Steve Case

Stephen McConnell Case (born August 21, 1958) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist best known as the former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online (AOL). Case joined AOL's predecessor company, Quantum Computer Services, as a marketing vice-president in 1985. In 1991, he became CEO of the company (renamed AOL). Later, at the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000, Case orchestrated with Gerald M. Levin the merger that created AOL Time Warner, described as "the biggest train wreck in the history of corporate America." Since resigning as chairman of the company in 2003, he has launched a venture-capital firm, Revolution LLC, based in Washington, D.C., and authored The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future, which in 2016 became a New York Times bestselling book. In 2022, he published his second book, The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places Are Building the New American Dream.