SUCCESS FACTORS
Puncture
The Myth
Marc Randolph On Netflix , Mentorship , And The Importance Of Testing Your Ideas
I f there ’ s one person you ’ d be surprised to hear say , “ There ’ s no such thing as a good idea ,” it ’ s Marc Randolph . As co-founder and founding CEO of Netflix , Randolph , along with co-founder Reed Hastings , created a company that is regarded as one of the best ideas in Silicon Valley history . In a place that ’ s in love with grand innovation , it would be easy for Randolph to view his career in tech as the foregone conclusion of coming up with a concept that is now one of the textbook examples of disruption .
But Randolph , never afraid to go against the grain , rejects the conventional narrative of tech startup success . Early in his new book , “ That Will Never Work : The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea ” ( Sept . 15 , Little , Brown and Company ), Randolph immediately puts the sword to the Hollywood version of the origin of the streaming giant . “ There ’ s a popular story about Netflix that says the idea came to Reed after he ’ d rung up a $ 40 late fee on ‘ Apollo 13 ’ at Blockbuster ,” he writes . “ He thought , ‘ What if there were no late fees ?’ And BOOM ! The idea for Netflix was born . That story is beautiful . It ’ s useful . It is , as we say in marketing , emotionally true . But as you ’ ll see in this book , it ’ s not the whole story .”
If that didn ’ t make his point clear enough , he later adds , “ One of my goals in telling this story is to puncture some of the myths that attach themselves to narratives like ours .”
The Art Of Storytelling
“ That Will Never Work ” revises the myth and attempts to tell the whole story while also dispensing what Randolph calls “ hard-won truths ” from his 40-year career in entrepreneurship . “ I did not want it to be a ‘ you ’ book ,” he says . “‘ You have to do this . You have to do that .’ It ’ s telling a great story — about the things we over-
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