#20 Steve Case

Age: 52yrs

Birth Place: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Industry: Internet Services

Influence: Helped Pioneer Online Services

Net Worth: $1.0 billion

Why they made the list…

you may or you may not know Steve Case, he’s one of those rich and successful entrepreneurs, with a gigantic company who likes his privacy, kept private. He was born and he grew up in Honolulu in Hawaii and graduated in 1976 from a private school. In 1980 he left the Williams College in Williamstown Massachusetts, with a degree in political science. In 1982 after having worked as an assistant brand manager at Procter and Gamble, he joined the Pizza Hut incorporation in Kansas, and served as one of the pizza marketing managers. In 1983 he met Bill Von Meister, who was a contact of his older brother. His company was creating a marketing service to the Atari game console which basically allowed the users to download certain games using only a phone line and a modem. This was seen as an amazing advancement in technology. Later in the same year Von Meister hired case to become a marketing consultant for a business, which at the time was almost going bankrupt.

1985 case co-founded business called Quantum Computer Services, case was soon promoted to vice president of marketing and due to his good work, entrepreneurial character, and his passion for the company he was soon promoted yet again becoming the Chairman and CEO of the company in 1991 and 1995 respectively. In 1988 his business began working with Apple as well as PC link, helping create online services for both. Later in 1991 case changed the company’s name to America online, and later that same year decided to integrate the Apple and PC services under the name AOL. Over the following years case personally made many innovative online games with his team most of them being very successful. After 10 years with amazing growth throughout the business AOL and Time Warner decided to do a merger. The mergers was worth approximately $164 billion and it was completed in year 2000. Over the course of the next five years the business seemed to take a very sudden downturn due to the recession of the dot-com boom. In 2005 case decided to leave AOL and Time Warner so that he could spend more time on his own business Revolution LLC which is a company he created in 2005.