Marc Randolph: ...that every idea sounds bad at first—but if you love the problem, you’ll find the solution

Nobody Told Me!

Business, Entrepreneurship

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Marc is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, advisor, and investor—but you probably know him best as the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix. Under his leadership, Netflix grew from an idea sketched out on a car ride to a revolutionary company that transformed how the world consumes entertainment.

Marc is also the author of the bestselling book That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea, where he shares the behind-the-scenes story of Netflix’s early days—and the lessons he learned about risk-taking, innovation, and resilience.

In addition to his work as a founder and thought leader, Marc is a sought-after speaker and mentor, passionate about helping the next generation of entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality. He’s here today to talk about the highs and lows of building something from nothing, what it takes to keep believing in yourself, and why the words “that will never work” might just be the greatest motivation of all.

Learn more at marcrandolph.com.

Transcript

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0:43.2	Welcome. Welcome to Nobody Told Me.
0:45.6	I'm Laura Owens, and I'm Jan Black.
0:51.3	And we are so excited to welcome veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mark Randolph to the show.
0:56.1	As you may know, Mark is the co-founder and founding CEO of Netflix.
1:01.7	He's mentored hundreds of early stage entrepreneurs and helped see dozens of successful tech ventures in addition to many unsuccessful ones. And Mark is the author of the bestselling book,
1:07.2	That Will Never Work, The Birth of Netflix and the amazing life of an idea.
1:12.6	Mark, we thank you so much for joining us.
1:14.8	Oh, it's exciting to be with you. Thanks for having me.
1:17.2	We love the book because you have a great way of making the reader feel like they're right
1:22.3	alongside you as Netflix goes from an idea to a big business. You left Netflix in 2003 and you say you're glad
1:29.8	you waited 16 years to actually write about Netflix. Why is that? Well, there's a couple of reasons.
1:36.1	You know, one reason I wrote the book was I did want to give people kind of the untold story of
1:42.0	Netflix since there's all kinds of myths and false founding stories.
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