Quotes from Marc Randolph

The role of a founder-CEO is extremely lonely. You can't always be fully forthcoming with your board or investors or employees.

I came from years and years in the direct marketing industry where everything is layered.

People are always advised to follow your dreams, but in 'That Will Never Work' I show them how!

Certainly when I was starting, it required being in a community where, when you tried to rent a building, and they looked at your balance sheet and saw it was negative, that didn't scare them away.

Negotiation is empathy. It's almost trite to say that if you can't put yourself in the seat of the other person you're speaking with, you're not going to do well. It's not about being a bully, not about making offers people can't refuse.

When I was 23, I was quite possibly the worst real estate agent in New York. I was working for my mother's agency in Chappaqua, and no one was buying houses. In eight months, I made zero sales. I rented one apartment.

Every successful career I've ever known was filled with long periods of meandering, months or even years when no one knew what would happen next. Look at me: I started as a geology major turned failed realtor.

The most powerful step that anyone can take to turn their dreams into reality is a simple one. You just need to start.

No one has ever asked me to give a graduation speech. But in my years of working with aspiring entrepreneurs, many of them in college, I've gotten used to giving advice.

I mean, at the simplest level, my entire background was in marketing, which largely is about understanding a customer, being able to be intuitive, being able to be empathetic.

The lessons I learned starting Netflix - and over a lifetime of entrepreneurship - are broadly applicable to anyone with a dream.

One of the key lessons I learned at Netflix was the necessity of focus.

Luck was a huge part of the Netflix story.

Some of my fondest memories of the early years of Netflix have to do with our efforts to figure out the most efficient, effective, and fast methods to get DVDs to people all over the country.

Like Netflix, Looker started as nothing more than an idea. Lloyd Tabb and Ben Porterfield were two brilliant engineers who had figured out a better way for businesses to see and analyze their data, and they asked me to join them to help out with the ABCs - that's short for Anything But Coding.

I exited Netflix on wonderful terms, but I don't think I was totally at peace.

Back in the early days at Netflix, it wasn't unheard of for me to tell prospective hires that I could see our stock going to a hundred dollars someday.

Netflix was my sixth start-up, and that point I decided I didn't have it in me to start another company. At least that's what I thought at the time.

At a startup, it's hard enough to get a single thing right, much less a whole bunch of things. Especially if the things you are trying to do are not only dissimilar but actively impede each other.

In 'That Will Never Work,' I give readers a clear-eyed insider's look into how one of the least likely startups grew into one of the world's most successful companies.

Most legacy companies get crushed - they get Blockbustered - because they are too afraid to walk away from the status quo, to embrace what the future is.

I'm definitely a note taker.

When you're in a meeting and you pull out your paper notebook, people look at you and go, 'Oh, he's taking a note.' But if you're in a meeting and you pull out your iPad, they go, 'Oh, he's checking Facebook.'

No one knows what's a good idea or a bad idea until you try it.