Walking with Marc Randolph, Co-Founder of Netflix

Hey guys, this week's guest is absolutely mental. I cannot believe I'm actually introducing this person, but first of all let me introduce myself. So if you're new here, hello, I'm Tara Keeney and welcome to Look Who I Found. I go for walks with the world's most ambitious founders and have unscripted conversations to uncover the human side of the people building the biggest companies in the world. So this week I'm joined by Mark Randolph, the founder of Netflix, a billion-dollar company that is one of the most disruptive companies of the past 25 years. This episode is brought to you by Lover Bull, which is the fastest and easiest way to build an app for a website. I'm so happy that you're here and I hope you love this episode. Let's go. This is so surreal, okay. Hi Mark Randolph, tell us what have you built? What have I built? Yes. Probably what you're hinting at is I was co-founder of Netflix, so I built that. I'm an old guy and I'm building since I was a young person. What is the reason you started Netflix? Curiosity. All my startups are the same way. It was basically me saying, "I wonder if it's a better way to do something. I wonder if I can solve this problem." Netflix was just a wonder if it's a better way to make video rental work because that was a huge category and everyone hated it. I go, "Maybe you can do it by mailing people movies, keep it for a week and mail it back." That was the ridiculous idea that started Netflix. So did you have any other world ideas before that that nearly happened? Oh hundreds of them. I'm not a movie guy, so it's not- You don't like movies? It's not like I was- I'm fast. You know debating about who the best French directors were. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what happened was I was quitting my job. The company I was working for is being sold. I was going to lose my job. So was this other guy kind of read hastings? Yes. Am I the two of us go, let's start something new? And so I would pitch him ideas for us to start another company. And believe me, movie rentals was about number six year, seven in the list. Stupid ideas. What's another stupid idea that you have? Personalized shampoo. What? Listen to me. You're going to cut off a lock your hair. You're going to mail it to us. A team of scientists are going to formulate a custom blend just for you. That was the idea. Pitched him another one. Vitamin. You know, personalized sporting goods. And I just kept pitching ideas. I did. After I did. Until one time, we finally come up with one. Which also was stupid. Which was the video rental. Yeah. What turned that around was we happen to be at a time just when they released this thing called a DVD. So how much of it do you think was luck? And how much of it do you think was you just always throwing ideas until something stick? Do you think a lot of entrepreneurship is luck? It's all a combination of things. What people miss is how important the luck part is. I mean, just a name one out of like seven thousand lucky breaks. I think yeah. The fact that DVD actually worked. I mean, because there could have been all kinds of other formats that ended up being how people watched movies. And we bet it all on DVD, becoming something. And luckily it did. So do you think entrepreneurship? I read something where you said entrepreneurship is very new. You never used to be able to learn how to be an entrepreneur. You just were one or you weren't. You have no idea how lucky you are and how lucky you are. It is so much easier now. Because all the tools are there to try things quickly and easily. For example, we did Netflix. Oh right, we have an idea for an e-commerce style website. There were no e-commerce style websites. You could just buy. You didn't have like Shopify. If you wanted to have a website which did things for money, you had to build it all yourself. All right, Martik Payments? There's no straight. There's no PayPal. You got to write it all yourself. It took us a million dollars. And six months, just to figure out how to get to the point we could have a functioning e-commerce website. So for us, yeah, we say that the distance between the ideation and the validation, you know, between we had the idea, when we could prove whether it worked or not, was six months and a million dollars. And of course, for you guys, you know, six minutes. It's just so much easier. Not to mention the psychological easiness of it. If you were an entrepreneur, just meant you were a person who couldn't hold a regular job. That is a crazy line. What did your parents teach you about entrepreneurship? Did they encourage you to be one? There was two things that they taught me. The one is, my dad was very successful, but he was miserable. I mean, he really did not love his job. And that taught me something very important. And what do you, what do you always say is, you go, listen, Mark, do you really want to have control over yourself? You've got to do your own thing. And I think it's because he always regretted that he didn't have control over his life. So he would have said a lot and somehow got wired into me. But the other one is that he always encouraged, my parents, both of them, I want to say, encouraged risk taking. But never were scared of it. So I'd come home from school and go, hey, I just got invited. I'm going to go caving this week. And maybe like, how yeah? And they would have them going, oh my god, are you out of your mind? You're going to get killed. They would go, oh my god, that sounds awesome. Every turn where the one who was risky, one was not risky. They encouraged me. They were always very comfortable with me taking the risky route. And do you do that with your kids now? Oh, absolutely. But not in an active way. They'll, I actually find it a little creepy when kids become what their parents were. That's a lawyer. They're going to the family business. Yeah. So I'm always terrified. In fact, not just my own kids. I'm terrified about you guys all are coming entrepreneurs for the wrong reasons. And the wrong reason is money. Money or fame or power or some or parties or picking or being on what's the called drag and stuff, front cover foals. Yeah. The cows basically. That's ridiculous. Yeah. Because the reality is you're not. Don't go because you think I'm going to build a huge company. Do a kosher curious and just love creating things and solving problems and sitting around the table who really smart people. Yeah. Trying to figure something out. Because if you're going with that attitude, you'll get what you want. Whether it's successful or not, you'll go to work every day just challenged by the fact you're trying to solve something. You said every idea is bad. What did you mean by that? Everyone always says, you know, like, oh, there's no such thing as a bad idea. But there is. That's such bullshit. There's hundreds that every idea is a bad idea. What I mean by that is that our job as entrepreneurs is to come up with an idea. Yes. And they're always flawed. No successful company you've ever seen is doing what it started out doing. What about like Uber? Okay, go. Yeah, neither of them did it. Yeah. What their business now are so completely different and I guarantee you, as soon as they took that original idea and started doing it, they realized what the flaws were. But what separates those Googles, yeah, Uber's is they bumped into something that didn't work. And rather than digging in and sticking to their guns and saying, I'm not going to change. I have a great idea. Yeah. They went, oh, but this is not what I thought. Let's try this. Let's try this. And it's this ongoing period ongoing for it could be year, year and a half, two years of, oh, this didn't work. What would be this wheel? Maybe this wheel because each experiment, each thing you try teaches you some new little thing that informs which direction you go. Has our good friend, Uri. Yes. I'm not sure whether you guys have heard from Uri yet. You know, he always says, you know, that don't fall in love with your ideas. I love the problem. Yeah. And that's just so fun. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Over the problem because that's not the solution. That will never desert you. And you've got to be comfortable so that you don't dig in and spend years searching for that self-obviously perfect idea. Me bringing it back to the Netflix thing, we did this DVD rental by mail. It was terrible. We spent six months. We spent a million dollars and it didn't work. But we didn't expect it to work really. When you have an idea there, it's like your baby. See, he feels so passionate about it working. How do you know into quick if it's your baby and it's your idea. It's so hard. You can't exactly true. But that's, that's, it's such an incredibly important thing. Yeah. You've got to be willing to leave the baby. What is this? That's called a puppy. It's less intense. It's very, very true. It's that it is your baby. Yeah. And you, you're holding it and of course you it's the most beautiful baby in the world. Thank you. You know what it is? You go, oh it's going to grow up. It's going to be, you know, the striker for a nutrition. Yeah, yeah. Or whoever it is. But it's not. It's probably going to grow up to be a drug or a criminal or something. You can't do it that way. Yeah. You've got to say, I have an idea. Probably not going to work. But rather than spending my time obsessing what finding one that I know will work. Yeah. Let's just start. Let's just try this and see what happens. And I guarantee even though it doesn't work, something happens that gives you that spark. And it's that path. And going back to doing it for the right reasons. Yeah. That's the fun part. What does success mean to you? So you've mentioned it wasn't about money or fame or anything. What does real success mean? So number one, you're right. It's not money and not fame. As you probably can tell by looking at the world, you can never have enough. Yeah. There's always someone who has a better car. And once you have the best car that someone has a better playing. Better walks. Or a bigger boat. Yeah. And if you're judging yourself on that, it's completely unfulfilling because you can never get to the point where that satisfies you. So how do you know? How do you know it enough is enough? You don't. If you go stop making that the benchmark enough is enough that you're not, you have a roof over your head and you can afford to feed yourself and feed your family. But after that, it just becomes some weird measurement system. I was lucky. I kind of figured some of that stuff out early. But ultimately, you realize that what success is and one dimension is being able to spend your time doing the things that you really enjoy doing. Yeah. And that you're good at. And if you can do that, and every day get up and do the things that I love doing and I'm actually pretty good at it, you're successful. That's incredible benchmark. So I've just read the most amazing interviews about how much you love your wife and how you say a spouse is so crucial to success. What's the secret to successful healthy marriage? Well, I was going to say that's the deeper level of success. Being an entrepreneur has a downside and that it's extremely demanding. It wants your attention every day, wants your attention all day. It wants it on nights and weekends. And I think part of what makes some successes that realizing that life is not all about work is not possible to be a successful entrepreneur. And still, you know, I have time to spend time with your partner. Spend time with your children. So what's the secret? I spent 35 years since then working on that and that was much, and I think I've got a successful at it. And that's much, much harder. I mean, listen, you're going to interview people who've started companies much bigger. The Netflix, are you insane? What's unique? I think, or rare is I was able to do that and I'm still married. I have three kids and I was just telling you, you know, we still spend lots of time together, enjoy spending time together. They grew up with me knowing them and I think they like me. Yes! And who wouldn't? The fact that I was able to have that level of entrepreneurial success and all those other things in my life, that was fucking hard. Seriously, but that that's what I'm proud of. That's success. Oh my god, that is amazing, Mark. If someone is stuck and they really want to be an entrepreneur, they really want to start a company, but they can't think of an idea, what's your advice? So I guess ridiculous can't think of an idea. You think? What they mean is, I can't think of an idea which is, where it's obvious to me, it's going to work. Yes. And obviously it's going to be big. And I'm saying, if you really want to be an entrepreneur, you've got to abandon both of those things. It doesn't make a difference, you've got to start the process. That depends where you are on your life stage, obviously, but I began starting things. I won't say companies. Back when I was very little, but if you're a new need, you know, you start selling something out of your part. Do a simple web page. Try and monetize something. Don't worry whether it's going to be big or huge. Don't quit your job. Don't drop out of school. Don't quit your job, no. Start the process of learning what it really means to be an entrepreneur. What was the moment when you nearly gave up on Netflix and how did you get back up? The thing is you get knocked down a lot. As I said before, most of the things you try don't work. And sometimes, despite what I'm saying, no fun over the internet, you can't help it because you go, this one is definitely going to work. And then it doesn't. And you can't help but be disappointed. Then if you have that curiosity, obviously, it's not going to work. Wait a minute. That didn't work, but you see what these people did? Okay. And I'll hand that over to you. But I've got to look back probably the thing I kicked myself about to took us about a year and a half before we tried doing subscriptions for video rental. And of course, that's what made it work. And I go, oh, I can't believe I didn't try that. So then you kind of get disappointed in yourself. But listen, whatever. You can work down on that. Yeah, do work down. Okay. But someone who's about to give up who's watching this, what motivated you? Also one is that there is naturally as inclination is I want to prove I'm going to show them. Yeah, I got it. So they don't believe in us. They I think we're ridiculous. Yeah. We're going to show them. You know, my dad used to always also send to me sometimes he goes, listen, a lot of times, once you've fought about it a long time and you realize there's no easy way out. Well, the only way out then is through. You've got to turn and go right into it. It's kind of that motivation was, okay, there's no way to avoid this anymore. We're going to survive. We have to take it head on. And then you say, we're going to do it. And we did. We laid off a lot of people and he just focused in the business took pay cuts ourselves. I just went for it. So we went for it. We're going to make this work when we're another. And you did? Yeah. High five. When you think of a good idea, people trying to copy you. Who cares? The ideas? Ideas mean nothing. And everyone goes, oh, I've got this amazing idea. Yeah. Yeah. And they go, no, tell everybody. You want people to come back to you go, oh, that's not going to work. I know that, but why? Oh, someone else is doing that. Oh, why isn't it successful? Yeah. You want to know everything. I want all the advice you can get. And you do not get that unless you share your ideas widely. Let them copy you. Yeah. Out execute them. Don't think that your ideas what's going to make you win. In fact, okay, here's the deep hummin. Okay. I'm going to lay the deep one on you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Blow all your aspirations for short form content. By keeping your idea to yourself, you are protecting 1% of what makes companies successful. And you're squandering the 99% of what makes a company successful. The ideas 1%. So by protecting that, you're going great. No, no one has that 1% part of it. Because the 99% is getting the word out there to everyone you know what you're working on. So they can feed back to you all this information about what works and doesn't work. Who's tried something? Who can help me? Yeah. That's what makes a company work. And by protecting your idea, you're saying it's more important to keep safe this one thing that doesn't count. And then not doing the 99% that does. I mean, Blockbuster was going to come after us once they. And you're just like, oh, fine. Yeah. And it was a great battle. And the battle makes you stronger. It's going to happen or it's not going to happen. People pitch me these ideas. I must say 99.9 times of the time. I've heard it before. It's extremely rare. Really? That someone has an original idea. What? And so you've got to understage figure out why hasn't it happened? Rather than being amazed, oh my god, no one's doing this. Yeah. The smart person goes, why not? And unless you know why not, you're just going to make the exact same mistake, the other 99 people who've tried that before. That's the question. But wait, you're the natural entrepreneur talent, which is for seven or eight last seven or eight last questions. I know. Favorite Netflix show? Drive a survive right now. What is your life motto? Why do something when you can overdo something? What is one daily ritual that keeps you sane? God, I get out and run. How far do you run? Probably 10k. I mean, if I could get out and climb or surf or wow. Every day I do that because that's so in the moment. To your mental health. Yeah, you just, there's no future, there's no past. Yeah. There's purely present in that of really great place to be for someone who's in a startup. Yeah. Constantly worrying about the past and the future. What was the worst advice you ever got? First advice is you have to go to grad school or you have to get a computer science degree. Or you have to. You don't have to do anything. Counter examples for every piece of advice you get. So I guess best advice is nobody knows anything. Netflix is bidding sport by Warner Brothers for 108 billion. How does that make you feel? It's mind blowing. Mind blowing. Because when you start something, your aspirations are so modest. You never, ever imagine it would be. I mean, if you would told me then that one day, you know, we'd have 300 plus million subscribers and we'd be in every country in the world that make it never would. You would have me committed. It's ridiculous. To buy Warner Brothers is even more outrageous. It's just so unimaginable that Netflix, everybody came to like this. But you know what? Yeah. None of it compares to Netflix's chill. That is the truly mind blowing thing. I know. Where the hell did that come from? That is so good. Thank you so much. Okay guys, so that is it for look who I found this week. A huge thank you to Mark Randolph. I actually cannot believe that I interviewed the founder of Netflix, but it's maybe even more excited to show you who is next. So make sure you also follow me on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube for more clips and to see which founder I'm walking with next. I hope you have the absolute best week.