Steve Case: “The Three ‘P’s”

Tips for entrepreneurs

Steve Case is certainly most well known as one of the co-founders of AOL, but these days, as the Chairman of the Case Foundation, the Startup America Partnership and Revolution LLC, he now invests his time, money and passion into a myriad of innovative enterprises. On May 13, Case gave a keynote to kick off TiEcon 2011, The World’s Largest Entrepreneur’s Conference. Afterwards, he spoke with HP Startup Central about his own entrepreneurial lessons learned as well as what he sees and hears from the many startups and business leaders he meets every day.

As his primary piece of advice, Case says he always emphasizes what he calls “The Three ‘P’s”: People, Passion and Perseverance. He says first and foremost it’s crucial to assemble the right team members to work with on your ideas. After that, he stresses the importance of being genuinely excited about what you’re doing so that you’ll make it through the tough times that you’re bound to face along the way. “The big ideas, like an AOL, it took us a decade before we really got going and hit our stride,” he remarks. “So you’ve got to be in it to win it over the long run and not just have a quickie, built-to-flip kind of mentality.”

The Startup America Partnership (of which HP Startup Central is a member) is a coordinated public/private effort that brings together an alliance of the country’s most inventive entrepreneurs, corporations, universities and foundations. In his position leading the initiative, Case travels the country meeting entrepreneurs and trying to stimulate ecosystems of innovation. Case notes that while a technology startup culture has been around in Silicon Valley for years, we’re beginning to see this mindset spread to many other regions and industries. “Part of our goal,” Case says, “is to establish that entrepreneurship culture throughout the nation and in sectors not just focused on technology.” To learn more about the Startup America Partnership, visit https://www.startupamericapartnership.org

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