That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea

by Marc Randolph

little DVD-by-mail company that Blockbuster could have purchased for $50 million is now worth $150 billion.

Dzuh,!

And guess where Blockbuster is? They’re down to one last store. It’s in Bend, Oregon. I keep thinking I’ll make a trip to pay my respects, but I haven’t found the time.

Looooool

many aspects of the corporate culture spring from the way Reed and I treated each other and the way we treated everyone else. Radical honesty. Freedom and responsibility. Those were there from the beginning – in the car on 17, in the Hobee’s dining room, in the first days in the bank vault.

So was Netflix’s emphasis on analytics. It’s what happens when you put a guy with direct marketing experience into a car (and then a conference room, and then a boardroom) with another guy with a brilliant math mind.

Just like Michael and Jamie

That was my company, I think – and it still carries my DNA. The child may not look exactly like me, but it definitely has my nose.

Aweee hahaha

Sometimes you have to step back from your dream – especially when you think you’ve made it real. That’s when you can really see it. In my case, I left Netflix because I realized that the finished product of Netflix wasn’t my dream. My dream was building things. My dream was the process of making Netflix.

Even though I don’t have a W-2 job anymore, I’ll never stop being a type A person. I still make obsessive lists of things to be done. Only now, the only things on my lists are things that I put there. I follow my passions: mastering the perfect cappuccino, growing my own grapes and making my own wine.

success is not defined by what a company accomplishes. Instead, I have a different definition: Success is what you accomplish. It’s being in a position to do what you like, do what you do well, and pursue the things that are important to you.

But do you know what I’m proudest of? I’ve done all those things while staying married to my best friend and having my kids grow up knowing me and (as best I can tell) liking me. I just spent two weeks at the beach with Lorraine, Logan, Morgan, and Hunter. Doing absolutely nothing. Just enjoying their company.

Fulfilling your goals, making your dreams a reality, nourished by the love of your family. Forget money, forget stock options. That’s success.

The most powerful step that anyone can take to turn their dreams into reality is a simple one: you just need to start. The only real way to find out if your idea is a good one is to do it. You’ll learn more in one hour of doing something than in a lifetime of thinking about it.

You have to learn to love the problem, not the solution. That’s how you stay engaged when things take longer than you expected.

turning a dream into reality has a dramatic arc – it isn’t quick and it isn’t easy, and there are obstacles and problems along the way.

Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari, once said something that has always resonated with me. “Everyone who has taken a shower has had an idea,” he said. “But it’s the people who get out of the shower, towel off, and do something about it that make the difference.”