Walking with Marc Randolph, Co-Founder of Netflix

6:02Marc Randolph:Everyone always says you know like oh there's no such thing as a bad idea. But there is! That's such bullshit. There's hundreds, every idea is a bad idea. What I mean by that is that our job as entrepreneurs is to come up with an idea. Yes. And they're always flawed. No successful company you've ever seen is doing what it started out doing.

6:27unknown host:What about like Uber or Google?

6:29Marc Randolph:Yeah, neither of them did it. What their business now are so completely different, and I guarantee you, as soon as they took that original idea and started doing it, they realized what the flaws were. What separates those Googles and Ubers is they bumped into something that didn't work, and rather than digging in and sticking to their guns and saying, I'm not going to change, I have a great idea, they went, oh, this is not what I thought. Let's try this. Let's try this. and it's this ongoing period, ongoing for, it could be a year, year and a half, two years of, oh, this didn't work, but it would be this wheel, it would be this wheel.

7:06Marc Randolph:Because each experiment, each thing you try teaches you some new little thing that informs which direction you go. Here's our good friend Uri.

7:16unknown host:Yes!

7:16Marc Randolph:I'm not sure whether you guys have heard from Uri yet, but he always says that don't fall in love with your idea, fall in love with the problem. Yeah, yeah. And that's just so... Fall on. Yeah, exactly. Fall in love with the problem because that will never desert you. And you've got to be comfortable so that you don't dig in and spend years searching for that self-obviously perfect idea. I mean, bringing it back to the Netflix thing, we did this DVD rental by mail. It was terrible. We spent six months. We spent a million dollars and it didn't work. But we didn't expect it to work. Really? We originally put it together.

7:55unknown host:When you have an idea there, it's like your baby, so you feel so passionately about it working. How do you know when to quit? If it's your baby and it's your idea, it's so hard.

8:04Marc Randolph:Exactly true. But it's such an incredibly important thing. Yeah. You've got to be willing to leave the baby. How cool is this? Let's call it a puppy. A puppy is less intense. It's very, very true. It is your baby. Yeah. And you're holding it. And, of course, to you, it's the most beautiful baby in the world.

8:23unknown host:Thank you.

8:23Marc Randolph:You know, it is. And you go, oh, it's going to grow up. It's going to be the striker for Manchester United or whoever it is. But it's not. It's probably going to grow up to be a drug addict or a criminal or something. You can't do it that way. You've got to say, I have an idea. Probably not going to work. But rather than spending my time obsessing about finding one that I know will work, let's just start. Let's just try this and see what happens. And I guarantee, even though it doesn't work, something happens that gives you that spark. And it's that path. And going back to doing it for the right reasons, that's the fun part.

9:01unknown host:What does success mean to you? So you mentioned it wasn't about money or fame or anything. What does real success mean?

9:07Marc Randolph:So number one, you're right. It's not money and not fame. As you probably can tell by looking at the world, you can never have enough.

9:13unknown host:Yeah.

9:13Marc Randolph:There's always someone who has a better car. And once you have the best car, there's someone who has a better plane. Better watch. Or a bigger boat. Yeah. And if you're judging yourself on that, it's completely unfulfilling because you can never get to the point where that satisfies you.

9:26unknown host:So how do you know? How do you know enough is enough?

9:29Marc Randolph:You don't. If you go, stop making that the benchmark. Enough is enough is that you have a roof over your head and you can afford to feed yourself and feed your family. But after that, it just becomes some weird measurement system. I was lucky. I kind of figured some of that stuff out early, but ultimately you realize that What success is in one dimension is being able to spend your time Doing the things that you really enjoy doing yeah, and that you're good at and if you can do that And every day get up and do the things that I love doing and I'm actually pretty good at it. You're successful

10:05unknown host:So I've just read the most amazing interviews about how much you love your wife and how you say a spouse is so crucial to success What's the secret to a successful, healthy marriage?

10:15Marc Randolph:Well, I was going to say that's a much deeper level of success. Being an entrepreneur has a downside in that it's extremely demanding. It wants your attention every day. It wants your attention all day. It wants it on nights and weekends. And I think part of what makes success is that realizing that life is not all about work. Is it possible to be a successful entrepreneur and still have time to spend time with your partner, spend time with your children? So what's the secret? I've spent 35 years since then working on that and that was much, I think I've got really successful at it and that's much, much harder.

10:54Marc Randolph:I mean, listen, you're going to interview people who've started companies much bigger than Netflix.

10:58unknown host:Than Netflix, are you insane? What's unique, I think, or rare, is that I was able to do that and I'm still married.

11:07Marc Randolph:I have three kids and I was just telling you, you know, we still spend lots of time together enjoy spending time together they grew up with me knowing them and I think they like me yes who wouldn't the fact that I was able to have that level of entrepreneurial success yeah and all those other things in my life that was fucking hard yeah seriously but that that's what I'm proud of that's success

11:34unknown host:oh my god that is amazing Mark if someone is stuck and they really want to be an entrepreneur they really want to start a company but they can't think of an idea

11:41Marc Randolph:what's your advice so it's ridiculous can't think of an idea you think what they mean is yeah I can't think of an idea which is it's where it's obvious to me it's gonna work yes and obvious it's gonna be big and I'm saying if you really want to be an entrepreneur you've got to abandon both of those things it doesn't make a difference you've got to start the process that depends where you are in your life stage obviously but I began starting things I won't say companies you know back when I was very little but you know it's okay if you're uni you know you start selling something out of your out of your apartment yeah you know do a

12:17unknown host:simple web page try and monetize something yeah don't worry whether it's gonna be big or huge don't quit your job don't don't start the process of learning what it really means to be an entrepreneur what was a moment where you nearly gave up on netflix and how did you get back up

12:35Marc Randolph:thing is you get knocked down a lot as i said before most of the things you try don't work and And sometimes, despite what I'm saying, don't fall in love with your idiot, you can't help it because you go, oh, this one is definitely going to work. And then it doesn't. And you can't help but be disappointed. Then if you have that curiosity, all of a sudden you go, oh, wait a minute. That didn't work. But you see what these people did? Okay. And all of a sudden you're excited to come back in the next day and try the next thing. I've got to look back. probably the thing I kicked myself about it took us about a year and a half before we tried doing subscriptions for video rental and of course that's what made it work and I go I can't believe I didn't try that so then you kind of get disappointed in yourself but listen whatever it worked out okay

13:23unknown host:there's someone who's about to give up who's watching this what motivated you

13:28Marc Randolph:well so one is that there is naturally as inclination is I want to prove I'm I'm going to show them. Yeah, I'm going to show you. So they don't believe in us, they think we're ridiculous, we're going to keep with us, we're going to show them. You know, my dad used to always, I'll say to me sometimes, he goes, listen, a lot of times once you've thought about it a long time, you realize there's no easy way out. Well, the only way out then is through. You've got to turn and go right into it. It's kind of that motivation. He goes, OK, there's no way to avoid this anymore. If we're going to survive, we have to take it head on.

13:57Marc Randolph:And then you say, we're going to do it. And we did. And we laid off a lot of people. and you just focused in the business took pay cuts ourselves just went for it said we went for it we're gonna make this work one way or another and you did yeah high five when you think of a good idea people try and copy you who cares the ideas don't ideas mean nothing and everyone goes oh i've got this amazing idea yeah yeah and i go no tell everybody you want people to come back to you You go, oh, that's not going to work. Oh, I know that, but why? Oh, someone else is doing that. Oh, why isn't it successful?

14:32Marc Randolph:Yeah. You want to know everything. And you want all the advice you can get. And you do not get that unless you share your ideas widely. Let them copy you. Yeah. Out-execute them. Don't think that your idea is what's going to make you win.

14:46unknown host:In fact, okay, here's the deep.

14:49Marc Randolph:Okay. I'm going to lay the deep one on you. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

14:52unknown host:Please.

14:52Marc Randolph:Blow all your aspirations for short-form content. Okay.

14:55unknown host:So by keeping your idea to yourself, you are protecting 1 % of what makes a company successful,

15:03Marc Randolph:and you're squandering the 99 % of what makes a company successful. The idea is 1%. So by protecting that, you're going, great. No, no one has that 1 % part of it. Because the 99 % is getting the word out there to everyone you know what you're working on so that they can feed back to you all this information about what works and doesn't work, who's tried something, who can help me. That's what makes a company work. And by protecting your idea, you're saying it's more important to keep safe this one thing that doesn't count and then not doing the 99 % that does. I mean, Blockbuster was going to come after us once they...

15:45unknown host:And you were just like... And we're fine. And it was a great battle.

15:49Marc Randolph:And the battle makes you stronger. it's gonna happen or it's not gonna happen people pitch me these ideas I must say 99.99 at the time I've heard it before it's extremely rare

16:01unknown host:someone has an original idea what and so you've got to under figure out why

16:07Marc Randolph:hasn't it happened it's rather than being amazed oh my god no one's doing this yeah the smart person goes why not and unless you know why not you're gonna make the exact same mistake the other 99 people who've tried that before. By the way, you have the natural entrepreneur talent which is seven or eight last questions. I know.

16:31unknown host:Favorite Netflix show?

16:32Marc Randolph:Drive to Survive right now.

16:33unknown host:What is your life motto?

16:34Marc Randolph:Why do something when you can overdo something?

16:38unknown host:What is one daily ritual that keeps you sane?

16:41Marc Randolph:I get out and run.

16:42unknown host:How far do you run?

16:43Marc Randolph:I run probably 10K. I mean, if I could get out and climb or surf. Climb?

16:47unknown host:Wow.

16:48Marc Randolph:Every day I do that because that's so in the moment.

16:52unknown host:To your mental health.

16:53Marc Randolph:Yeah, there's no future, there's no past. Yeah. There's purely present, and that's a really great place to be for someone who's in a startup who's constantly worrying about the past and the future.

17:07unknown host:What was the worst advice you ever got?

17:09Marc Randolph:First advice is you have to go to grad school or you have to get a computer science degree or you have to You don't have to do anything counter examples for every piece of advice you get So I guess best advice is nobody knows anything.

17:23unknown host:Netflix is bidding sport by Warner Brothers for a hundred and eight billion How does that make you feel?

17:28Marc Randolph:It's mind-blowing mind-blowing because when you start something your aspirations are so modest you never ever imagine it will be. I mean if you had told me then that one day you know we'd have 300 plus million subscribers and we'd be in every country in the world, the maker never would, you would have had me committed. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. To buy Warner Brothers is even more outrageous. It's just so unimaginable that Netflix everybody can't select us. But you know what? yeah none of it compares to netflix and chill that is the truly mind-blowing thing where the hell did that come from that is so good thank you so much okay guys so that is it for look

18:14unknown host:who i found this week a huge thank you to mark randolph i actually cannot believe that i interviewed the founder of netflix but it's made me even more excited to show you who is next so make sure you also follow me on instagram tiktok or youtube for more clips and to see which founder i'm walking with next. I hope you have the absolute best week.