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Case refined his education at Pizza Hut, chewing his way through a yearlong assignment to scout the latest in pizza innovation at the unhealthy rate of eight to 10 pies a day. He helped the Hut launch a "pocket" pizza called Calizza--it followed the towelette into oblivion--and divined what he says is the single most important law of business: success requires you to sit taste bud to taste bud with your customer.
Case's own tastes were going digital. He bought a Kaypro, a clunky home computer connected to a snail-paced modem. Even for a hobbyist, the machine was a nightmare--hard to set up, impossible to maintain, boring to use. But the modem was a revelation. As he connected to early online services such as CompuServe and the Source, Case felt the electronic rapture that would one day seduce millions of AOL users: "There was something magical about the notion of sitting in Wichita and talking to the world."
The convergence of Case's entrepreneurial spirit and his hobby came in 1983, when his brother Dan helped him land a job at Control Video, a Virginia-based company with the premature idea of shipping Atari video games to home computers over telephone lines. Two weeks after Case arrived, the firm's capital dried up. Out of the ashes, Case crafted Quantum Computer Services. His idea was to create an online bulletin board for owners of Commodore 64 computers. It wasn't a sexy niche, but he thought it might have potential.
From 1985 onward, Case nurtured Quantum from a few thousand members to more than 100,000. Along the way he refined his ideas about how computers should communicate and what his audience needed. In 1991 Quantum--what a geeky name--became America Online and, with 150,000 members, prepared to battle CompuServe, which had 800,000 members, and Prodigy, an IBM-Sears joint venture with 1.1 million.
This seemed nutty. Compete with IBM? Sears? Even Case's mother, a retired teacher in Hawaii, worried a little. But Case was operating with a bit of screwy good luck and the market savvy that comes from hard knocks. He looked at American consumers and somehow understood what it would take to get them online. IBM and CompuServe bet that the real lure would be lots of fancy computer features. Case, with the taste of dozens of complex pizzas still in his mouth, knew better. What America wanted was cheese, tomato sauce and occasionally some pepperoni. AOL would reek with simplicity.
The online experience wasn't an easy sell, but when the business began to pick up in the early 1990s, it picked up fast. From 200,000 members in 1992, AOL surged to 1 million by 1994, 4 million by late 1995 and 8 million by last January. As AOL shot up, it passed CompuServe and Prodigy on the way down. The market changed overnight, and forever. Millions of Americans instantly recognized the value of getting online, and AOL was their first, best hope.