AOL Co-Founder Jim Kimsey Influenced Generation of Net Providers
Jim Kimsey, a dot-com entrepreneur who helped turn a failed video game company into America Online, the giant dial-up service that helped bring the Internet to the masses, died at his home in McLean (VA). He was 76.
Kimsey was a co-founder of AOL, connecting a nascent online audience with news and information as never before. Through its online chat rooms and email service, the company influenced a generation of Internet providers and left an imprint on popular American culture, the sound of a buzzing modem and its trademark “You’ve got mail!” entering the national lexicon. Kimsey steered AOL through its early days as its founding chairman and chief executive, but he largely avoided the spotlight. Indeed, one of his best known acts at AOL was handing power to someone else. Kimsey, a sort of elder statesman for the company, groomed another co-founder, Steve Case, at the time a young Internet marketing expert, to take over. Case oversaw AOL’s expansion into a media conglomerate with a $220 billion market capitalization.