Meet the new consumers of the new media age. They want things to be better, faster, cheaper and, even more important, free.
"This new consumer is very, very different from [the ones] we dealt with before," said Ted Leonsis, vice chairman emeritus of AOL, who is considered an Internet pioneer and whose business portfolio over the years includes an impressive array of online companies. It doesn't matter what business you're in -- restaurant, real estate or financial services, he added. "We're living in a world where consumers have taken control of everything."
Leonsis, a keynote speaker at the recent Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference 2007, traced his own life story to explain how consumers and the marketplace have changed because of the Internet. "The expectations of our consumers are off the charts," he said. "They want everything great. They want it really, really fast. And it's got to be free. Trying to build businesses around that model becomes a challenge."
Using an illustration of a highway map with signs and dates posted along the main route, Leonsis walked the audience through his own stops on the path of entrepreneurship -- from his first startup company in 1981, to the beginning of his relationship with AOL in 1993, to his acquisition of the Washington Capitals hockey team in 1999, to one of his latest ventures, Revolution Money, a Web 2.0 payment platform and credit-card service.
Leonsis' foray into entrepreneurship began while he was a student at Georgetown University. It was 1976, the Bicentennial summer, and he started a business selling red-white-and-blue snow cones. It was hardly the stuff of which millionaires are made, but Leonsis said the experience gave him a taste of what it's like to start and grow a business. "I think that entrepreneurial spirit is really what drives this country and what drives the world economy," he said.
Leonsis, who was born in Brooklyn in 1957, recognized early on the potential of computers and the Internet.
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