Most people who have ideas, those ideas sit in their head forever until they eventually die.
— Marc Randolph
I certainly don't only watch Netflix. I enjoy the fact there is multiple companies producing content. I think it's great for consumers.
Most legacy companies get crushed - they get Blockbustered - because they are too afraid to walk away from the status quo, to embrace what the future is.
When a company gets bigger, when it begins to bring on employees, it naturally goes through this tendency of wanting to control, of wanting to build process - essentially to say not every one of our customers or employees has great judgment.
Once you're an entrepreneur you're always an entrepreneur, and you need that fix.
The most powerful step that anyone can take to turn their dreams into reality is a simple one. You just need to start.
The number of people who have successfully scaled a company from dream to post-IPO success - you could list them on the fingers of two hands.
Certainly when I was starting, it required being in a community where, when you tried to rent a building, and they looked at your balance sheet and saw it was negative, that didn't scare them away.
When an opportunity comes knocking, you don't necessarily have to open your door. But you owe it to yourself to at least look through the keyhole.
People watch 'The Social Network,' and what they hone in on is the wealth and the parties and the excitement, and they don't realize the grind and the 'gruelingness' and the disappointment.
Banks and investors don't usually view a high-ranking executive in the company selling off massive amounts of stock as a good thing.
Usually, when I give talks, I'm 100% there, 100% present.
In the years after I left Netflix, the company I co-founded, I didn't want to puff myself up or tear anyone else down.
At Netflix, we realized that we weren't in business with the Toshibas and the Sonys of the world. We were in business with the guy sitting at home trying to find a DVD to watch. If we had the courage to focus on him, everyone - movie studios, electronics companies, Netflix itself - won.
Netflix is famous for its corporate culture, which rightly emphasizes directness and personal responsibility.
I tell aspiring entrepreneurs all the time: Validate your idea locally. Get some experience under your belt. Prove your idea has legs where you are. Spend some time as a big fish in a small pond. Demonstrate that there's a there there... there. Where you live.
Companies have centers of gravity. Where they are is part of their identity.
There's nothing worse than the guy who at the party goes, 'Oh, I had that idea two years ago.' Well, then, why didn't you do something two years ago?
Collaborative decision-making is very poor in crises.
Risk taking in business is one thing. Risk taking in your personal safety is a different thing.
Innovation is doing something in a different way, but it also has a subtext: When there's an established way, and that way is considered the best practice and how it's traditionally been done, innovation comes by and says 'Let's try a different approach.' It doesn't need to be big or company-wide - it could be a single thing.
Netflix was my sixth start-up, and that point I decided I didn't have it in me to start another company. At least that's what I thought at the time.
Take any job in a growing, exciting company. You'll learn so much.
Learning and the exchange of ideas is dramatic.
When you're in a meeting and you pull out your paper notebook, people look at you and go, 'Oh, he's taking a note.' But if you're in a meeting and you pull out your iPad, they go, 'Oh, he's checking Facebook.'
The biggest problem I see with early-stage entrepreneurs is they get the idea in their head, and they leave it in their head. And they begin embellishing it in their head, making it more ornate. They add on the second story to their dream house - then add the tennis court and the turrets and the gargoyles.
As you get older, if you're lucky, you realize two things: what you like, but also what you're good at.
I came from years and years in the direct marketing industry where everything is layered.
I wanted to use my story of starting Netflix - the whole thing, warts and all - to show how a dream could make it from the inside of one's head out into the real world.
In a two-sided market, focusing on the customer will increase a business's ability to extract value from the supply side.
If you want your company to succeed, you have to have the confidence in your business to take a bet on its future - to risk destroying a mediocre business model for the chance to have a strong one.
By being courageous enough to state the difficult truth, the most important reputation that you will preserve is your own.
It used to be true that to succeed in the creative class, you had to move immediately to where the action was. It was how you made connections, how you got auditions, how you found an audience and funding and some attention for your craft. But not anymore.
With people, if you see something you want to change, you can make the change immediately. And if that doesn't work, you can change it again half an hour later. You can't do that with a robot. They're terrible at experimenting.
I'm not a glass-half-full optimist. I'm a glass-overflowing optimist.
Poor leaders have a certain style and that's the only style they have.
Culture is a critical piece of success.
One of my bywords is that nobody knows anything, including me.
Build something, make something, test something, sell something. Learn for yourself if your idea is a good one.
That became the Netflix culture: radical honesty.
I personally believe that a critical part to innovation is that exchange of ideas so when you say, 'Here's my idea,' someone else at the next table, who is in a different party, will go, 'Oh, these guys are trying that,' so that comes.
I'm definitely a note taker.
The role of a founder-CEO is extremely lonely. You can't always be fully forthcoming with your board or investors or employees.
I still have long lists of things that I want to accomplish every day.
My father was an investment banker, a stock broker.
I exited Netflix on wonderful terms, but I don't think I was totally at peace.
Two-sided markets are notoriously finicky.
Companies make a big point of how their culture is all about 'bad news first,' but when it comes to people, they are suddenly scared to communicate bad news out of some mistaken feeling of politeness or political correctness.
My first real job lasted for three years. It ended the day I was unceremoniously fired.
Don't move to L.A to become an actress - you'll just be a waitress. Don't drive to Nashville to become a country music star - you'll just end up playing empty honky-tonks at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday.
