How did you wind up creating Revolution?

When I stepped down as chairman of AOL Time Warner, I wasn't intending to launch a slew of new businesses. I intended to focus more on the Case Foundation and more on the family side, and I did quite a bit of both. But it just became clear to me that I loved building businesses, particularly ones that could empower consumers in a new way and disrupt industries. Revolution is not supposed to be another venture capital or private equity firm, both of which tend to have pragmatic, relatively short-term horizons. I'm trying to build iconic companies over decades with much more of a built-to-last mentality.

And you financed it with your personal wealth?
If I was going to spend a lot of time on it, I really wanted to have a longer-term horizon, which led to a conclusion to fund it with my own money. I wanted to take on challenges where maybe you won't hit a home run every time, but you still try to. If you're trying to hit home runs, you're going to strike out sometimes. Most people, these days, are trying to hit doubles.

Speaking of swinging for the fences, one part of your company is Revolution Money, which is trying to reinvent credit cards.
The credit-card business really hasn't changed much in decades. There are a few large incumbents—Visa, MasterCard. It's certainly illogical that a credit card would have your name on it and your signature on the back, so if you dropped it on the street, somebody else could use it. It would be more logical to have an anonymous card that didn’t have your name on it and required a PIN in order to verify that it's your account. But this is the classic chicken-and-egg situation, because it makes sense only if you can get lots of merchants accepting it and lots of consumers using it—which is hard.

That division is also taking on Western Union and PayPal?
We're launching Revolution Money Exchange on Facebook and AIM, so that you can transfer money to your friends and family for free. We hope some of the people who use it will then, over time, become Revolution credit-card holders.

It seems like an expensive proposition. What do you sink into something like that?
Well, I don't want to get into specifics. Overall, with Revolution, we've committed $500 million. The largest portion has gone to health care. But what we're doing with Revolution Money is a significant investment. We've brought in partners and investors like [former U.S. Treasury secretary] Larry Summers, [ex-Charles Schwab C.E.O.] David Pottruck, and [ex-Fannie Mae C.E.O.] Franklin Raines, as well as some institutional investors like Citigroup. Collectively, we've invested a significant amount of money—mostly ours but not entirely ours.

What do you hope Revolution Health will become?
It's bold, but we hope to help play a role in revolutionizing health care. We think the answer is to put the consumer back at the center, empowering consumers. It starts with the Revolution Health website. We've developed the No. 2 referencing health network in the country. WebMD is still No. 1, but we feel like we're closing in on them. [Editor's note: If HealthTalk and SparkPeople, two sites Revolution recently acquired, are included, Revolution Health is actually ahead.]