That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea

by Marc Randolph

Overview

In the tradition of Phil Knight's Shoe Dog comes the incredible untold story of how Netflix went from concept to company-all revealed by co-founder and first CEO Marc Randolph.

Once upon a time, brick-and-mortar video stores were king. Late fees were ubiquitous, video-streaming unheard was of, and widespread DVD adoption seemed about as imminent as flying cars. Indeed, these were the widely accepted laws of the land in 1997, when Marc Randolph had an idea. It was a simple thought—leveraging the internet to rent movies—and was just one of many more and far worse proposals, like personalized baseball bats and a shampoo delivery service, that Randolph would pitch to his business partner, Reed Hastings, on their commute to work each morning.

But Hastings was intrigued, and the pair—with Hastings as the primary investor and Randolph as the CEO—founded a company. Now with over 150 million subscribers, Netflix's triumph feels inevitable, but the twenty first century's most disruptive start up began with few believers and calamity at every turn. From having to pitch his own mother on being an early investor, to the motel conference room that served as a first office, to server crashes on launch day, to the now-infamous meeting when Netflix brass pitched Blockbuster to acquire them, Marc Randolph's transformational journey exemplifies how anyone with grit, gut instincts, and determination can change the world—even with an idea that many think will never work.

What emerges, though, isn't just the inside story of one of the world's most iconic companies. Full of counter-intuitive concepts and written in binge-worthy prose, it answers some of our most fundamental questions about taking that leap of faith in business or in life: How do you begin? How do you weather disappointment and failure? How do you deal with success? What even is success?

From idea generation to team building to knowing when it's time to let go, That Will Never Work is not only the ultimate follow-your-dreams parable, but also one of the most dramatic and insightful entrepreneurial stories of our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316530200
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	09/17/2019
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	688,706
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 5.80(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Marc Randolph is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, advisor, and investor, whose career as an entrepreneur spans four decades. In addition to being the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, Marc has founded or co-founded six other successful startups, mentored hundreds of early-stage entrepreneurs, and as an investor has helped seed dozens of successful tech ventures (and just as many unsuccessful ones). He is host of the top-10 Apple podcast That Will Never Work, where he works directly with entrepreneurs to provide 1-on-1 mentoring. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.
 

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

1 Against Epiphanies 3

2 "That Will Never Work" 10

3 Please, Mr. Postman 24

4 Getting the Band Together 38

5 Show Me the Money 48

6 How It Feels to Deposit a Check for Almost $2 Million 64

7 We Were Almost CinemaCenter 79

8 Ready for Launch 99

9 A Day in the Post-Launch Life 122

10 Halcyon Days 146

11 Two Cents for Bill Clinton 161

12 "I'm Losing Faith in You" 175

13 Over the Hill 190

14 Nobody Knows Anything 209

15 Drowning in Our Own Success 228

16 Crash 242

17 The Belt Tightens 254

18 Going Public 267

Epilogue: Randolph's Rules for Success 293

Afterword to the Paperback Edition 313

Acknowledgments 325

Index 329

Editorial Reviews

2019-07-28
The rocky road from startup to colossal success.

Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, makes an engaging book debut with a candid memoir recounting the history of the company as it evolved "from dream to concept to shared reality." After co-founding the magazine MacUser and working in direct marketing for a software giant, Randolph, eager to work for himself, had been coming up with new business concepts (e.g., personalized dog food) when he hit on the idea of renting videotapes. When his friend Reed Hastings, looking to fund a new company, expressed mild interest, Randolph gathered a dozen "brilliant, creative people" to see if the idea made sense financially. Videotapes, it turned out, were prohibitively expensive to mail, but the upcoming new technology of DVDs seemed viable. Inventing a name for the new company (NowShowing and CinemaCenter were possibilities) was the least of their problems: Only by contracting with Toshiba and Sony to offer free rentals with the purchase of a DVD player did they entice customers, but even then, sales of DVDs were stronger than rentals. For a few years, the company was "almost always on the razor's edge between total success and total failure." When individual rentals failed to put the company on secure footing, Randolph and his team came up with the idea of a monthly subscription service with no late fees, a move that proved popular. Yet even with 200,000 subscribers, Netflix still lost money and was forced to trim its staff; the layoffs, writes the author, were painful. Besides internal changes, the company looked for alliances with more successful enterprises, but a deal with Amazon (it would sell DVDs and steer customers to Netflix for rentals) collapsed and a hopeful bid for Blockbuster to buy Netflix fizzled. Elevating Hastings to CEO helped to lure investors, and after "years of work, thousands of hours of brainstorms, dire finances, and an impatient CEO," Netflix went public in 2002. Now with 150 million subscribers, Netflix has morphed into a media behemoth.

An entertaining chronicle of creativity, luck, and unflagging perseverance.

Kirkus Reviews

"Engaging and insightful"—Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix

"Netflix was built on the vision and creative DNA of one man — Marc Randolph. As the founding CEO, his leadership defined the culture of Netflix and laid the groundwork for successive, global revolutions in how we make and consume entertainment. His willingness to step aside so that his co-founder Reed Hastings could scale up the company stands as an example of humility and self-knowledge that is rare in the startup world."—Gina Keating, author of Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America's Eyeballs

"Marc is an unusually brave soul. Marc's genius in recognizing that not knowing frees you to experiment and observe and to ultimately win."—Lloyd Tabb, founder ofLooker

"Marc wastes no time cutting through the noise and identifying the truth. Every moment I have spent with Marc, whether it was as he formulated and launched Netflix or since then, has been truly rewarding. Marc understands what is important whether it is your product, your marketing, or your business plan. A remarkable and one of a kind visionary."—Mitch Lowe, founder of RedBox

"An entertaining chronicle of creativity, luck, and unflagging perseverance."—Kirkus

From the Publisher