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and started half a dozen magazines focused on technology. What had gotten my attention, in particular, was Ted’s seemingly innate ability to envision and evangelize a digital future, something I was very focused on doing with AOL. So before I even sat down for breakfast with Ted, I was eager to make a move.
    We had a warm and engaging conversation that lasted about ninety minutes. He was very impressive. After the waitress dropped off our check, I decided it was time to make an offer.
    “I want you on our team,” I told him. “We’d be great together.”
    “We probably would,” he responded, “and I’m flattered. But I love what I’mdoing at Redgate and I couldn’t walk away from the company.”
    “Ted, you misunderstand. I’m not here just to offer you a job. I want to buy your company.”
    Ted has a great poker face, and he was careful to be noncommittal.
    “Can we date first?” he asked.
    But I knew I had him. Our visions were too similar for him to say no. I knew that what was coming out of his mouth belied what was going on behind those eyes. He was imagining what it would be like to use his skills on the biggest possible stage. It was only a matter of time.
    Ted became one of AOL’s most influential executives. A few months after we closed on the acquisition of Florida-based Redgate, Ted agreed to move to the DC area to oversee the AOL service. Later, we put him in charge of our content efforts, where he acquired brands like Moviefone, created the Digital Cities local brand in partnership with newspapers, and launched one of the Internet’s first incubator and accelerator programs, called AOL Greenhouse. The strategy was to help develop new brands, then launch them with independent management teams and outside investors. The goal was to let them be nimble, while leveraging the AOL platform. Greenhouse helped launch dozens of brands, including The Motley Fool, a personal finance software, and PlanetOut, an LGBT-focuseddigital media company founded by Megan Smith, who would later become an early Google executive and, later still, the White House’s chief technology officer.
    Seven months after our IPO, Walt Mossberg, a highly influential and widely read technology columnist then writing for the Wall Street Journal , penned a glowing review of our service, comparing us favorably to our biggest competitor:
    Prodigy is huge, claiming 1,750,000 subscribers, but it has been aimed mainly at computer novices. It is taking some welcome steps to become speedier and more sophisticated. But at present I regard Prodigy as seriously flawed. Its navigation system is unusual and confusing, its text is clunky and moves at a snail’s pace, its content promises more than it delivers. And the service splashes distracting paid advertisements across the bottom of many of the information screens (including pitches for this newspaper and even for America Online).
    In contrast, I see America Online as the sophisticated wave of the future among such services. Though it has just 200,000 subscribers and still suffers from some shortcomings, America Online features the type of graphical user interface, popularized by the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows on the PC, that is sweeping all of personal computing. It uses overlapping windows to hold and display text that can be freely manipulated, menusof plain-English commands that can be selected with the mouse, and colorful icons you can click to quickly reach any of a wide variety of rich information databases.
    That review was a tipping point in terms of how people viewed the online market. They took it—and us—a lot more seriously. We were still small; but now we were on the map. And our growth accelerated from there.
    In the spring of 1993, Jim and I went to lunch a short drive from our headquarters. When the waiter came over, Jim ordered a bottle of champagne, the nicest on the menu.
    “Are we celebrating something?” I asked.
    “We sure are,” he said.
    “Okay,” I