Quotes from Marc Randolph

In the years after I left Netflix, the company I co-founded, I didn't want to puff myself up or tear anyone else down.

Long story short: I didn't start out thinking I'd be a tech entrepreneur.

As software began to be sold to people who would never consider themselves technical, it suddenly became clear that you needed people who spoke their language.

I don't know if there's a genetic marker for entrepreneurship. But if there is, it's most likely not a genius for planning. It's a propensity for action - and the ability to put failure behind you quickly. To stop being precious about your ideas.

Once you're an entrepreneur you're always an entrepreneur, and you need that fix.

I'm this big believer that culture is not what you say, it's what you do. Who cares about your PowerPoint and about what you've carved into your cornerstone? If it's not being modeled, it won't be readable.

It was a long, circuitous route from my mom's real estate business to Netflix. It didn't happen overnight. Or in a year. Or even in ten years. But it happened.

When a company gets bigger, when it begins to bring on employees, it naturally goes through this tendency of wanting to control, of wanting to build process - essentially to say not every one of our customers or employees has great judgment.

The biggest problem I see with early-stage entrepreneurs is they get the idea in their head, and they leave it in their head. And they begin embellishing it in their head, making it more ornate. They add on the second story to their dream house - then add the tennis court and the turrets and the gargoyles.

It used to be true that to succeed in the creative class, you had to move immediately to where the action was. It was how you made connections, how you got auditions, how you found an audience and funding and some attention for your craft. But not anymore.

As a student I'd done work with a charity that took inner-city kids from disadvantaged areas and introduced them to hiking and climbing in the wilderness.

That became the Netflix culture: radical honesty.

My first real job lasted for three years. It ended the day I was unceremoniously fired.

Companies have centers of gravity. Where they are is part of their identity.

I just always believed we would succeed. Even when everyone else said my ideas were ridiculous. Even when we were almost out of money. Even when the metrics were all upside down. I always have confidence that I'll figure something out. I just have that confidence that things are going to work out fine.

If you apprentice yourself to the smartest people who will take you seriously, you will learn at every step. You'll learn their special language. You'll see what real people do. Your interests might surprise you. They will evolve. And you'll be well-positioned to take advantage of whatever opportunity life throws your way.

Now, I love a good factory tour. Drop me into a bottling plant, an automotive assembly line, or a jellybean factory, and I'm happy as a clam at high tide.

People watch 'The Social Network,' and what they hone in on is the wealth and the parties and the excitement, and they don't realize the grind and the 'gruelingness' and the disappointment.

When entrepreneurs talk about their success, they rarely talk about luck. I think that's because most of them think the concept denigrates the hard work and smart thinking they put into their projects. But luck is a huge part of any successful business.

As entrepreneurs, or artists, or just people with dreams, the worst thing you can do is get so caught up in planning the perfect idea that you never get around to actually... well, doing it. I call this building castles in your mind.

Iteration, not ideation, is the most important part of early stage entrepreneurship. You have to have a lot of ideas - a lot of bad ideas - if you want to end up with a good one.

By being courageous enough to state the difficult truth, the most important reputation that you will preserve is your own.

You pick what your customers want, not what your entrenched business model may require you to do.

I personally believe that a critical part to innovation is that exchange of ideas so when you say, 'Here's my idea,' someone else at the next table, who is in a different party, will go, 'Oh, these guys are trying that,' so that comes.