That Will Never Work

by Marc Randolph

  “It’s sort of crazy, isn’t it?” I said to Lorraine as Reed made his way up to the microphone. “I mean, this has kind of been our life for the last seven years.”

  “I hear the post office is hiring,” Lorraine said with a smile. “They need a guy out near Missoula. You game?”

  I stifled a laugh as Reed cleared his throat and started on his speech. It was, in true Reed fashion, concise. But it was also heartfelt and genuine. He gave a miniature history of the entire company, highlighting my role in the early days. He spoke eloquently about our working relationship, and how it had evolved over time. He ended it by thanking me and inviting several of my colleagues to the stage.

  What followed was part of a grand Netflix tradition. You know how some people say they want their funerals to be celebrations? How instead of a wake, they want a parade? Well, that’s how things were at Netflix. When someone left the company, the party wasn’t a sad occasion. No dirges were played. Instead, it was more like a roast. There would be a succession of speeches—but the state of the art was to deliver your farewell as a limerick.

  That evening, the limericks were long, inexpertly rhymed, and raunchy. I had to cover Logan’s ears a couple of times. But I was crying laughing.

  Eventually it was my turn. My speech that day was off-the-cuff, so I can’t reproduce it here. But it was about how much the company and the team had meant to me—how fortunate I felt to be a part of something that was truly changing the world. I thanked my colleagues, thanked Reed—thanked everyone in that room who’d made Netflix what it was.

  And then I ended with a poem of my own. It was the only part of my speech that I typed out. Unfolding the paper and clearing my throat, I began:

  I’m a little surprised, if I may

  By the tone of the rhymes here today

  I expected some toasts

  And instead I got roasts?

  Well, two can play that game, I say.

  I went on, roasting many of my colleagues, most of whom had already read poems about me.

  Then I got to Reed.

  And Reed, well, the guy can’t be beat

  Whether pitching to us or the Street

  But that late-returned movie

  Apollo 13? Fooey!

  It was actually Teen Vixens in Heat.

  Roars from the crowd. I looked at Reed, who was laughing and shaking his head.

  I was winding up. Just one more stanza to go. I found Patty McCord in the audience and winked at her. Then I took a moment, surveying my audience of friends and colleagues for the last time, and smiled.

  I read the last words on the page:

  Lastly, Patty, who’s mad ’nough to spit

  Because of that last “iffy” bit.

  I’ve been dying to roast her

  Since the “shorn scrotum” poster

  And hey, you can’t fire me: I quit.

  Wait—the story doesn’t end there.

  You’re probably used to reading that by now. But it’s true—because the Netflix story is far from over, of course.

  Reed is still there, still CEO and chairman, still having the time of his life. Unlike me, Reed is not only a phenomenal early-stage CEO—he’s as good (or better) as a late-stage CEO. He’s taken the company to heights I could only dream of. We’re still good friends. He tells me that occasionally he gets angry emails from people who’ve been cut off in traffic by someone with a NETFLIX vanity plate and assume that it could only be him.

  After a few years off, Christina founded an exercise company called Poletential, which runs empowering pole dancing exercise classes for women in Redwood City. Can’t say I saw that coming! But her dedication, organizational genius, and commitment to women’s health has inspired thousands of people to nurture their bodies and minds.

  Te went on to take the VP of marketing position at several companies, including MarkMonitor and Recurly. She still has her Boston accent.

  After Netflix, Eric Meyer took a position as CTO at LowerMyBills, taking Vita (and eventually Boris) with him. Now he’s VP of software at Align, a huge 3-D printing company.

  Boris eventually became a CTO himself, first at ShoeDazzle and then at Carbon38. Vita lasted a few more years as a technologist before changing tracks entirely and getting a doctorate in psychology. Last I heard, she was a postdoctoral fellow at USC.

  After Netflix, Jim Cook spent a couple of years at WineShopper before finally getting the CFO job he’d always wanted, at Mozilla. He was there for almost fifteen years.

  Steve Kahn didn’t stay in that trophy house for long. He’s now down in San Diego pursuing his dream of being a professional photographer. I have two of his photos prominently hanging in my house.

  Corey Bridges is the only one of us (besides Reed, of course) who stayed in the entertainment business. He spent years doing marketing strategy for James Cameron, before striking out on his own, forming his own consulting company.

  Suresh Kumar is still at Netflix, twenty-one years later. He’s currently an engineering manager, and he still has that silver dollar from predicting the hundredth order.

  And Kho Braun? I have no idea where Kho Braun is.

  Netflix has gone on to do many things in the years since I left. As I write this, the company has just passed 150 million subscribers, with customers in nearly every country in the world. Netflix makes its own TV shows, produces its own movies, and has changed the way people consume entertainment. It introduced the concept of binge watching, and is a popular euphemism for getting laid.

  I know that the stock market is never an indicator of real value—but I can’t help but note that as of this writing, the little DVD-by-mail company that Blockbuster could have purchased for $50 million is now worth $150 billion.

  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.

  I can’t take credit for all of Netflix’s successes in the years after I left. But even though many of the company’s initiatives took place after my watch, I think it’s clear that a lot of them have my fingerprints on them.

  So 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.

  Reed brought the drive for scale. I made sure that we never stopped focusing on the individual customer. And both of us came to realize that how we treated individual customers was as important at 150 million subscribers as it was at 150.

  Netflix has thousands of employees now. It’s been sixteen years since I pulled out of the parking lot for the last time. But whenever I come across a news story about their movie deals, read an interview with Reed, or just fire up an episode of Ozark at home, I feel a thrill of pride. 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.

  And when I’m not binge-watching Netflix or writing this book? You can’t ever stop being a startup guy. After leaving in 2003, I knew I didn’t have it in me to immediately start another company—I’d wait until 2012 for that—but I also knew I couldn’t walk away entirely. Instead, I realized that I could get my fix by helping other founders of young companies make their dreams come true. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve helped scores of startups as a CEO coach, invested in dozens of others as an early-stage investor, and mentored hundreds of young entrepreneurs from all over the world. As I did at Netflix, I still get to wade into a crisis and help solve complex problems with smart people—only now, I get to go home at five o’clock, while they stay up all night actu
ally making those things happen.

  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.

  Leaving allowed me to keep building things, and help others with the process of turning their dreams into reality. And moving on to my next stage has given me the time to pursue the other things in my life that are important. 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. Understanding the evolution of Roman church floor tile.

  (I know, I know. Once a dork, always a dork.)

  I’m really proud of what we accomplished at Netflix. It’s been successful beyond my wildest expectations. But I’ve come to realize that 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.

  By that definition, I’ve done okay.

  But success could also be defined a bit more broadly: having a dream, and through your time, your talent, and your perseverance, seeing that dream become a reality.

  I guess I’m proud to fit that definition as well.

  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.

  I think that’s the version of success that Randolph’s Rules point toward—that my father always wanted for me. Fulfilling your goals, making your dreams a reality, nourished by the love of your family.

  Forget money, forget stock options.

  That’s success.

  Okay, one more time—the story doesn’t end there.

  Because now the story is about you.

  Flip your book over. Read the title again.

  “That will never work.”

  That was the first thing out of Lorraine’s mouth the night I told her the idea for Netflix. She wasn’t the only one. I heard that from dozens of people, dozens of times.

  (And to be fair to her, the idea as originally conceived wouldn’t have worked. It took years of adjustments, changes in strategy, new ideas, and plain old luck for us to land on a version of the idea that worked.)

  But everyone with a dream has had that experience, right? You wake up one morning with a great idea that’s going to change the world! You can’t wait to run downstairs and tell your husband. Explain it to your kids. Run it by your professor. Or burst into your boss’s office to lay it all out for him.

  What do they all say?

  That will never work.

  By now, I hope you know what my answer to that line is.

  Nobody Knows Anything.

  I only get to write this book once. And I’d feel like I missed an opportunity if I ended this story without giving you some advice.

  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.

  So take that step. Build something, make something, test something, sell something. Learn for yourself if your idea is a good one.

  What happens if your idea doesn’t work? What happens if your test fails, if nobody orders your product or joins your club? What if sales don’t go up and customer complaints don’t go down? What if you get halfway through writing your novel and get writer’s block? What if after dozens of tries—even hundreds of attempts—you still haven’t seen your dream become anything close to real?

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

  And trust me, they will. If you’ve read this far, you’ve seen that the process of 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.

  One of the things I learned from William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade—aside, of course, from Nobody Knows Anything—is that every movie begins with an inciting event, one that sets the plot in motion. The protagonist of a film has to want something—and for the film to be interesting, there have to be obstacles between the protagonist and what he or she wants.

  In my own case, there were quite a few obstacles—or, in screenwriter-speak, complications—between the dream of Netflix and its reality. But the great thing about having a dream is that you get to write your own story. You’re both the protagonist and the writer of your movie.

  And your idea is your inciting event.

  I trust that at least a few things I’ve said have made you think about an idea that you have. Something that you would like to accomplish. A company you want to start. A product you want to make. A job you want to land. A book you want to write.

  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.”

  Maybe you’re already thinking about whether you could apply some of the tips I’ve given you to make that dream come true. Maybe you’ve gotten the confidence that there is a way to take those difficult first steps toward making your dream a reality. Maybe you’re ready to get out of the shower, towel off, and do something about it.

  In that case, my job is done.

  From here, it’s all up to you.

  Acknowledgements

  When I tell people I wrote a book, their first question is usually “Did you write it yourself?” I guess they expect that I used a ghostwriter, or wrote an “as told to” tale. Or, conversely, that the words simply poured out of me, like water from a pitcher, stimulated by a dream about a late fee on a movie.

  But as I hope you’ve figured out by now, no venture—whether it be book or company—is ever the product of a single person. So did I write this book by myself? Of course not. Like Netflix, this book is the product of scores of people each adding a little bit of themselves to the mixture. I’ll never be able to thank them adequately…but if you’ll bear with me through a few more pages, I’m going to try.

  First, a huge thank-you to Jordan Jacks, who—with his patient coaching and countless supportive cries of “this is pure gold”—reviewed, massaged, rearranged, shaped, and infinitely deepened the manuscript. Jordan, I owe you big time.

  Also to my friend Doug Abrams of Idea Architects, who, on one of our hours-long walks in the woods, convinced me that there might be a book inside of me, and then spent countless hours helping me bring it to life. This book wouldn’t exist without him.

  To my editors: Phil Marino at Little, Brown, who took the how-to book that I initially pitched him and realized that it would be stronger and more powerful as a memoir. He was right. His ongoing edits and suggestions made the book infinitely stronger. And to Claudia Connal, my UK editor at Endeavour, who not only helped me avoid an international incident by misspelling colour (or endeavour), but also provided numerous great suggestions that made the book tighter and clearer in every country.

  To Janet Byrne, my copyeditor, who painstakingly found every misplaced comma, misspelled word, and factual inaccuracy. You don’t notice these things until someone points them out to you. If not for her, you may have gotten the impression from me that Dr. Evil’s testicles were “freshly shorn,” not simply (and more accurately
) “shorn.”

  A huge shout-out to all the members of the early Netflix team who spent countless hours with me on the phone and in person: Christina Kish, Te Smith, Jim Cook, Eric Meyer, Suresh Kumar, Mitch Lowe, Patty McCord, and Steve Kahn. They shared their stories, filled in holes in my memory, and reviewed early drafts of the book for tone and content. I’m sorry I couldn’t fit in all of your great stories, but I loved hearing them.

  I owe a special debt to Gina Keating, author of Netflixed, who selflessly shared her original notes and interview transcripts, all of which helped me more accurately capture not just what people said, but how they said it.

  To my first advance reader, Sally Rutledge, who, by reading the entire book on a single transcontinental plane flight, first demonstrated that it might be bingeworthy (which is appropriate for a book largely about Netflix).

  To the rest of Doug Abrams’s team at Idea Architects: Lara Love, Ty Love, Cody Love, Mariah Sanford, and Janelle Julian, who spent two long days patiently listening to my Netflix stories and helping me build them into something approaching a narrative.

  To the publishing team at Little, Brown: Craig Young, Ben Allen, Maggie Southard, Elizabeth Gassman, and Ira Boudah; and to the team at Endeavour: Alex Stetter, Shona Abhynakar, Caro Parodi, and Juliette Norsworthy—who all patiently tolerated an insatiably curious newbie trying to understand how the publishing industry works. Oh…and they promoted and published the book, too.

  To Caspian Dennis and to Camilla Ferrier, who helped bring this book to other international audiences.

  And a quick call-out (literally) to Anthony Goff and Chrissy Farrell, the people responsible for the audiobook. Thanks for letting me know that I’ve been pronouncing timbre and inchoate incorrectly for all these years.