Billionaire and Former Chairman of AOL Steve Case spoke at Imagination In Action’s ‘Forging the Future of Business with AI’ Summit about the similarities between the AI boom and the dot-com boom, and which lessons AI entrepreneurs can learn from that period.
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TechTranscript
00:00Steve, thanks for coming.
00:01Great to be here.
00:02A lot of energy.
00:03A lot of excitement.
00:04It is.
00:05There's a lot of energy.
00:06Speaking of energy, before we get into it, I have a personal question.
00:07Every time we hang out, you look younger.
00:08You're like the Benjamin Button of tech here.
00:09What is the secret to that?
00:10And then we'll get into it.
00:11We heard some life science talks earlier, but I want the secret from the Sewer Theory.
00:12Well, I'm flattered that you say that.
00:13Maybe it's because I'm hanging out with you with a lot of young people.
00:14But I'm curious.
00:15What is the secret to that?
00:16What is the secret to that?
00:17And then we'll get into it.
00:18We heard some life science talks earlier, but I want the secret from the Sewer Theory.
00:19What is the secret to that?
00:20And then we'll get into it.
00:21We heard some life science talks earlier, but I want the secret from the Sewer Theory.
00:22Well, I'm flattered that you say that.
00:23Maybe it's because I'm hanging out with you with a lot of young people and a lot of smart
00:24entrepreneurs that are inspiring me about the future.
00:25Yeah.
00:26The energy is big here.
00:27All right.
00:28So, again, I appreciate you coming.
00:29When I reached out, there was a purpose to it, because it feels like we're at this moment
00:30here where it has gone from a concept to now it's actual life science.
00:31So, I'm curious.
00:32What is the secret to that?
00:33And then we'll get into it.
00:34We heard some life science talks earlier, but I want the secret from the Sewer Theory.
00:35All right.
00:36So, again, I appreciate you coming.
00:37And when I reached out, there was a purpose to it, because it feels like we're at this
00:43moment here where it has gone from a concept to now it's actual life science.
00:50And you were so key, and everyone talks about AI, it's the biggest thing, maybe even bigger
00:55than the internet.
00:56The last time we had this incredible shift in how everybody did everything was the internet,
01:01and you were one of the key, key people.
01:04You had Tim Berners-Lee, and he developed the World Wide Web, and then you had people
01:08like Marc Andreessen with the Mosaic browser, and then really it was AOL and your company
01:13that brought tens of millions of people, popularized the internet.
01:19I mean, how many CD-ROMs did you guys send out back in the day?
01:22A lot.
01:23Sorry about that.
01:24And everybody over 40 is like, yeah, I got about eight of those.
01:28Everybody who's under 30 here is like, what's a CD-ROM?
01:31But there were a lot.
01:33If you were around in the 90s, it was AOL, really, that was bringing you onto the internet.
01:41So with that perspective, what do you see, first question would be, what do you see as
01:46the similarities and differences right now about this moment here and when, kind of that
01:51mid-90s, mid to late 90s, where you really saw everything go nuts with the internet?
01:56Well, I think one similarity is it's been developing the technology, in this case AI
02:02or the internet, for decades, and then hit a acceleration point.
02:08So 75 years of investment, including here at MIT, around AI, it's really the last 18
02:13months where things have really accelerated, because obviously the overnight success of
02:17ChatGPT, which was 75 years in the making, and that really created momentum and excitement
02:23with entrepreneurs and investors and the general public, and attention from, it was yesterday
02:27we were meeting with some senators in DC around what to do around AI policy and so forth.
02:32So it went from developing in an interesting way, but not really captivating at the moment,
02:39not really capturing the zeitgeist, and suddenly it took over.
02:43The same thing was true with AOL.
02:45We started in 1985, at the time only 3% of people were online, and those 3% were online
02:51about an hour a week.
02:52And for a decade, from 85 to 95, I'd go to conferences like this, and nobody cared about
02:58the internet.
02:59We're talking about semiconductors, personal computers, software, there's a few of us kind
03:03of fringy on the side, we're talking about the internet.
03:06Most people didn't think the internet ever would be a mainstream phenomenon, more like
03:09a hacker and computer enthusiast kind of thing.
03:12And then in 95, with Netscape, IPO, and some other thing, it sort of accelerated and became
03:17sort of a little bit of a mania.
03:19You could tell that because companies would rename themselves something.com, just as now
03:24companies are renaming themselves something, AI, to be part of that movement.
03:29We're ussteel.ai, we're a new company.
03:33But at the same time, there is tremendous excitement.
03:36People do recognize the absolute potential of the technology, how it can transform business,
03:41transform society, improve healthcare, all the things that you're all aware of.
03:45But there also is a concern, a fear, about some of the unintended consequences.
03:50In the case of the internet, because it grew so slowly, there was sort of a sense of let's
03:54have a light touch of regulation, let's kind of leave it alone.
03:58Here there's a sense that it needs more than that, not too much, because there's obviously
04:01a concern if you have too much regulation, it stifles innovation.
04:05But nothing is not likely to be the case, whether it be in this country or other countries.
04:09So it just shows you it's arrived, it's hit, it's hit, it's moment, nobody knows exactly
04:13what's going to happen.
04:14It reminds me of a song that most people in this room are too young to know, a Buffalo
04:17Springfield song, something's happening here, what it is, is not exactly clear.
04:23People are trying to figure it out and try to maximize the benefits, while also kind
04:28of hedging, minimizing some of the potential risks.
04:31Makes sense.
04:32What year, what was the year that you saw the tipping point with AOL?
04:37It was 95.
04:39We went from, two statistics I remember, I mentioned the initial usage when we got started.
04:46The other was we raised $1 million to get started.
04:49$1 million.
04:50In 1985.
04:51And then we went public in 1992, the first internet company to go public, and our IPO
04:55we raised $10 million.
04:58And the market value that day was $70 million.
05:01And then five years later it was $160 billion.
05:04So we'd been at it for a while, it was still growing slowly, and suddenly it really accelerated.
05:09The other data point is it took us nine years to go from zero to one million subscribers,
05:15and a couple years later we're adding one million subscribers every month.
05:19And so it was a classic hockey stick that venture capitalists never believe appropriately
05:24because it almost never happens, but in that case it really did happen.
05:28So based on that experience, when do you think we'll see that, are we there now?
05:34Is it 18 months from now, 12 months?
05:37You're looking at a lot of startups, so obviously both your history and your field vision here,
05:42when do you think we're going to see that mass kind of acceptance and acceleration?
05:48Well I think we're seeing the mass interest in acceleration and the creation of new companies
05:53and a lot more venture capital going into the sector.
05:57So that bodes well for what's going to happen in this next phase.
06:00But where these things typically follow, and maybe this is a little different, but typically
06:04including with the internet, there's this initial phase of people are working hard on
06:08it, but nobody's really paying attention.
06:11Then it moves into a phase where everybody's paying attention.
06:14It's a little bit too much hype, a little bit too much mania.
06:17Then it moves into a phase where it's kind of like a correction, a little bit of disappointment.
06:212000 for example, a lot of the dot-com companies went public, a lot of them ended up going
06:24bankrupt and it was sort of this viewed as this internet nuclear winter and the ones
06:30that survived then were able to accelerate the Googles, the Facebooks, et cetera and
06:35really become kind of significant, iconic kind of companies.
06:39So we clearly moved from that first phase where people were working hard on the research
06:43here at MIT and other places, but it wasn't really getting significant traction in the
06:48marketplace and now we're in that phase where there is a lot of attention and hopefully
06:53we'll figure out a way to move to the next phase in a way that is not quite as disruptive
06:59as it was with the dot-com side where 90% of the companies ended up going bankrupt.
07:05Maybe one major difference, who here is kind of a startup entrepreneur doing their own
07:11thing?
07:12Okay.
07:13About half.
07:14How many are working for like a Google, Microsoft, one of the big guys?
07:18All right, so we got the entrepreneurs.
07:21I like that.
07:22This is your room.
07:23These are your people.
07:24Small tech, not big tech.
07:25That's right.
07:26So small tech versus big tech.
07:27It's a great point, which is maybe one difference though between kind of the 1990s and the internet
07:34and today is that because of large language models, obviously it's more of a top-down.
07:39You need massive scale and size and money to start developing it where you are able
07:44to kind of ground up and now there's a lot of top-down.
07:47So how do we make sure that it's not just a three-player field and that you've been
07:52one of the great evangelists for the reason things work and the way we stay ahead is because
07:57of the entrepreneurs, not because of big tech, but definitely there's a risk that this becomes
08:02a big tech play.
08:03No, there's a big risk of it and I do worry that AI, because of sort of the, as you said,
08:09the sort of the table stakes and the need for data and so forth, you know, could result
08:12in big tech getting bigger.
08:14And you've seen that in the market.
08:15You know, there's some companies that have increased a trillion dollars in market cap
08:18in the last couple of years based on the presumption they're going to dominate this next wave in
08:22terms of internet.
08:23These are great companies and they're important companies, particularly in what's now a global
08:29battle with China and others around the future.
08:32But we can't let this just be around, you know, the big, you know, getting bigger.
08:36We need to make sure the playing field's level, so entrepreneurs with less capital and also
08:41in places outside of Boston or outside of, you know, San Francisco or, you know, all
08:45around the country have the opportunity to, you know, to participate as well.
08:49And that is one of the things that I've been pushing hard for, including in Washington.
08:52I testified at the last Senate AI Summit and my main message was this, which is we need
08:58to make sure that as you think about guardrails, you think about rules of the road, you err
09:03on the side of allowing new companies to start and scale and don't do things that end up
09:08entrenching some of the incumbents, regulatory capture issues.
09:11And one key part of that is there's a big debate now in Washington, Brussels, other
09:15places about open source.
09:17And there is a concern, which is understandable, that open source results in losing control
09:22over the technology and some bad things, national security risks, other things could happen.
09:27And that is a fair concern, but we have to have open source if we're going to make sure
09:32that this really is an open platform, a level playing field, and new companies, including
09:36some of those hopefully in this room, are able to, you know, launch and scale and become
09:41the next Google.
09:42And the lesson, going back to the Internet, was when we got started, the only reason America
09:47dominated the Internet is because the defense agency, a government agency, DARPA, funded
09:52the creation of the Internet to create essentially a network that would withstand a nuclear attack,
09:57number one.
09:58Number two, a judicial decision was made to break up Ma Bell, the dominant, you know,
10:03the only monopoly phone company, to create seven regional Bell companies.
10:06That unleashed competition, and that's why the cost of being on the Internet went from
10:10$10 an hour to nothing because of that, you know, competition.
10:13So that was a key decision.
10:15Another key decision was to essentially commercialize the Internet.
10:17When we started in 85, it was still illegal for consumers or businesses to be on the Internet.
10:22It was for educational institutions like MIT or government agencies, not for consumers
10:26or businesses.
10:27Congress passed a telecom bill to commercialize the Internet.
10:30And a final one, and the most important relative to this conversation, is the FCC mandated
10:35open access.
10:36So they said, we're not going to just create all these different phone companies.
10:38We're going to require that those phone companies allow others, like AOL, to run on their networks.
10:44And if that hadn't happened, the cost wouldn't have come down, the innovation wouldn't have
10:48accelerated, and certainly companies like ours wouldn't have existed.
10:51I don't think America would have, you know, led the charge.
10:53So how do we take some of those lessons forward here with AI and make sure it is open and
10:58new companies can emerge and it's not just the, you know, the big tech getting bigger?
11:02Well, you know, again, that took Washington to bust up AT&T.
11:09So what's the prescriptive solution to make sure that we have many, you know, RBOCs and
11:14we have the ability to start, you know, for companies to start versus three companies
11:19to dominate?
11:20That's why I made an event like this, having 2,000 people at an event.
11:23Most of whom are entrepreneurs trying to imagine a future and not just people representing
11:27the larger companies, you know, we've got to lean into that and be backing this next
11:32generation of entrepreneurs.
11:33In terms of antitrust, it's a bigger, you know, kind of conversation and it is being
11:37considered now with the FTC and others being much more aggressive on antitrust issues.
11:41It is going to be harder.
11:42It already is harder for big companies to buy other big companies.
11:45There's more scrutiny.
11:46So that's slowing some of that, which is not all bad, you know, at the same time, we don't
11:51want to move too far in that direction where it ends up kind of stifling some potential
11:55innovation, stifling a path for, you know, young companies in some cases should be acquired
12:00by the larger companies.
12:01So we don't want to go too far in that direction, but I do think we need to err on the side
12:06of making sure AI is open to all, err on the side of making sure the leaders in AI 20 years
12:12from now are new companies, new entrepreneurs that didn't, you know, didn't exist just as
12:17with the leaders of the internet today are companies that did not exist.
12:21It was not AT&T that dominated that.
12:24It was not IBM that dominated.
12:25IBM spent a billion dollars with IBM, Sears, and CBS to launch an online venture 25 years
12:32ago called Prodigy.
12:33A billion dollars ended up, you know, kind of failing.
12:36Our little company with $1 million ended up, you know, kind of emerging.
12:39But then we got challenged by other companies and we kind of lost our way and new companies
12:44emerged.
12:45That's the arc of innovation.
12:46That's the arc of the American, you know, story.
12:48That's right.
12:49Well, you also mentioned before the idea that we need to make sure that there are entrepreneurs
12:54all everywhere that are empowered to do this.
12:58You know, I don't know if anybody's seen, you know, Steve has this movement, Rise of
13:00the Rest.
13:01I don't know if anybody's ever been on, seen the Rise of the Rest tour.
13:04Steve traveled around, has traveled around over the years in an RV and he pulls into
13:08towns like Cincinnati or, you know, Topeka or wherever and, yeah, go Cincy.
13:13And he, and it's like Drake getting on the concert tour.
13:18He comes out and all the entrepreneurs.
13:19It was not quite that.
13:20But, and the van pulls up and the fans are there.
13:27Might be dozens or hundreds versus tens of thousands.
13:30But the entrepreneurs in these cities feel seen and, you know, I, you know, I've been
13:36hearing a lot even walking around today about the necessity to make sure that AI is inclusive
13:41and that's absolutely right.
13:43But there needs to be geographic in the city, right?
13:45The issue there, we launched Rise of the Rest 10 years ago, actually in Detroit, a city
13:48that we then did a Forbes 30 under 30 conferences for a number of years.
13:52And we'll be going back to celebrate that in a couple of months and Pittsburgh and others,
13:56which are the cities, by the way, that a hundred years ago were the Silicon Valley at the time.
14:00You know, Detroit was the most innovative city in America, fastest growing city in America,
14:04fifth largest city in America, because everybody wanted to be part of the car revolution.
14:07Pittsburgh was powering the steel industry and the industrial revolution, it was really
14:12rocking and rolling.
14:13And so these cities had great histories, but there was some risk about not having great
14:18futures.
14:19And the progress in the last decade has been great.
14:20There's 1,400 new venture firms in these Rise of the Rest cities.
14:23We, through our own Rise of the Rest seed fund, have made 200 investments in a hundred
14:27different cities.
14:28And some of them, one of them actually a company called Pryon in North Carolina, Igor the founder
14:32will be speaking in a session, one of the next sessions.
14:35He was the original founder of the technology that Amazon acquired to create Alexa.
14:39And he's in North Carolina building, you know, Pryon.
14:41He backed a company called Tempest in Chicago.
14:43Now it's 2,000 employees focused on using AI initially on oncology so there can be a
14:49better diagnosis, a more precise intervention.
14:52We founded a company in Baltimore called Catalyte using AI to identify potential people have
14:57that has shifted some people that were truck drivers to now being, you know, coders.
15:02So we're seeing this happening, you know, there's one company in Atlanta that's building
15:05a Mach 5 engine to go from Atlanta to Europe in 90 minutes.
15:09And some of that is the core technology around the engine, but they're also using AI and
15:13a plan with the military to do a, essentially an uncrewed mission, you know, later this
15:19year, that company is in Atlanta.
15:21And so how do we make sure that as AI moves forward, it is open to all, it's not just
15:26the big getting bigger, but it also isn't just Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, which
15:31have dominated the last couple of years, continuing to dominate because 75% of venture capital
15:36for the last decade has gone to California, New York, and Massachusetts.
15:38We have to level the playing field.
15:39And if we don't, this country, which some of you I'm sure are concerned is, I'm concerned
15:43about the hyper-partisanship, tribalism, some of that, not all of it, some of that is a
15:48lot of people in a lot of parts of the country feel left out by the technology revolution.
15:53They feel unheard.
15:54They feel that the innovations happening in places like Cambridge are ending up creating
15:58job loss in their community.
16:00And we're not offsetting that by launching new companies that can create jobs for those
16:04communities.
16:05They're mad.
16:06And that's playing out in politics.
16:07And the biggest risk to America, I think, is an internal risk.
16:10China is a competitive risk, but an internal risk of the dysfunction and the hyper-partisanship.
16:15So how do we create more opportunity for more people in more places so more people wake
16:19up in the morning anxious, happy, and enthusiastic about the future, not anxious and fearful
16:25about the future.
16:26And we're unique in coming in this morning and saying, oh, this is all possible.
16:31Most people in most parts of the country trust me.
16:33I've been there.
16:34I've seen this.
16:35Do not have that enthusiasm.
16:37Do not have that optimism.
16:39And we have to create more jobs for more people in more places.
16:42And startups create most of the jobs.
16:43It's not small business.
16:45It's not big business.
16:46It's new business, companies under five years old.
16:49So we've got to do that if we're going to have a united country, as well as doing that
16:53if we're going to win and continue to be the most innovative entrepreneurial nation in
16:56the world, which is a risk given what's happening globally.
16:59We've got to do that in a more inclusive way.
17:01How do we, how do we, it's a catch 22 because the money goes to where the talent is, the
17:08talent goes to where the money is, and there's this, you know, perception, you know, a lot
17:12of it's true, a lot of it's not.
17:13You know, that Silicon Valley's got a majority of the AI talent, Boston's got the, you know,
17:18a smaller but decent percentage, and some in New York, but really, you know, those are
17:22the markets.
17:23So how do we, how do we get out of the talent issue in places like Detroit or Pittsburgh
17:28or Atlanta?
17:29Well, first of all, the talent has always been there.
17:32You know, if you go to Silicon Valley, I was actually speaking at a conference, it wasn't
17:35for, it was TechCrunch conference five or six years ago.
17:38There were, I don't know, 2,000 or 3,000 people in the room.
17:40I asked for a show of hands, how many people grew up in the Bay Area, and it was like 5%.
17:47Everybody in Silicon Valley is from someplace else.
17:49They go there because that is the land of opportunity, because the capital, other people
17:53there, an ecosystem of supporting risk-taking and so forth, but they grew up in other parts
17:57of the country.
17:58They went to school in other parts of the country.
17:59And some of our best universities, MIT is wonderful, Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh is
18:03wonderful, Michigan and Ann Arbor is wonderful, Ohio State and Columbus is wonderful, Georgia
18:07Tech in Atlanta is wonderful.
18:09But when they've graduated historically, and it started to change in the last decade, historically,
18:13they've left those places to go to the coast, because that's where the action was.
18:17That's where the money was.
18:18And so if we reverse that, and people have the flexibility to build companies wherever
18:22they choose to build companies, and the pandemic has been a little bit helpful there in terms
18:26of freeing up some flexibility around how people work and where they work and so forth,
18:32and we merge that or blend that with capital so people can access capital and get started,
18:37that creates opportunity in those places.
18:39The last point is right now the focus tends to be on the horizontal platform AI applications,
18:44which obviously is really important.
18:46The real action is when AI meets the real world, and AI basically gets integrated into
18:52the core industries of our country, healthcare and food and agriculture and so forth.
18:57And that's when being in other places may be advantaged, because most of the companies
19:01need to partner with are in those other places, MD Anderson in Texas, Mayo Clinic in Minnesota,
19:07Johns Hopkins in Maryland, those are super important institutions to partner with if
19:12you're trying to reimagine, disrupt the healthcare sector.
19:16So it will advantage people that are close to it, it'll advantage people that have some
19:19credibility with those institutions so they can build trust and establish partnerships,
19:24and I think partnerships and policy will be much more important in this next wave of innovation,
19:28next 20 years than it has been in the last 20 years.
19:31I think you make great points there.
19:33We had the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston for three years, and that was about six, seven
19:38years ago, and I remember coming here and I had a lot of meetings with Marty Walsh,
19:42the mayor, and Charlie Baker, the governor of Massachusetts, about what this event could
19:47do.
19:48There were about 20,000 young entrepreneurs at that event, and it struck me that the thing
19:52that was haunting them, and the reason they were very keen to have this, and it boiled
19:56down to one word, which was Facebook.
20:00And the reason it was Facebook is because Facebook was founded here, about two miles
20:05away from here, but yet they felt like, even in Boston, they felt like they had to go to
20:10San Francisco because of the quote-unquote talent.
20:12And imagine how much different Boston would look, and Boston's doing great, but imagine
20:16how much different it would look if Facebook was still based in Boston.
20:19So the secret is, right, in Atlanta, Georgia Tech, every school you mentioned is amazing.
20:25How do you send the message to the local entrepreneurs coming out of those schools or surrounding
20:28those schools so they could stay home where they're comfortable, where they like it, and
20:33build business?
20:34And tap into talent.
20:35Georgia Tech has a great program.
20:36So Hermes is attracting dozens and dozens of people out of Georgia Tech, and so there's
20:40a competitive advantage for them, and if they were just moved to San Francisco, the battle
20:45for talent is more intense.
20:47So I think there's some strategic advantage, some cost-of-living advantage, but you have
20:50to have the venture capital there, you have to keep the talent there, slow the brain drain
20:55of people leaving, create a boomerang of people returning, and you have to create an ecosystem
20:59that is around risk-taking.
21:01As you all know, it's hard, it's challenging, it's risky to start a company, and being in
21:06a community which recognizes that and supports that, which is one of the great things about
21:09Silicon Valley, or one of the great things about Cambridge, how do we create those communities
21:13in more parts of the country?
21:14Very important.
21:15Yeah, I want to touch upon what you just mentioned about hyper-partisanship.
21:18Again, your experience is so valuable here, because I got on the internet with AOL myself,
21:26and it was an amazing tool, because all of a sudden I was reconnecting with all my grade
21:30school friends that I'd never, you know, we started an email chain, you know, it was just
21:34this mind-blowing experience.
21:37But what it also unleashed, a lot of the hyper-partisanship is a, you know, after the first few years
21:43were super-friendly, but then, you know, a lot of the internet obviously became, you
21:47know, weaponized in terms of putting everyone into factions.
21:50How do we, based on that experience, not let AI accelerate that exponential?
21:55So that is the core question.
21:56I'm super-proud of the, obviously, the role internet's played in our lives, and how transformative
22:01it's been, and how empowering it's been.
22:03It's more so than I would have expected in my wildest, you know, imagination.
22:07That said, I also recognize there have been some unintended consequences that are unfortunate
22:12and disappointing, and what's happening with the weaponization of social media is a good
22:16example of that.
22:17You know, I always thought that one of the great things about the internet is everybody
22:20could have a voice, and it wasn't just the newspapers and magazines and the TV networks
22:25with a small number of people with megaphones.
22:27Everybody could have a megaphone.
22:28And that has proven to be true, where people have, you know, blogs and can, you know, figure
22:33out ways to share their ideas with people.
22:35But with that came this tribalism.
22:38People generally are following people that are like them, generally watching television
22:42networks that, you know, kind of reinforce their views.
22:46They're not really getting exposed to other views and sort of the other side, which has
22:50created more of this tribalism.
22:52As a result, there are issues around, you know, privacy, issues around safety for your
22:56kids, issues around mental health related to, particularly, social media.
23:00This is a real concern, not just here in this country, but around the world.
23:03And so there is a backlash against social media.
23:07There is a backlash against the internet.
23:09There's a backlash against big tech.
23:11There's a backlash against Silicon Valley that's happening, because people see the benefits,
23:16but also recognize their risk and don't think the companies that are taking the lead right
23:21now are responsible enough in trying to maximize the benefits and minimize the risk, which
23:25is why there's more of a focus on making sure we get AI right and don't just let the market
23:30figure it out.
23:31We need some kind of policies, which I understand with a motivation.
23:35At the same time, I worry that it could overreach what's happening right now in Europe.
23:39What's proposed is an overreach that likely will stifle innovation in Europe.
23:43But doing nothing is not an answer.
23:45And each of you, as you think about your companies, need to make sure you're engaged in this discussion
23:50and you're helping to forge the right policy so we can maximize the good things, minimize
23:54the bad things.
23:55Basically, regulations are an attempt to keep bad things from happening.
23:59How do we also make sure we are enabling good things to happen?
24:03And that really is by putting things in the hands of entrepreneurs, including people in
24:07this room.
24:08So as you're building your company, if you do emerge as the next school, the next big
24:12company, recognize that there are a lot of benefits that come with that, but you also
24:15shoulder a lot of responsibilities to help get this right.
24:19So our society really does benefit, and there's some benefits and then also a lot of negatives.
24:26No pressure, guys.
24:30That's a great way to end.
24:31It's kind of like when you're giving the Oscar speech and they start playing the music when
24:34John's on stage.
24:35Yeah, I know what you're saying.
24:40But we really appreciate your time and your wisdom, and I hope you're going to stick around
24:43for a little bit because we've got, you know, Steve's one of the great proponents of entrepreneurs,
24:48and this is a building today full of entrepreneurs, so, you know, I think...
24:52That's why I'm here.
24:53Thank you, Randall.
24:54Thank you, John.
24:55Thank you all.
24:56Thank you.
25:01Thank you.