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Can a lapsed agreement be revived through an addendum?

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Can you accept a mandate when the registered owner is deceased?

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How the ANC still gets a single vote is beyond me.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

Exactly 25 years ago today - on April 14th, 1998, at 8am in the morning, Eric Meyer leaned forward, tapped a few keys on his laptop, and launched Netflix to the world.

That first day was a long one.  We crashed our servers. Ran out of mailing labels.  Scrambled to get everything to the post office in time.  But we ended that day with 200 customers.

Today, Netflix has more than 200 million of them.

Starting with a dozen people squeezed into a tiny office with dirty green carpet, Netflix now has more than 10,000 employees.  It has customers in nearly every country in the world.  It produces it’s own movies.  It makes it own television shows.  It’s brought the world “Netflix and Chill”.  (And I promise, I never saw that last one coming).

25 years ago, we simply believed there “had to be a better way” to rent movies, but along the way we ended up not just changing the way the world consumes content, but how that content is created.

We started out just wanting to enjoy work, and ended up showing it was possible to build a culture based on radical honesty, freedom and responsibility.

But looking back, I know it could have gone very differently.

- What if the DVD had gone the way of the LaserDisc? (Don’t know what a LaserDisc is? My point exactly!)
- What if Reed and I had accepted Amazon’s offer?
- What if Blockbuster had said yes to our $50 million ask?

I can point to hundreds of other forks in the road that may have made the difference between success and failure.  Each of them reminds me of the importance that luck plays in every success story.  (And the role that survivor bias has in the fact that I’m the one telling it).

Speaking of luck, what about the people?  Would any of this have happened without the right startup team?  Without Christina Kish?  Te Smith?  Jim Cook?  Eric Meyer?  Mitch Lowe?

Where would Netflix be if PureAtria had not acquired Integrity QA; the lucky break that resulted in me sharing an office - and a carpool - with a guy named Reed Hastings.

And what would have happened had we not stumbled - more than a year and half into our journey - onto the no-due-dates, no late-fees subscription model that ended up saving us?

It’s been an amazing ride, and at the beginning, all I wanted to do was start a company that sold something on the internet.  I ended up with so much more than that.

As Netflix closes out it’s first 25 years - and hopefully kicks off it’s next hundred - I’ve never been prouder of what Netflix has become.

And I’m proud of everything that we accomplished.  We started out wanting to solve an interesting problem, and ended up proving that a handful of people with a crazy idea and a bit of determination can change the world.

But I’m proudest of the fact that I didn’t listen when everyone - and I mean everyone - told me “That Will Never Work”.

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

In 2000, Blockbuster was the movie rental king with 60,000 stores and 9,000 employees. Reed Hastings and I, on the other hand, were just two Silicon Valley geeks with a DVD-rental-by-mail idea.

We’d been struggling since 1998 to find a way to make it work, and by the summer of 2000, we were finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Our no-due-dates, no-late-fees subscription model was a hit. Customers were pouring in and the company was growing like crazy.

Running a subscription business takes a lot of cash, since you pay acquisition costs up front while the revenue comes in over time. But it was the height of the internet boom. Cash was plentiful.

Until suddenly it wasn’t. Over a few short months, the internet bubble finally popped. The .com at the end of our name had been a badge of honor; now it was three scarlet letters. And with customers flooding in, cash was flying out. We’d spent more than $50 million getting to this point, and now it looked like our success was going to bankrupt us.

Luckily, there is a Silicon Valley play book for this. It’s called “pursue strategic alternatives”—code for “sell, and sell fast.”

The obvious strategic alternative for us was Blockbuster. Which is why, just a few weeks later, you’d have found me, Reed, and our CFO Barry McCarthy sitting at a giant conference table on the 37th floor of the Blockbuster headquarters in Dallas, getting ready to pitch Blockbuster.

The pitch was simple. We would join forces with Blockbuster. We would run the online business. They would run the stores. We would jointly develop a blended model. And everyone would live happily ever after.

And it was going great. They were leaning in. They asked good questions. Until they asked the most important question of all: “How much?”

Now, we had rehearsed this. We figured we were $50 million in the hole... so let’s go with that! Reed leaned forward confidently and told them: “Fifty Million Dollars.”

There was perfect silence. Their words were “we’ll consider it,” but we could tell they were fighting to suppress laughter. After that, the meeting went downhill fast.

Well, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or, as my father used to tell me, “sometimes, the only way out is through.” We knew there was no easy way out. We struggled for years. But we eventually did make it through. We had our IPO. We passed Blockbuster in revenue.

And today, the company that Blockbuster could have purchased in 2000 for $50 million, has a market cap exceeding $150 billion. And that company with 9000 stores? Now it’s got just one.

But what’s the lesson to take from this?

There’s certainly an inspiring one: It’s possible for a handful of people, with no prior experience in the video business, to take down a 6 billion dollar category-leading company.

But I think the more important lesson—one that Blockbuster learned too late—is simply this:

If you are unwilling to disrupt your business, there will always be someone willing to do it for you.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@minliangtan I’m open to the idea

[Megan Choritz @meganshead]

Dear @CyrilRamaphosa, Today I am all over the place. A young vet, who started his new job at the SPCA the day before, was stabbed to death during load shedding when he went out and caught thieves stealing his car wheels. I thought you should know.

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As technology and commercial lawyers representing many technology companies, we make it our business to stay on top of new developments in both technology and the application of law for emerging businesses.

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Let our experienced team of #lawyers guide you through the legal aspects of your next #capitalraise.

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[Pauli Van Wyk @PaulivW]

Intelligence reports obtained by Daily Maverick link two senior members of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Cabinet to four criminal cartels operating inside Eskom. - @KevBloom https://t.co/4Fl1yXuzcP