Marc Randolph

Co-founder of @Netflix & 6 other companies

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

If you’re unwilling to disrupt yourself, I promise someone smaller, hungrier, and quicker is working hard to disrupt you.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

If you’re an early-stage company going up against an entrenched competitor, stop being intimidated by their size.

Instead, take advantage of the one thing you have that they can never have again — the ability to turn on a dime.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

My initial title at Looker was ABC. As in: Anything But Coding. That’s what I did. I was simultaneously the CFO, the head of sales, the chief counsel, and the head of marketing. None of those was a job I was actually qualified for. I muddled through. And in the process, I learned exactly what each of those roles required at our particular company at our particular stage.

Then, little by little, we recruited people who knew vastly more than I did. A real CFO. A real head of sales. A real general counsel. Each time, I handed off the job and watched the function get dramatically better than anything I could have built.

By the time we sold Looker to Google for $2.6 billion, my title was just “Board Member.” And I was completely fine with that.

That’s what success looks like at a startup. You work yourself out of every job, in order, until the company doesn’t need you anymore.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

Validate your idea locally.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

If the way your company is built to grow doesn’t match the way you’re built to operate, you’re going to spend every day fighting yourself.

And you’ll lose.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

A startup is a lonely place.

You are working on something that no one believes in, that you’ve been told time and time again will never work.

It’s you against the world.

But the reality is that you can’t really do it on your own.

You need to enlist help. Bring others around to your way of thinking.

Let them share in your enthusiasm.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

Trust means having the right people in the right seats, and giving them all the information and context they need to make good decisions, and then leaving them alone.

If you truly trust your team, “reviewing their decisions” and “making decisions” shouldn’t be part of your job description.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

Everyone obsesses over product-market fit.

Almost nobody talks about founder-model fit.

But it’s the same idea…

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

Somewhere we got it into our heads that “profitable” is a dirty word for an early-stage company.

That if you aren’t constantly doubling down, chasing 2x growth year over year, you’re not really playing.

That growing “within your means” is what people settle for when they fail to raise.

Nonsense.

Building something durable is a perfectly legitimate game.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

You cannot install a culture of experimentation. You can only model it.

Culture isn’t what’s written in the employee handbook or posted on the lobby wall.

Culture is what people observe — who gets celebrated, who gets promoted, who gets fired, and why. Everything else is decoration.

Geology works this way too. Ninety-nine percent of the change to a landscape happens in one percent of the time — earthquakes, floods, eruptions.

The slow steady stuff barely moves anything.

Culture is identical.

Most of what you do day-to-day barely registers.

But a handful of moments — specific, visible, impossible to misread — reshape the terrain completely.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

@marcbienaime and everyone should have to walk 10 miles to work each day, barefoot, through the snow, uphill in both directions.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

One of my reliable signs that an early-stage company is in trouble: I walk in a few weeks after their seed round closes, and every employee is sitting in a $1,000 Aeron chair behind an automatic standing desk.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

@blakeaburge Solid advice, Blake. I always like to tell entrepreneurs… get a life…. it’ll help your work.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

Wealth doesn’t ruin kids. Confusing wealth with worth does.

[Galax @Galax_Gana]

Hit me with the harshest reality truth.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

@lukemiler I clearly remember in early nflx days, I had a meeting at HP and they parked me in a conference room. I opened a cabinet and there were 3 staplers. I couldn’t believe they could afford 3 extra staplers. Still remember that feeling.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

@antoniogm That’s so true. And to be honest I’m not sure if I would even recognize a real one if I saw it. But we could substitute any of hundreds of expensive but equally unnecessary amenities and the tell is still there.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

A company that rewards people lavishly at the beginning and then goes out of business has done nothing for anyone.

Sorry, but that’s the truth.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

One of my reliable signs that an early-stage company is in trouble: I walk in a few weeks after their seed round closes, and every employee is sitting in a $1,000 Aeron chair behind an automatic standing desk.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

In my book, I wrote about visiting Amazon in the early days. Every desk in the building was a repurposed door. The offices were ugly. But @JeffBezos was unapologetic about it — Amazon was focused on the customer, and a pretty office wasn’t going to help the customer.

This always sparks the same question: do you have to pick? Employees or customers? Can’t it be both?

Sure, it can be both. I’m not suggesting you treat your team like dirt. But the operative word in what Bezos was saying is focus. And focus, by definition, means an unequal allocation of time, money, and attention.

In a startup, you will always have more demands than resources. Always. You can spread everything evenly across every competing need — and end up doing nothing particularly well. Or you can pick the one thing that matters most and pour everything you have into making it great.

Pick the right thing, deliver on it, and it lifts all the other boats. The customer is almost always that thing.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

It’s always amazed me. Richard Mille has a network of about 30 boutiques - all in the most expensive retail districts - and none of them have any inventory. Ever! Empty windows. And they spend lavishly to drive demand for a product impossible to buy. For watches like this, “Ya gotta know a guy”

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

Somewhere along the way, startups got it in their heads that the way to take care of employees is to throw amenities at them.

Kombucha on tap. Nap pods. Fireman poles between floors. Cold brew, hot yoga, catered lunches Tuesday through Thursday.

It’s ridiculous. None of that is what your best people actually want.

What they want is agency — the freedom to make real decisions and own real outcomes. And they want to be surrounded by other people who are just as talented and just as committed as they are.