Special treat for viewers to talk about your new book, the new wave we have known each other for years so it is privilege you being here. You are a successful serial entrepreneur and one of the few people in congress that understand that startup community. Host my first question is the timing of the book. You went to America Online when it was called something different. In the 80s it had a different plan and you reformulated the company. You were the founder and leader really. You lead the company through the 90s and it became one of the most Iconic Companies and you are one of the most iconic entrepreneurs in America History and one of the great Business People of our generation. Guest lets stop there and call it a day. Half of america connected through aol and then you had the merger with time warner, biggest merger in history, you started the revolution Investment Fund that invested in a hundred Startup Companies including zip car among others. Why write the book now . I have to imagine the factor in those days at aol people were beating down the door. When you told me about the book, i had an opportunity to see the book before it was published, which was a privilege, i was like how come he hasnt written a book before. Why now . That is a great question. People talked about it 20 years ago trying to get me to write about the lessons from that merger. But i wasnt interested in memoir. I have been more interested in what is happening next or the future than the past. So i just wasnt that motivated. It was about two years ago, i have been touring around and visiting cities all across the country and looking at startups all around the country and it it dawned on me there was this first wave, second wave and third wave about the break and it would be different and the lessons from the first wave would be helpful to the third wave so maybe it was time to write a book mostly about the future but tell stories about the past. Once it became less about a memoir, and more about the future and a playbook or roadmap and in terms of what will happen in the future i became more interested. I started writing it two years ago and it is finally out. Before we get to the substance of the book, i want to spend a little time on your background. One thing i am happy about as your friend when i read the book, you didnt want to write a memoir but you gave us a little look in your background, how you thought about the world as a young entrepreneur and the aol days. You are from hawaii, born and raised in hawaii, and up until about eight years ago you were probably one of the most famous people from hawaii and probably until eight years ago you were probably the most famous person from your high school. I got elbowed aside. President obama was at the high school as well. It is the 175th anniversary of the school. I was a little older than the president. I still am older. I was a senior in high school and he was a freshman. So we didnt have any classes together but we played ball together. When he came to the senate we worked together and then as president. You are completely right. In hawaii, i am thinking i had a good run until the president managed to in a pretty significant way toss me aside. People were wondering what was in the water. Even the third wave title is like going back to the roots. You and the president must have a good friendship. You worked with president bush, and president clinton as well. So Public Policy is a big part of who you are and i want to come back to that because that is our audience. But before we get much further, what i liked about the book, and when there is a big thing going on, and nothing is bigger than the internet. You can argue it is the most important Economic Force in history in terms of pure Economic Force in terms of change where you ushered in the Business Model and the internet to peoples home. What is great about the book is you overlay an Analytical Framework as to how we ask thing about this. You break it down into the first wave, second wave and third wave. So can you explain that thesis . The first wave was building it and building awareness of why you should get connected to the internet and building the onramps with the software, networks and servers to get people connected. When we started in 1985, only three percent of people were online and only online one hour a week. We wanted to get America Online more than that. It took us a decade before it got traction. And most of the decade most people thought why would anyone want to do that . It was a hobby, corky thing. In fairness back then it was hard and expensive to do. If you were able to get online there wasnt much to do, not much to talk to and not much content. So it took a while before it was ready for primetime but that was the first wave. The second wave has been building on top of the internet with apps, services, google and facebook and software riding on top of the internet created opportunity and Iconic Companies in the second wave. But i think the third wave is going to be different and that is integrating the internet in every aspect of your lives. How we stay healthy, how our kids learn, how we think about food, energy, investing money. Fundamental things that changed in the first and second wave but not that much. The way most people deal with the Health Care System is about the same. They walk in and have to fill out the same form. It is not as precise. You can order a pizza on your phone or watch netflix but i think the things around health and education havent changed and they will change a lot in the third wave. But everybody understands this and the definition of work is even changing more in the third wave. The first wave is building, seck wave building on top of it and third wave is integrating it into our lives and in the process disrupting the Largest Industries in the country with world which creates enormous opportunity for people that understand where the puck is going and can position themselves. Host in a way, in the third wave we stop thinking of companies as technology companies. Guest exactly. Host and we start thinking technology is part of every company. The basic tools we thought existed in business and became integrated into Business Technology becomes that. One of the great things about the book, when you took aol public it had 30 million in revenue and worth 70 million. Now we have google, apple, facebook, amazon, collectively these companies are probably worth two trillion dollars. Host it is an extro extraordinary thing to think about this. You are saying we will not think about this eventually. Guest in some ways every company is a tech company. Even the internet is shifting from being an interesting phenomena and in the future it will be taken for granted. I think the internet is on a similar path and i think we will get there when we dont have hyphenated mail. It is called email but one tay it will be mail and same for ecommerce being just commerce. It will take another 1020 years and we are on the path and the third wave is the next wave of taking the idea and shifting it from being a corky technology think to being a fundamental part of every day life. One of the things i admired about you is you strike me as a big optimist guest i think entrepreneurs have to be optimist. Host there is a lot of debate about the Effect Technology has had on our world. I am of the view it has been enormously positive. But when you look at technological innovation and combine with global interconnection it has been a blessing for many people here and around the world but it has pressured us in terms of anxiety in our lives with being so connected and hurt a lot of middle class jobs. While we created new jobs, there havent been the equallibrium. Why are you so positive about where this is going to take us . I completely agree with our characterization. I am not in the tech camp where everything is positive and sprinkle technology on anything and it will solve the problem. There are positives as you mentioned and there are negatives. How do you maximize the positive and minimize the negatives . I think the internet has been an enormous force of good. Internet access available in cuba is going to be a ga gamechanger. Host we look at their cars and think they are behind time. Guest the hotel i stayed in said they had wifi and one of the people said can i use it . Last summer we were in africa, visited kenya and ethopia and ghana and because of the internet and innovation around the solar and other kinds of Energy Technologies is incredibly empowering and liberating. But sometimes we are too connected. The good news is we have the ability to get connected but the bad news is sometimes we are hyperconne hyperconnected and we need to put the phone down and have a face to face conversation. It is True Technology has created jobs but hollowed out jobs as well. How do you find the innovations of the future but bring everybody along. Uva put another an initiative around Small Business and the report that came up is can startups save the American Dream and i think the key is, just as we saw the internet democratizing access, i think there is an opportunity to democratize access to entrepreneurship and opportunity so everybody feels they have a shot. Not everybody does. A lot of people do feel left out and part of the reason i wrote the book is to lay out a framework for everybody. Not just the entrepreneurs or the Technology People but everybody look at how the world is developing and what are the opportunities for our own kids that might help give you a better, brighter future. You talk about health care, education, you know what are some of the examples or areas that could be transformed by this third wave, by technology . It can really change how we are thinking about the problems we are. Any time an entrepreneur sees a problem they see an opportunity. In education, a lot of things have been done in the last few decades in terms of computers in classrooms. I am not a tetcher but i talk to teachers and they will say the way they are teaching is about the same 20 years ago and the way students are learning is about the same as 20 years ago but there are advancements in personalized adaptive approaches to learning. Not all kids learn the same way, some take more time, some are visual. Having systems that customize the learning is important. Having teachers have a sense of what is going on with individual students and where they really are struggling and need more help. That is one example of the third wave. That is not just about software but integrating it with features and partnerships. It is not just about new learning in the cloud on the internet but how you improve learning in the classroom. In health care, interesting developments there particularly on the wellness side like the fitbit being poplar. Managing chronic disease is the same way for the most part, particularly a lifethreatening disease. Md anderson said when they have people coming for second opinions on cancer 25 of the time they change the opinion. So more data, more personalized approaches to help and technology is part of that solution. It is not just the engineers solving the problems. It is the engineers partnering with the doctors and hospitals to figure out ways to knit ni things together and usher out the care. Host we are on an island and know what is best and that is an insular view of the world. Then you have people saying government should be driving this. One thing that is important about your voice is it is balanced. Kwou talk about how there is a role for government for us, it is a positive role, but we have to be careful because government clearly can stifle innovation, it can get in the way, it is too bureaucratic and there is not enough balanced voices particularly people who had the Business Career you had. What kind of brought you to that point . Is it the fact you lived in washington, d. C. For a while . Guest i think d. C. Helps, understanding the people, and part of the reason i am more involved. He reason i am more they need to respect each other and figure out the best process. Government is large and most things are very large and bureaucratic and not nim disable and the government isnt nim disable nimble. You touch on that in the book, and i dont want to provide fuel for the fire that people say you are advocating for government because you are not. You are talking about smart government. What do you this can if you could get government to act against a couple things . Thinking about the partisan gridlock which presented us from doing anything. What is two or three things you think are important for the government to try to do and get right to insure that america maintains its competitive advantage related to entrepreneur . Because you are little worried about that. Guest i am worried about that. I remind myself 250 years ago america was a startup and now we are the leader of the free world. We led the way in all revolutions. We went from being the startup nation to the leader of the free world but that doesnt mean it is not guaranteed to continue. The secret sauce that animated the u. S. Story is innovation. So you see others figuring out ways to create the right investment and regulatory environments. It is a global battle. We saw the globalization of entrepreneurship and we have to understand that and step up the oversight and i talked about a number of things doing that. The work the congress did with the white house and the jobs act that legalizes crowd funding is important because it lowers the Playing Field to entrepreneurs who dont have the money can use the internet to raise capital. The fcc put rules in place, there is still work to do but it is a step in the right direction. Another is to make sure i understand particularly this Election Year and i imagine listeners have opinions on this and the issue of immigration is hot and politicized but we cannot remain the most innova innovative country if we dont have the best talent and immigration has many facets. One example i mention in the book, which is a sad one, there is an entrepreneur at warton, started a company after graduating, wanted to stay in the United States but couldnt get his visa extended and had to go home, in his case to india, and that company now has 5,000 employees and is worth millions in india but he wanted to built it here. And regulations. How do you figure out the right regulations that protect people but enable innovation as well. There are some regulations that have designed to make it harder for the innovator and those are bad. Some regulations are designed to protect people and that is good. How do you take a fresh look at them particularly where they are converging and colliding. Host if someone is an entrepreneur they think the Big Companies are hurt by the regulations but they protect the Big Companies and make it hard for entrepreneurs to get started in some of these fields. Guest another thing i discovered is most people think about business in monolithic way. Small business mainstream restaurants are important. Big business is important but the job growth is coming from the young startups. And big businesses want the larger regulations and the smaller ones want less. They want to figure out ways to Access Capital and to survive and thrive. Different mindsets in terms of the Business Community and we need to be sensitive and create the right environment. We maximize the opportunity to lead. I think it is possible. But if people get complacent, and the best example, a tragic example, is detroit. 75 years ago detroit was silicone valley and the most innovative city in the country when the car was the hottest technology. It lost its entrepreneur mojo and a bunch of other things happen and lost 60 of its population and went abrupt bankru bankrupt. And other cities, kansas city, new orleans which is fighting back, are showing momentum around startups. That gives me hope. But if we get complacent and thing america is always going to be this innovative nation there is risk. That is part of the reason i wrote the book. Not just a playbook for peoples lives but a manifesto saying we can win here but we have to change our tune. It is such an important point. People on capitol hill and again as an entrepreneur this shocked me. But what you said is true. They categorize companies as big and Small Companies. Big companies as a group largely dont create any jobs if you look at the data. And even though two 3rds of the job are in small and Midsize Business which is stat people like to talk about and why they are important but as a group tla dont actually create a lot of jobs. It is all of these gizels which is a Small Company that gets going, it takes off aol is an extreme example worth 70 million and a decade later worth 160 billion. That is an offthechart extreme example. In my home state, you have under armor, great example. Small Company Selling a unique athletic shirt people thought was a niche product that would be in the corner somewhere but the founder, ceo, kevin plank, and we visited the headquarters, it takes off with thousands of employees. Guest in baltimore host you mentioned the job stack and you were a huge instrumental force in getting passed which created with situation where startups with cap can happen. You have done a lot of work on immigration reform. There are fabulous cities around the global attracting entrepreneurs with capital and free xhaeconomies. A lot of the viewers follow the government and are caught up in the debate we are all caught up in. We got something done with the job bills, not with immigration reform, but we moved the ball a little until recently. You have been very much involved in that debate. You have been a big voice around additional money for research. What have you learned from your experience trying to get stuff done in congress that is relevant to think about . Guest first all, you are k