Marc Randolph Quotes

There's this myth floating around startup land that says you just pound away forever and never give up—that if you persevere long enough, success will inevitably come knocking.

But that's bullshit.

Don't get me wrong....I'm a huge believer in persistence.

But there's a crucial difference between productive persistence and just being stubborn.

And knowing which one you're practicing?

Well, that's the hard part.

The founders who succeed with obvious ideas aren’t the ones who found the idea first.

They’re the ones who understood the problem deeply enough to find the non-obvious solution hiding inside it.

Netflix wasn’t “movies by mail.” That idea had been tried.

What we figured out — eventually, after a year and a half of testing — was the subscription model.

No late fees. No due dates. A completely different relationship with the customer.

That was the non-obvious thing.

Finding the balance between productive persistence and wasted effort is the whole game.

Get your foot in the door and you’ve won half the battle.

The main thing I’ve learned in 40-plus years as an entrepreneur is that nobody knows anything.

Nobody knows if your idea is good or bad. You don’t know if it’s good or bad. You need to test your idea, trial it, collide it with reality.

That’s the only way to learn.

You’ll learn more in one day of doing than in a month of thinking about it.

Personally, I’d rather have someone who executes a mediocre idea brilliantly than someone who talks about a brilliant idea forever.

Execution beats perfection every time.

Perfect information doesn’t exist.

You’re always making a bet with incomplete data.

The question is whether you make that bet early, when the stakes are small, or late, when you’ve burned months and money protecting an idea that’s never been tested.

Exceptional people put a premium on working with other exceptional people.

This requires that you not only hire well, but cut smartly.

It means taking the “no jerks” policy seriously, even for high-performing jerks.

The most important skill of an entrepreneur is the ability to make decisions based on incomplete, inconclusive, and frequently contradictory information.

Assume the best.

Assume people will fulfill their promises.

That they will hold up their side of the bargain.

That they will also want a win/win outcome.

Don’t hedge your bets. Don’t cover your ass. Don’t use a lawyer. Leave yourself open to being taken advantage of.

99% of the time you will be amazed at what trust and vulnerability unlocks.

1% of the time you’ll be taken advantage of.

So worth it.

The best candidates have options.

They always have.

They always will.

The question isn’t whether they’re good enough for you.

The question is whether you can convince them that you’re good enough for them.

The thing about trust: you can lose it in thirty seconds.

Getting it back takes forever — if it comes back at all.

At Netflix, I had a rule that drove people crazy: every person who came in for an interview should leave dying to work there—even if we knew in the first five minutes we weren't going to hire them.

Because that 'wrong candidate' is going to tell everyone they know about their experience.

And you never know which of those future conversations will matter.

The ability to reverse quickly as an entrepreneur is key.