Sunday was my 50th birthday, and as I celebrated with my family, I started thinking about a few of the things I wish I’d known as a younger man.

Twenty-five years ago, my first business was just taking off.  It was a consumer business — publishing — but based on technology.  And the lesson I learned in that business is one that applies equally to everything I’ve done since:  Stay close to your customer.  Whenever I’ve gotten more than two steps removed from my actual customer, or I’ve stopped really using my products, my products — and my business — have suffered.  When I was publishing my magazine, and I read every page and went to the focus groups, it did pretty good.  But when it started to expand, I hired an editor, and a publisher, and a group editor and a group publisher, and I sometimes only read the magazine when it came out.  Guess what?  It did worse.  As I got further away from the product, and less in tune with my consumers, the product wasn’t as good and my business did worse.  That’s the challenge:  How do you scale and grow a business while staying really close to your customers and the product?  It’s a balancing act.  You can be innovative and take risks when your company is small and private, but it’s much tougher when you get to be big and public.  The other thing, on a personal level, is how time accelerates as you get older.  I was looking at colleges with my son the other day.   When I joined AOL in 1993, he was just four years old.  Now he’s 17, and next year he goes away to college.  People say that the older you get, the faster time flies.  Well, they’re right.  And despite all the time I spend with my family, there will never be enough.