOL we started in the Washington DC area 35 years ago there was no venture capital in DC so we had to go to other places including San Francisco, New York to raise the capital to get started and then to scale and we just want to change the paradigm, kind of level the playing field so everybody everywhere who has an idea really has a shot at building a company, a shot at frankly the American dream and it's not just limited to certain people in certain places. And if you just look at the data it's pretty sobering that last year 75% of venture capital went to just three states, California, New York, Massachusetts. The other 47 states fight over 25%. And if you look at not just the place but the people, last year, even though women are half our country, less than 10% of venture capital went to female founders and Black Americans are about 14% of the country. Less than 1% of venture capital went to Black founders. So, it does matter where you live. It doesn't matter what you look like. It doesn't matter who you know. It doesn't matter what school you went to if you have an idea whether you really can turn it into a real company. And that's just wrong. And so, we're trying to change that. And David's leadership of the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund is our tool to do that.
Well, David, why don't you tell me what the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund is and the whole concept of the Revolution process, please give us some insight.
Yeah, sure. So, at Rise of the Rest, as Steve said, our goal is to really accelerate early-stage capital, that first sort of couple of checks that can convince somebody who's working now for a big corporation to leave that job and go start a startup. We recognize that that's the most important sort of step and most important capital that's typically pushed into these early-stage companies that allow those founders to actually spend 100% of their work time dedicated to this project. And we know that there are tons of entrepreneurs with great ideas that are now trapped in corporations or working in a job that they don't really feel motivated by. And we know that the world has sufficiently enabled them through high-speed internet, through the dispersion of really smart talent across the country who've gone to great universities and don't necessarily have to leave home any longer to start and fuel their dreams. We want to put that capital in those companies and the Rise of the Rest mission is to invest early-stage outside of Boston, outside of New York City, outside of San Francisco, the three most evolved markets for venture capital in the country and look in places like Nashville, like New Orleans, like Detroit, like Miami, like Phoenix, where there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are a little systematically outside, locked out of the system because of their zip code. And so Rise of the Rest is we're a geographically focused fund. We're industry agnostic. We really invest only at the early stage and we're looking for fantastic entrepreneurs that are tackling really tough problems. Problems where technology and the application of technology can really disrupt big markets, healthcare, education, logistics, financial services, agriculture and food. These are the problems that are changing our society. We're unlikely to invest in the next dating app, but we think that there's some really big problems that smart technology-driven entrepreneurs can really help us usher in change. We think that not only is that going to be a transformative event for the country and for a lot of these industries that frankly haven't innovated much since they've been founded, we think that there's some really good business opportunities underneath that. We think that it's a great opportunity for us to make money while doing really good, having a really positive impact.
I love that. I love that. Now y'all have worked together as investors and you've worked together to create this new push. What have some of the lessons you've learned along the way in this process?
That it is harder in these cities for entrepreneurs to get noticed and to get the credibility to raise capital. That's why we aren't just sitting in Washington DC trying to figure this out. We hit the road and so far we've visited dozens of cities. We've invested in 150 companies in 70-plus cities. So we're really kind of getting out there and hitting the road and trying to then work with the entrepreneurs we do back to create a network around them so they have access to mentoring, we can help open doors in terms of strategic partnerships or initial customers. We can help them recruit talent. So obviously the capital is a key part of that but we also are doing some other things to support these entrepreneurs and we're also trying to encourage each of the cities we visit to focus more on startups not just on the existing companies but on new companies and that's important because you look at the data most of the job creation in this country comes from young companies, new companies, startup companies not from big companies like Fortune 500 not from small businesses but from fast-growth young companies. And so if we're only backing those sorts of entrepreneurs in a few places like Silicon Valley, we shouldn't be surprised that a lot of people in a lot of parts of the country are kind of feeling left out, feeling left behind. So we encourage the cities themselves to focus on startups to be a magnet for talent, be a magnet for capital and create a culture around risk-taking and possibility. So those are some of the takeaways.
Right? And one thing I'd add there is I just think that demographics also plays a little bit into it, right? If we're going to look for founders that sort of are outside of the typical Silicon Valley mold, we can find them usually in places like Atlanta and Chicago and Charlotte because that's just where the demographics of the country have those people graduating from schools like my alma mater Morehouse or Georgia Tech or the University of Michigan or Florida A&M down in Tallahassee. That's where those entrepreneurs live and the notion that they're all going to be able to pack up and move up to New York City, move out to the West Coast is just really challenging on a lot of those families. And so we really do celebrate that local flair of entrepreneurship because we know that it's easier to make money and create these companies in your own backyard where you know the players, where you know the movers and shakers and you have a little bit easier access than to try to replicate those networks in the big city.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what this brings to mind, I some years ago I was the keynote speaker for the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference and one of the things I wanted to do right at the beginning of that concept or that message was to define what an entrepreneur was so we were clear. And I give this my definition. I want to bounce off of the two of you if you see anything different. My definition, first of all, I came from a second-generation entrepreneur. My dad was an entrepreneur and he always encouraged my brother and I to go to school, get a great education, not so you could get a good job, but so you could create some good jobs. That was always his last statement. Go to school, get a great education so you can create some good jobs. And so I told people, an entrepreneur is someone who designs and determines their destiny. They make the decision to design and determine their destiny. And there's so many people who have an idea but sometimes are afraid, sometimes get lost. So, as y'all go around, what are some of the things you're trying to encourage people to do to create entrepreneurial pathways? What are you pushing them to do? How are you pushing them to think? What are some of the things that you are doing?
Well, it builds on what you just said. Your definition is a great one that, you know, entrepreneurs really see something in their lives that could be better and say, I'm not going to just complain about it. I'm going to go do something about it. Either there's a problem they want to solve or an opportunity they want to seize. And they do that despite the odds, despite all the different challenges. They kind of, one way to think about entrepreneurs is they really do more than anyone thinks is possible with less than anybody thinks is realistic. In terms they take, you say I'm going to climb that mountain. I'm going to make that happen. And they're like well how are you going to do that? It's you and a few other people and you're not going to do that. And that's what was the criticism of startups. When we got started even with America Online 35 years ago, most people were pretty skeptical that the idea didn't seem all that interesting. You know, the internet maybe would never be more mainstream and if it was, how the hell do you think you're going to breakthrough when there's big companies like AT&T and Microsoft and others out there. And so that's why entrepreneurs just really have to have that passion and that sense of purpose and they're going to hit some challenges and hit a wall from time to time that they see that wall, they're either going to climb over it or climb around it or knock it down, but they're never going to stop. They're never going to give up.
That perseverance, that keep going, that stick-to-it-ness and the encouragement. And many of the entrepreneurs I know are people who are always learning, always becoming lifelong learners, and are filling themselves up with the pure, the powerful, and the positive because they know that there is a crisis up the road. So, they got to start preparing for it. Well, you guys have just been on fire for helping companies and I get emails from people like Rodney Sampson and others who say, Willie, I get a text from Rodney just about every other day saying, 'Hey, we are really working hard on building some entrepreneurial activities and so forth.' And so you know that Steve, you talked about The Third Wave in your book, in the book The Third Wave, but you also talked about the impact that futurist Alvin Toffler had on your thinking and I love a couple of the pieces in there and the fact that you got to hit the wave. I love that story in Hawaii where you went to the guy who was body surfing and he was doing it better than you and you said hey what I got to do, he said you got to hit the wave, get in it or you got to understand there is a wave. Talk about that.
Yeah, I did. Alvin Toffler is a futurist who wrote a number of books, Future Shock. The one that really meant a lot to me was The Third Wave that came out in 1980, which when I was just a senior in college, just about to graduate. And what he talked about was his three waves were the first wave was sort of the agricultural revolution and then that was followed by the industrial revolution. We kind of retrained people to move from farms to factories. And he was predicting now again four decades ago the third wave would be the technology revolution, the digital revolution essentially the internet and I was just captivated by that and that's what I knew I wanted to do. I decided to kind of write a book reflecting on some of the lessons I learned. I picked the same name, The Third Wave, partly out of respect for him and thankfully he was still alive at the time and was able to review it but also because I recognized the internet itself had three waves. The first wave was getting everybody online. We talked about some of that in terms of in the 80s essentially nobody was online. Nobody thought they had a reason to be online.
Hold that thought for one second, Steve. Hold that thought. We're going to come back to these other waves because folks, I want y'all to hear the rest of this. This is Dr. Willie Jolly on the Willy Jolly Wealthy Ways Show. And for sure, we'll be right back.
Hi, this is Dr. Willie Jolly and I got an email from a gentleman in Australia who shared how he had been struggling in his business and he bought some of my books and audios and how it had a profound impact on his business and he went from worst to first in his company. I shared with him how much I appreciated his note. But I told him those books, those audios, those videos were not just something that I just thought up one day and started to write. They were born out of my experiences, out of the challenges of overcoming the problems and the difficulties and how I was able to do it. And I shared with him that others have sent similar messages and that these resources work. I want to encourage you and invite you to go to my store. Go to wjspeaks.com/shop. Get some of the books. It Only Takes a Minute to Change Your Life. Or A Setback is a Setup for a Comeback. Or Turn Setbacks into Greenbacks. Or Chicken Soup for the Soul. Or An Attitude of Excellence. Or the book I wrote with my wife after 34 years of being married and not having an argument in over 30 years. We wrote a book called Make Love, Make Money, Make It Last. And now it is saving marriages all over the globe. Go to the store, get some of the audios, the videos, the books, the resources to help you have greater personal and professional success. This is Dr. Willie Jolly. Make this a great day on purpose.
And we're back. This is Dr. Willie Jolly and the Willy Jolly Wealthy Ways Show and podcast. Steve Case, you were talking about The Third Wave and the three waves of the internet. First, just to get people aware and online. Go from there, please.
Yeah. The first wave was getting everybody online, going from a world where nobody was connected to a world where everybody was connected. That was sort of the 1980s, 1990s. That then led to the second wave of the internet, which was building apps and services on top of the internet, things like Google and Facebook. And the third wave which is just now picking up steam is when the internet kind of meets everyday life and we start changing fundamental aspects of our lives including healthcare and education, food and agriculture, some pretty fundamental parts of our lives. And I realized which is why I wrote the book.
That some of the lessons from that first wave were going to be applicable in this coming third wave. One of them was the importance of partnerships. It wasn't just about what you did, it's how you connected to others, how you networked with others and built bridges around your idea. Another was policy. A lot of the regulatory issues were very important in the early days of the internet when it was just getting commercialized. It's going to be important again when you're dealing with things like healthcare. It's very sensitive, people's lives are hanging in the balance. Of course, there are going to be some kind of regulatory aspects. And the final, what I call the third of the three Ps, is perseverance. The systems-level change that's possible in the third wave is going to be hard and going to take time. It's not going to be an overnight success. It's going to be a 10-year slog before you finally break through. And so those were some of the lessons I applied. That's also the prism through which we look at things at Revolution, really trying to back entrepreneurs in the third wave and back them particularly in these rising cities as part of our Rise of the Rest strategy.
Wow. You both have been very, very active on helping entrepreneurs all over the country and of course we're now doing it virtually. What advice do you both, and I want both of you to answer this, give people to build their businesses and especially in challenging times?
David, why don't you start?
