Last week, I was honored to be invited to attend a Bloomberg Breakaway Conference in New York, along with about 100 other CEOs of high growth small- to mid-cap companies. It was a fascinating exchange of insights on “Growing the Company of the Future.”
During one of the sessions, I had the opportunity to ask Steve Case, AOL co-founder and current head of Revolution LLC, if he thought the third wave of the internet would actually happen — given our country’s current broadband speeds and the general lack of optical fiber?
I was happy to hear him say he was hopeful. He said, “I actually hope one of the things to come out of this debate now in (Washington) D.C. around infrastructure is not just focusing on physical infrastructure — better bridges and roads (which we do need) — but on our digital infrastructure. Particularly broadband and how do you distribute it more broadly?”
He went on to say, “I think it’s critically important. Hopefully, it’s one of the areas that gets focus when they start the debate on where to put the dollars and how to prioritize the infrastructure projects.”
His response was highly encouraging, and I agree whole-heartedly. If we hope to keep pace with the rapid (even rampant) technological growth globally, we have to make sure our digital infrastructure can handle it.
If you fast forward to the 22 minute mark of the video above (or https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-05-04/steve-case-on-growing-the-company-of-the-future-video), you can see our exchange. But I encourage you to watch the whole session. We can learn a lot from people like Mr. Case, who was there for the early days of the dot-com boom. After all, he helped navigate the first wave of the internet.