HPU's Life Skills and Leadership Series | A Conversation with Netflix Co|Founder Marc Randolph | Watch HPU

Chapters & Transcript

0:00

Well, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good to see you. So, Marc Randolph is not here, and I'm going to give you a speech about how to start a Netflix. How is that? They accepted that. I thought they're going to throw tomatoes at me or something. Get that volume down just a little bit, please. So, good evening. Those of you from the community, we're delighted to have you here. On this campus, we have many, many programs where we bring some great thought leaders so that our students can be exposed to the greatest minds.

For example, yesterday in this very room, we had Mr. Rob Seikfrieded. Any of you were here yesterday? Yes. There was a great program on leadership. Mr. Seikfed started one of the largest accounting companies in the country, and um, and he has endowed a program here called the Seek Freed Leadership Fellows. And so yesterday for two hours we had a great program. Some of our students spoke. He spoke about life and living and how to build a business and all of that. So, uh, tonight of course we're going to have a friend to High Point. Some of you students have seen him before.

He's here every year. He's been here for years. Uh, he comes to High Point University, and it's all for gratis. We don't pay these people. They're just, they love High Point University, man. What do you want? They love High Point University. God, family, country, premier life skills. And he flies all the way from California just to, um, just to be with us and share with our students and our guests some ideas. So, um, I've interviewed Marc numerous times, both for television and in person. And tonight, my job is to interview him a little bit and to talk about some subjects that you students, many of you are working on your certification program.

Um, and I'll explain that to our guests here. So, our students here get degrees, BA, BS, MBA, doctorate, etc. Um, but they also can achieve a certificate in a certain discipline. For example, coachability is the number one trait that employers look for in hiring people. Are they coachable? We have done national studies at High Point University to find out what is it that employers look for in college graduates and coachability always comes at the top of that list. Are they coachable? Are they flexible? Are they willing to learn? Are they willing to sort of go along with what's happening at the moment with the trends in the marketplace?

And so tonight I'll talk about some of that. And for our guests here, just know that these students are working towards the coachability certificate. How many of you are working towards that? Let me see students. Where are you? There you are. Look at the hands. And so what they have to do is they have to listen to this program and others like it and write an essay afterwards and eventually they will have a very respectable certificate on top of the academic college uh degree. That's why High Point University is the premier life skills university. You learn the discipline that you're going to major in and on top of that you learn the life skills.

So when you graduate you are good to go in the marketplace. So, I'm delighted tonight to introduce to you a gentleman who made it all the way to the top and, um, and he's the co-founder of Netflix. He literally changed the way that you watch television and yet it wasn't always easy for him. He started a very small place and I'll try to illustrate that for you tonight. And, um, and built a great company and today he's traveling the world. He just came from Dubai, he was telling me and he just told me a great story. He said he's flying on Emirates from Dubai.

He and his wife and literally two rows in front of him is Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple Computer, whom our students know comes here every semester to talk to our students. And so he said the whole flight was about High Point University. There you go. There you go. Intelligent people. They know what to chat about. So, um, I'm delighted to have him here tonight and I will talk more about his life and what he has done as he comes out here. Would you please help me welcome my friend and yours, Mr. Marc Randolph, Marc? So, um, I don't know if this is the the 10th, 15th, 25th visit you've had to High Point University.

I'm not quite sure, but every time you come, our students love you and stand in line to, uh, to learn from you. And there is one student, the young lady who came up with that project. You were on, we did sort of a an elevator pitch program here. He's on a national television called Elevator Pitch. And, um, and you liked her idea and you helped her. As a junior in college, you helped her put her product in Walmarts across the country from border to border and coast to coast. This is remarkable. A junior in college invents something, meets the co-founder of Netflix, he opens up the doors of opportunity for her and then she goes out there and becomes a national brand.

And, um, that's just the impact that you've had on our students, an example of many, many, many of those students. You, we have to establish first how you started Netflix because I know the story and I've read your book obviously and I know that it didn't work the first one or two ideas you started doing one thing thinking it's going to be X, it ended up being Y, and then along the way you had some ups and downs give us just a quick overview of what was the very first thing you did, uh, in that new company, and, um, then lead us up to how that became eventually the

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Netflix we know. Yeah. So the first of all, thanks everybody. But the first thing you have to know is that this is not like I was a movie guy. I wasn't like dreaming about starting a movie company. I was open to doing almost anything. I just wanted to solve an interesting problem. And uh I had a co-founder guy named Reed Hastings, and him and I were brainstorming all kinds of different ideas we could try. And they were crazy ideas. I mean, we almost was personalized shampoo, custom dog food, uh personalized sporting goods, and then a crazy idea which was video rental by mail.

The idea was you'd come to the website, you'd pick a movie out that we'd mail it to you and you keep it for a week and mail it back. And that was a terrible idea at the time because this was back when there was VHS cassettes. So the breakthrough happened when one day we heard about this technology called a DVD, little disc, holds a movie, and realized we could possibly dust off that old video rental by mail idea. And this is the moment that was probably the formative moment, is that we said, "Let's, before we do anything else, let's just see if we can validate this idea.

Let's see if it's has it's real or it's in our heads." And we turned around the car right when we thought of it and went down to try and buy a DVD and couldn't find one and settled for a music CD. Uh, put it in a little envelope, addressed it to Reed's house, bought a stamp and put it in the slot and went to work. And the very next morning when we he picked me up, he held up an envelope with an unbroken disc in it. And that validation turned out to be really the key because based on that is what we said, we now have the confidence to actually give it a real shot and start a real company.

And um for the sake of these students who've never heard of a VHS and DVD um or cassette, um so it was literally a little piece of plastic that had a film on it. Yeah. A full movie on it. And the way you were trying to sell it was by mail. Yeah. There wasn't back then Netflix was a very different company. I mean, there was no streaming, that if you wanted a movie, we mailed it to you. It was on a DVD and it was in a little red envelope. And that was the idea. And the funny you mentioned the book, which is called That Will Never Work. And it's called that because when I pitched that idea, video rental by mail, everyone said it would never work.

I mean, my wife said it was the stupidest thing she'd ever heard. And the reality is though is that when we finally six months later launched the company with great excitement, well, everyone was right. It didn't work. It was a terrible idea that nobody would rent from us. And thus began the classic entrepreneurial journey of we're going to figure this out. Yeah. We're going to find some way of making this repeatable and scalable and hopefully have a real business. Yeah. You know, our students of course have heard me say many times that the most important skill that you can develop in life is risk management because if you know how to take a risk, you're more likely to take I mean, if you know how to manage a risk, you're more likely to take a risk.

If you don't know how to manage a risk, you'll never take a risk. If you never take a risk, you're it's not likely you will build anything. And the thing about risk taking is that it's a learned skill. I mean, people say, "How do you take these big risks?" And I say, well, I took thousands of small risks and I've learned how to take risks because I practiced and I practiced at school. I mean, I started clubs. I launched magazines. I made unbelievable mistakes, but I did it in a safe, nurturing uh place like this where I could experiment and fail and realize the consequences were nowhere near as bad as I thought they were going to be.

Mhm. And believe me, when we went from that initial start of Netflix to a year and a half later, we failed a lot of times. We took lots of little teeny risks of trying things to see if they'd work. And you ran out of money. Absolutely. And you tried to sell a piece of the company. Well, tried to sell the whole company, to tell the truth. The whole company. Yeah. So, you got on an airplane and you went where? Well, this was about uh two and a half years in and we finally had developed this repeatable scalable model. It was a crazy even a crazier idea of no due dates, no late fees and subscription.

And it was going great, but subscription businesses are very expensive because you spend more in that first month than you make. And it was great when the market was great, but then all of a sudden the dot-com crash of 2000, and we were in deep trouble. And you're right, we go, "All right, we've got to do something and we've got to find someone to rescue us." And the obvious candidate for that was Blockbuster. And if you don't know Blockbuster at the time, biggest video rental store in the world, you know, 9,000 stores and 60,000 employees. We were this tiny little dot doing video rental by mail and we flew to Dallas to try and convince them to buy the company.

And it was going great until they asked the big question, which was, you know, how much? What are we talking here? And we of course had practiced on the plane and figured, well, we're about $50 million in debt. So, $50 million. And that's the reaction we got. Just like this dumbfounded silence at the hubris this little company could possibly be worth $50 million. And it was a very depressing moment because I was so sure if we could just get this meeting it would save us. And now they weren't going to save us. They were going to compete with us. And it realized that if we were going to get out of this hole, there was no magic bullet.

That we would have to look inward. You know, my dad used to say, you know, sometimes Marc, the only way out is through. And we did what we had to do. We laid people off. We focused the business, took salary cuts, said we have got to survive on our own. And you and you had, uh, did you have the money to even rent that airplane that you flew on? Yeah, the when they actually when Blockbuster finally called us, you know, after two months of hounding them, we were at this corporate retreat. And before you picture corporate retreat, no, this was a little dude ranch in the foothills of Santa Barbara.

So, think cow manure smell and dust and horses. And that's when they called and said, "We'll see you tomorrow in Dallas." And I looked at the schedules and I go, "There's no way we can get to Dallas." So, we ended up chartering a corporate jet, which when you're $50 million in debt, it's just a rounding error. Um, and here's a little trivia, and this is not something that's very widely known, that jet was owned by Vanna White, who some of you over a certain age will remember was a Wheel of Fortune, uh, born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, by the way. Really?

There you go. Yes. See, we had this connection was inevitable. Yes. Yes. And um and today, so then you had $50 million, you're in trouble. And today Netflix um market cap is what, 70 billion, 80 billion, 100 billion. You know, there's a So basically, basically 50 million would have been a good deal. Yeah. The Blockbuster people were stupid. But the other side of it is Blockbuster, which used to have 60,000, you know, employees and 9,000 stores, you know, they have one store left. Yeah. And listen, I don't, I don't, I don't. It's like I take pride in bringing down a company like that because that's people and those are jobs.

But it's a lesson that if you are unwilling to disrupt yourself, there's always going to be someone willing to disrupt you for you. Well, that's a great question and Blockbuster never if you're willing to disrupt yourself, if you're not willing to, if you're not willing to disrupt, somebody will always disrupt what you're doing. Yeah, I know lots and lots of people who that's what's happening in higher education now. It's a lot of disruption going on because a lot of people are not willing to disrupt themselves. So, the market takes care of that. Um, Marc, you know, we did a study at High Point University uh, to ask employers what are the primary characteristics and tenets that you look, not necessarily skill but but behavioral patterns that a college graduate must have so that he or she can excel in some uh for-profit endeavor.

And we found that, well, I'm going to ask you the question instead of telling you the answer. The truth is that you have hired many a person. There are specific things you look for when you engage someone in your employ. What are those?

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There's a, there's quite a number of things you're looking for, but the main thing is it is not necessarily technical skill, uh, because that's reasonably accessible to people. But there's aspects of your personality that can be taught that are way more important to me. I mean, a better example is, for example, right now I do a lot of mentoring. So I will, I don't want to launch my own companies anymore, but I want to help other people hopefully make theirs successful and I have a lot of people who ask me to do that and I look for two things in particular, which might play into what you're talk what you're thinking about here.

So one is if you're going to start a company you need to have incredible self-confidence. I mean you are going to have everyone saying that'll never work. You're gonna have ideas that everyone tells you why it's a bad idea. Where does self-confidence come from? Where self-confidence? No. Where anybody self, how does someone develop self-confidence? But from practicing making decisions and taking risks and realizing my judgment's not so bad after all. Learning to think for yourself, learning to evaluate sources, learning how to understand the world a bit so you don't just follow in the well-worn path.

And after a while, you begin to go, "Wow, my judgment's pretty good." So, I am looking for that self-confidence. Self-confidence. But it has to be coupled with something else. The person needs to be able to listen. They need to hear. They need to be, fact, borrow a word coachable, because too many people who are self-confident treat advice as something they have to bat away, that it's like fencing with them and that's not the point. I don't necessarily want them to do what I say. I want them to hear what I say. I want them to go back and think about what Marc's advice was and say, "Do I really believe that?

Does that really apply in my circumstance?" And I'm delighted if they come back and go, "You know what, you told me doesn't apply here, and here's why." Because I know that you heard me. And when someone's like that, it's fantastic because I can then help. And otherwise, I just feel like I'm fencing with someone the whole time. Mm, so the research that we've done supports what you've just said, because we asked 500 CEOs uh, of companies, what is it you're looking for in college graduates, and um invariably, invariably technical skills technical skills meaning the discipline that you study, for example, you're a biologist, you're a mathematician, you're a history major, that's what they mean by technical skills that only come to about 30% of what they're looking for.

That doesn't mean They're not important technical skills. It just means that alone is not enough. 70% is life skills. What you talked about coachability, learning to listen, learning to um build bridges of understanding with other people, learning to be a communicator and a connector with people, a solution finder, which of course is what we do at High Point University with the Premier Life Skills University because we know that and we pay attention to that. You know, Marc, um the fascinating thing about entrepreneurs like you is that um and these are my words, not necessarily yours, but the fact that that you think failure sometimes is the way to success.

That you're not going to succeed in life if you have not taken a few risks. And if you take a few risks, it is likely you're going to fail at something. Risk-taking is fundamental to everything. I mean, it's almost the definition of entrepreneurship is to do things and not know in advance what the outcome's going to be. And if you start something and don't know what the outcome's going to be, that's a great definition. Say that one more time. So, it's you're going to do something, you're willing to do something without being assured what the outcome will be.

Absolutely. It's starting down a path and you can't see what's around the corner. And too many people will stand at the beginning of the trail and they'll look and try and get a better vantage point and they'll interview people and then of course they finally go okay and they start down the path and there then there's 200 people in front of them. You have to be willing to do things without knowing in advance what the outcome's going to be. And that means that a lot of times the outcome is not going to be what you wanted or what you expected. And I mentioned before that a lot of this is learnable and it comes from practice.

And it comes from taking risks and realizing not only was that sting not so bad, but wow, the excitement of seeing what happened greatly outweighs any consequence of that risk failing. I mean, you know, I use the analogy sometimes, you know, if you're learning a language, you can study books all you want and you can watch tapes, but to really speak a language, you've got to talk it. And that comes from, you know, I've done four years of French and then you walk into a coffee shop and try and order a cup of coffee in France and out of your mouth comes something that sounds like you're six years old.

And it's embarrassing and you walk away and they've given you a croissant rather than a cup of coffee and you go, "Wow." But then you realize, "Oh, what? Why am I embarrassed? That was a barista in a coffee shop and it's actually pretty good." Yes. But you've taken that little risk. And that's how you learn a language. And that's how you learn anything is by trying things in small degrees to train yourself that the thrill of discovery hugely outweighs the sting of it didn't work. I've been doing it now for 40 plus years. I don't even think anymore about what'll happen.

Is this going to be embarrassing or bad or a risk? I just am compulsively driven to try things because I love finding out what's going to happen. Why did Blockbuster uh go out of business?

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Uh, the single, the simple explanation is they were not willing to cannibalize their present to get the future right. So there was a time uh when we were they didn't buy us and uh we were competing with them and they were looking at us and saying what an interesting model this video we're talking about they're getting a little traction all right we should do that too but they had a circumstance here which is that they had a $6 billion business and so they were thinking okay if we get this video rental by mail right maybe it's a $10 million business. So they go, "Okay, six billion, 10 million."

Do you think they put their very best engineers on that? No. They go, "We're going to put our best engineers over here." Also, they had lots of franchises who were saying, "You're doing what? You're going to compete directly with us?" And okay, okay, we'll we won't. And each time they tried, they really weren't willing to accept the pain of what getting the future right would involve. By the time they finally on the fourth or fifth try said we have got to do what it takes um it was too late and it's the same thing that happens to almost every established company is you get into a rut you have lots of revenue you have lots of distributors you have high salespeople and when you try and you recognize oh my gosh here's what I have to do it's too painful to do it and you say I'll do it next year I'll do it next quarter.

And by the time you come around, it's too late. And now more than ever, you have to be willing to do that. There's going to be amazing disruption over the next three to five years because of AI. Um, and it's going to take some pretty dramatic steps for companies to adapt to that. But how does one um how does one adequately and accurately predict what is going to come around the corner? You can't. Uh so the trick is not to accurately predict the future. It's to put yourself in a position where you can respond whichever way the future happens to go. And how does one do that?

What are some of the qualities that I must possess to deal with that in a successful manner? Flexibility. Uh it's constantly thinking about are there other ways I could be doing this? But I think biggest one is courage. I'm going to do something which I know is short-term pain but it's long-term gain. And uh if you like most companies don't have the courage to do those things and it's same thing with people. Yeah. You know, I think what happens to all of us is we get comfortable in the environment in which we reside, and uh, it is uncomfortable to try something new because we're not sure what would come of it.

I mean, we're sitting in the midst of an entrepreneurial university that dared to be distinctive, that dared to look beyond the boundaries of what has been defined here before, and we excelled and prospered because of it. Um, and so that same principle applies to any business. It's very true. I mean one of, for example, many companies have these, I don't know what the word to use, command and control systems where every time anyone wants to make a decision or make a change, it has to get run up the ladder and the top person makes a decision and it goes back down, and maybe that works if things are reasonably stable quarter after quarter, but it's a terrible way when things are changing really quickly.

Whereas if you try and push your decision-making to the outsides of the organization, it requires that every person in the organization think that way. And what happens is you get successful. Oh my gosh, we love this. And all of a sudden, you think you can see four quarters, eight quarters of how it's going to go, and you say, "I'm going to optimize." And you bring in people who shorten the supply chain or look for margin improvements, and they're really really good at that, and then all of a sudden the world changes, and they're not very good at, oh my gosh, we've got to reinvent all of our systems.

So part of it is saying, we need to stay like a startup. We have to stay nimble. We have to keep taking chances. Um, we have to be willing to have the courage to do what the future requires, even if it's going to be really really painful in the short term. You mentioned AI, and everybody wants to talk about AI, artificial intelligence. I, for one, am more concerned about natural stupidity than I am about artificial intelligence because there's a lot of it around the world that we see every day. Um, what is it about AI that is dramatically different than technological advancement that we have seen in the last decade?

It is, it's, permeates almost, can permeate almost everything. And I think that's what's so dramatic about it, that it takes chores and tasks that we as people have been doing pretty much the same way for hundreds of years or at least dozens of years, and all of a sudden makes those trivial and quick. It's not going to replace people. I'm, I am not a pessimist. Um, I believe what it's going to do is free us. It's going to take away a lot of the mundane tasks. The same way that we used to use slide rules. Uh, and then we began using calculators. Uh, and there's, we used to use maps and compasses.

Now we use GPS. And those were all very positive steps because you spent less time on these very trivial tasks, and you could work on higher order things. What AI is going to do is do that, but not in one narrow spot. It's going to affect every business. And I'm excited because I'm an entrepreneur. And when I see large companies who have been so a well able to defend themselves, all of a sudden going, "Oh my gosh, everything is different now. What do I do?" That's opportunity. But I also believe it is possible for companies to defend themselves against that, if they're willing to take these hard steps.

But it really will profoundly. I'll give you one example. Okay. Um, and it plays back into you saying what are the skills that people really need versus technical skills. Let's take a look, practice of law. Um, and you look at what a lawyer does every day. And parts of it, parts of that day, it's very, very complicated, very strategic. What do I do? How do I think about this? What's the right approach? But another large part of it is reviewing contracts, making sure things are consistent, researching case law, and all of that piece is, can be taken away.

And all of a sudden, though, I'm not going to pay someone $1,000 an hour for that. So unless they're willing to say, "Well, what does this mean to be a lawyer in the future?" They can't rely on training they've had for the last 10 years, and here's how it goes. You're teaching people how to think for themselves and how to be flexible so that they can be great at that practice no matter what happens with it. And it's going to happen every place. Which is why, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm preaching to the choir here, but which is why life skills are more important now than ever, because the things that used to be consistent career paths are going to look very different to the kids who are sitting here today.

Well, you know, um, so easy to train people. It's very hard to educate people. Well said. There are many, many differences between the two. So you, training is a program. It has a beginning and an end. Education is a process, has a beginning, has no end. Training is really based on the past. What we've learned in the past cumulatively, and we use that to sort of try to predict the future, doesn't work anymore. And education is focused on the future. What is around the corner? What might become? And speaking of that, if you know, speak to these students for a minute about if you were hiring, you were to hire five people in a new business, what would you be looking for?

What are the things? You mentioned coachability, you mentioned hearing, listening, but really what would you be looking for? You know, if they, the moment they come in the room, what is it about a person that you would say I think that person has something I need in my company, and that person, forget all about it. Probably the most important skill, and I'm not sure how universal this is, I want someone who's thoughtful and has good judgment.

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Uh, the businesses that I run very rarely fall into a nice smooth cadence one after another. You're constantly required to figure things out. You're doing things that haven't been done before. You're going down paths. You don't know where they lead. And I need someone who is not just applying patterns that they learned someplace blindly. I'm not looking for someone who, oh, I did that in my last job, I'm going to do the same thing here. I want you to be thoughtful, and I want you to have good judgment, even in things that have nothing to do with your job.

Let's say you are traveling. Um, are you going to spend the company's money the way you would spend your own? Are you going to make the, go, I'm flying to Japan, but I'm going to spend four days there before my meeting, so I can fly in economy plus, or do I have a meeting the next day? I better fly business. And if someone's getting that stuff wrong, that sends a big signal to me. So, so judgment has to emanate from a sense of awareness, doesn't it? Absolutely. You can't judge unless you're aware of life and living and people's feelings, and somewhat predictive about what it would take to work in a committee, in a team, lead a team, lead other people.

And I'm also looking for, uh, you mentioned communication skills. You need to be able to communicate your ideas clearly. You need to be able to make and defend an argument. You need to recognize when someone else is giving you things that aren't, in fact, facts, that aren't true. And you need to be able to do this in all forms, in writing, in speaking. Um, and if you can't do that, you're going to have to work in isolation. But most work these days is not done in isolation. It's done as part of an organism, as part of a group. And those are critical skills for being able to do that.

You know, that's the purpose of a university, is to allow people to become critical thinkers, to develop that capacity, that sixth sense, to to take data, information, and turn it into knowledge and wisdom. Um, so I'm going to open it for some questions in a moment. So be thinking about some questions you may want to ask Mr. Randolph. What I appreciate about Marc is that, um, he's been there. He's done it. He failed. He succeeded. Uh, he knows the pathway. And, uh, a lot of people write books about success, but it's theoretical. They've never actually done something.

A lot of people teach material, let's say, on marketing or sales, but they've never, they've never run a lemonade stand. It doesn't work anymore. You have to have traveled the path to really know where the potholes are, right? Yeah. And it's it it requires great honesty with yourself. You know, we we you mentioned the book, and I wrote that book 16 years after I left Netflix. And that period of time was necessary for me to really understand what was my role, what succeeded because of me, but what succeeded in spite of me. And I think a dangerous thing is someone, for example, who has tremendous success with their first company, and all of a sudden thinks they understand the world, but you have no clue what aspect was luck, what aspect was skill.

Um, it requires that humility to say, I may not know everything. That's the difference between productive failure and non-productive success, right? You fail, you you learn something from it, becomes productive. If you succeed and don't know why you succeeded, you can't replicate it. That simple. Life is not really complicated. You know, we try to tell our students every day that, um, the the qualities that are going to really propel them forward. Of course, we want them to do well academically. Of course, we want them to succeed and and go to class and write the right papers and make the grades, but that alone is not going to compete in a in a universally global, ever-changing, ever competitive marketplace.

You know, it fascinates me, why is it that Chinese students, for example, want to learn the American way of doing business, marketing and management. They're wizards when it comes to math and science. Look at Silicon Valley. It's principally Indians who've come to this country. Uh, our graduation speaker this year is an Indian. He's the CEO of Federal Express. An Indian came to America as an immigrant and rose to the top. What is it in your mind about, I have my own answer, but I want your answer. What is it in your mind that makes these individuals excel at what they do, when we in America have to work very, very hard to get born Americans to understand what they must do to compete globally.

What do you think the difference is? Uh, I think, uh, our system kind of squeezes the risk taking out of people. Uh, there's so much sense of what someone has to learn, so much sense of what they have to do, that by the time they graduate from school, they they know what the teacher wants them to say, but they've never really learned how to say what they want to say. Uh, and it, I'm looking for that too, to street smarts, to tell you the truth. Savvy. It's, yeah, it's, I mean, I'm not gonna toot my own horn on this stuff, because I was a, I was a bad student, but, and one of the reasons I was a bad student is I would know, I was a geology major, believe it or not, but I would know what was going to be on the test, and I'd be studying and I'd find something that was Fascinating to me, and I'd spend two or three hours reading about something that I knew wasn't going to be in the test, but I couldn't help it because I was pursuing the things that I wanted to learn that made me, I thought, a better educated geologist than learning how to recite back what was rote and required.

Uh, and I think we don't do that enough and I think a lot of other cultures have that attitude where it's not this sense of, uh, here's what you have to do, and if you don't do it, and of course you're going to train people to do the things we reward. Geology is the perfect major for a guy who wants to start Netflix. I can see the relationship, very, very, the correlation is perfect there. The correlation is that I did not choose to be a geologist because, uh, I didn't choose to be a geology major because I wanted to be a geologist. I did not want to go work in the oil and gas fields.

That was not the reason. The reason is because I thought it was really interesting. I spent a lot of time, I was a climber. I spent a lot of time in the mountains and on glaciers, and learning about that stuff was just interesting. That was the sole purpose of why I was learning it. Yeah. And that's been the path for everything is I didn't start a video rental by mail company because I thought in my, inconceivable that it would ever be a worldwide company that made its own movies, that it's never in a million years. I did it because, wow, I wonder if we can figure out how to make video rental by mail work.

I, you know, Looker, the company I did afterwards, was not designed to be a big success. It was like, let's do something which should be really, can we really make this a self-service product? They all start the same way. Um, and that's what I think students need to get. They need to recognize that they can follow their curiosity, that will lead to a great place. You do not need to be on this path where, oh, I need to be an investment banker because that is the sole path. Fine. If you've grown up always wanting to be that, be that. But don't do that for some external reason.

Follow, I mean it sounds so trite to go follow your passion. And I don't mean wildly, but I mean let it guide you. That's what life's about. At least as I see it. Yeah. The, you know, the perfect thing about coachability is that you're able to make, um, flexible decisions. You're able to go with where the opportunities are. You can do this and you can do this and you can do that. Um, I think I'm a pretty good example of that. A guy who was never in the academy and became relatively successful as a president of the university. Yeah. Um, it the, when I tell the students that, you know, I'm not quite sure that I've ever taken a course or read a book about how to run a university, but the foundational principles are the same whether you're running Netflix or running a university or running a, uh, you know, a nonprofit.

The foundational principles are all the same it's the basics of leadership, too, and yeah, you're tired of me saying this leadership is learned also, and leadership is learned by being put in a situation where you have real responsibility for something and see how you do, and most people don't ever get that opportunity where they can have real decisions with real consequences. I mean, it is, it's an important part of the High Point education, which is one of the reasons I'm such a fan of how you're preparing people to lead in the future, or giving them the opportunity to do it where they can make mistakes, where they have people watching who can coach them.

Um, that, that's the thing that I think you and I developed. I mean, listen, I got, you know, what I got, my grades were, I took microeconomics and macroeconomics and I got a D in both of them, and I did okay. And it's because I learned other things at school that turned out to be the most important things about being an entrepreneur and successful. And you can sure look back at your path and see the same things, that some of the external measures, those aren't the ones that really make the difference. Um, and that's, I don't know, it's a life, no question.

Um, if you have a question raise your hand so I know that you have a question, or we'll begin right here. Yes, sir. Stand up. Tell them who you are, where you're from, and, uh, I'll repeat the question for the, uh, recording here. Hello everybody. My name is Brian. Nido, Marc, thank you both for being here. It's been very informative. You did something very interesting as a young man, and that is pull the fire alarm just because you felt like it at school. So that mentality can lead some people down the wrong path. How did you harness it to forge an incredibly powerful company?

So I think the question was, I didn't hear all of it except after I heard the fire alarm part, I turned it off. What what was the gist of the main question? The gist of the question is Yeah. Yeah. How do you, how were you able to build such a great company, um, even though you were a D student in macroeconomics? It takes a special type of person just like, but the, you know, I was going to actually say that I've kind of stopped telling people that because it kind of reflects badly on me, but I must say I was like in fifth grade, and it was one of those things where I'm going, I wonder what would happen if I did this, which of course was, I should have figured out what was going to happen if I did that, but so much of my life is, I wonder what will happen if I did this.

Uh, and I've learned to not do things which cause the sprinklers to go off. But it's the same pattern over and over again. But that's probably not what it is that I think made that helps make Netflix successful and helped other companies successful. That, the bigger one is that I model, I modeled a behavior that ended up being very, very powerful, which was I empower people. I do not micromanage. I find people with great judgment. I give them all the information and context they need to make good decisions and I stay out of the way. And not only does that allow the company to be really flexible, not only does it allow us to make good decisions, but it's an incredibly powerful tool to attract and retain people because fundamentally they don't want nap pods and fireman poles and kombucha on tap and all the garbage that you people think that startups are about.

They want to be empowered. They want to make real decisions. And I've always been about giving people that. And I think that's probably the more important dynamic. Thank you very much. All right. So, we actually have two microphones. One here, one here. So, if you want to ask a question, go to one of the microphones. Stand in line and we'll just take it in order. Okay. I'll go faster in my answers here. Yes. Lightning. Lightning round. We'll start right there. Yes, sir. Hi, Marc. How you doing? My name is Thomas Osa. I want to first thank you for being here.

Your words are very inspiring. Um, I have a tech startup myself and it's an app that's going to redefine the recruiting industry. My question for you is, what's a mistake you see first-time founders making when trying to launch a startup? Uh, lack of focus. By definition, startups are always going to be under-resourced. You have not enough money. You definitely don't have enough people. And you have a hundred things you're trying to get right simultaneously.

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And the nature is I need to make sure I have everything in place. And it has two big problems. One is that you keep waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting until you've got everything perfect. The other problem is that you end up taking a 100% of your effort and spreading it over a hundred things. So they each get done 1%. And the best founders take all of that energy and they have a great intuition about if I fix this one thing, all the rest doesn't matter. And I see that mistake over and over and over again. Focus, focus, focus. Pick the one thing that's going to make your startup successful and get that right.

Don't worry about the rest. Thank you. Thank you for the question. Yes, sir. How's it going? My name is John. Um, so I know you stepped down as CEO in 99 and then like actively stepped away in O2. I have more of like a business Netflix question for a company that is so popular amongst like young students and especially college students. You know, we have a long day. We just want to go home and watch Netflix. Um, do you think Netflix would ever have the idea of like a student plan? I know a lot of other companies have done this, but you know, a student plan.

A student plan. I know there's like a lot of companies like discount. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Apple Music has like has. See? Yeah. Everyone see, bring this back. Okay. So, so I mean it's I know it's a it's a pocketful question here, but for example, you know, one of the things Netflix did, which I never thought they'd do, is introduce advertising. And they introduced advertising not because they wanted to make advertising revenue because they wanted a way to offer a lower-priced plan that said, if you're willing to watch some ads, I don't know what anyone, on that, was it 5.

99 or 79 it's, you know, listen, it's reasonable. Let's think of all the content you get. No, I get, I get it, 100%. I was just wondering if there was like some thought behind why they didn't do it, or because it's his problem, but thank you. I appreciate it. I think he, I think what he said is he'll think about it how about my parents first place. Okay. How was the first introduction? Thank God he's talking about Netflix. Yes, ma'am. Hello, Mr. Randolph and Dr. Qubein. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Olivia Moran. I am a CBL student, which is communication and business leadership for our visitors.

She's in graduate school. She graduate school master's program called communication and business leadership. Great. I am set to graduate in May. And coincidentally, I met you 5 years ago before I was even an official student at the Innovation Summit. So, thank you again for making this a full circle moment for me. I was curious if you could share a time where you had to truly motivate yourself to combat failure or rejection.

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Oh, yeah. Uh, there aren't, this is going to sound silly, there aren't a lot. The skill I've developed is making very, very small failures. Um, and the, which I think is a really important skill for an entrepreneur. It's not how good your idea was because your idea is bad. The trick is, how do I be a figure out in a clever, creative way, a quick, cheap, and easy way to try it. Reed and I turn the car around and we bought a used music CD for $1. 99. That's what it cost to figure out whether there was even anything there. Um, and so I do very, very, very small, quick, rapid tests and I'm not a big person about that.

But the other one is that when you look at failures, you never really know if it's a failure. So we told the story before about trying to sell us to Blockbuster, right? So on the plane coming home, I was sure I had completely screwed this up. I thought this is our last hope as a company that we're going to go out of business and it's because I couldn't close the deal. I failed. But was that a big failure or was that the very best possible thing that could have happened to me? So I don't, uh, I don't sweat that. I really don't. So I don't have a good answer, honest answer for you about getting up uh, and came back getting better.

No, I'm Life's too short. I'm not going to stress about that stuff. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes, sir. Good evening. My name is Brett Ingram, and my question for you, actually, kind of jumping off the last question, is when Blockbuster or when Netflix was $50 million in debt, you're on the plane, you're not sure, you're feeling a little bit like failure after not getting the deal with Blockbuster. What advice would you have, like, do you have now that you'd ask, like, that you tell your past self to get out of that situation to move on and or to look for different avenues, right?

What I'm not, I'm not going to answer your question directly, okay, because it's the question I get, I hear all the time, same with the other one. Everyone is so obsessed with failures and big failures and kind of get over it. It is not this big thing that you have to dig deep and get knocked down. Practice failing. Practice doing something dumb. When someone comes to you and goes, "Hey, we're thinking about doing a road trip here." Don't go, "Oh god, I have this or I have that." Go, "Okay, I'm going to go." And find out that you, all the time you spent worrying about it and thinking about it, was a waste.

You got to practice this stuff. It's not. I know it's scary. None of us like to be wrong. None of us like to be embarrassed. None of us like to make mistakes. Single biggest thing you can do in your life is learn how to do that. And I'm telling you, it's not AI. It's not some secret trick. It's practice. Practice taking small risks. And I promise, just like anything, you'll get way better at it. Thank you. Yeah. You know. Um, Will, would you get the mic up a little bit, about 3, 4 in, so we can, uh, hear him a little better? Will, just raise it up a little bit so we can hear him.

Um, you know, the difference is Marc is that, um, these young people are 18, 19, 20 year olds, right? And they're in college. And college emphasizes so much. Pass this exam, pass that quiz, make sure this essay is a, is this, make sure your GPA is there. Somebody wants to go to medical school, they got to make sure everything is perfect to get accepted. We just had a student here, um, who accept who we got accepted at seven medical schools. Seven. Carolina, Duke, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins. I mean, we're producing some unbelievable students here and you're seeing some of them here tonight.

And I think that's what it is. I think college teaches us to be afraid of that next test, that next exam, please that next professor when in reality, you know, uh, as we become more entrepreneurial, we accept failure because you failed and it wasn't the end of the world, right? I failed many times and it wasn't the end of the world. I realized the sun still rises in the east the next day. That's what I call faithful courage. You have faithful courage, you get up the next morning and you get going again. Yes, ma'am. Hello, my name is Anna Joan Phillips. I'm a freshman here.

A good pianist. Thank you so much. He's amazing. Um, but yes, my name is Anna Joan Phillips. I'm a freshman here at High Point University. And speaking about faithful courage, actually, I was going to first share my thoughts very quickly and then ask you the question. So, like, in my life, I've made, like, lots of mistakes. Not a fire alarm, but it's, you know, we all sin. It's okay. You know, we're forgiven if we repent. The thing is that, um, you know, in my personal life, like, I've learned that even though we fail and, like, bad things happen, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ can, like, get us out of that failure and like, make it for our good.

And what I was going to ask about, that, speaking about failure and all this stuff that we've been talking about, I was going to ask, like, how did, like, you know, God, you know, make it good for you, like, how did he turn that in from you pulling the fire alarm to you becoming a Netflix co-founder? Uh, it's a strange path, isn't it? I guess from a fire alarm to founder. Yeah. Uh, it's a lot of it luck. I'll be the first to admit it. You know, I I, following my curiosity, didn't let me down. Uh, a lot of things broke right for me. Uh, I ended up, luckily, uh, doing things that I learned that I was really good at and I really loved, and I go, that made me want to work hard.

You know, something. Listen, I, if there was a simple path for every single person to be successful, you know, we'd all be on it. Yeah. And I'm not, you shouldn't hold me up as, like, I have some secret formula. But you, but you do. I have some. Yeah. I but the thing is that the thing, if you look at me as a successful founder, the thing you should admire is the fact that I'm so chill about it and that I can take these risks and it's not existential and I don't take myself too seriously, cuz all it's easy to do that when you're rich. Yeah, I guess so. But you know, I never That's a long story.

All right, Anna. Thank you so much. Yes, sir. My name is Johan Schwarz. I'm a junior here at High Point. My question to you is, well, first of all, you talk about Blockbuster and how you approached them and they ended up declining your offer. Um, and now you work with small startups. Has anyone ever approached you with an idea that you originally thought was bad that you, like, ended up turning around and saying it's good? And if you did, like, how did you, how did you look at the situation differently to find, you know, the opportunity? Did anyone ever approach me with an idea that I thought was bad originally and then you're like, "Okay, this has some potential."

Yeah. It's, um, so the first part of that is every idea is bad. You know, I don't know if you guys have ever done like a brainstorming session, and when you do a brainstorming session, there's always someone at the front of the room who goes, "There's some ground rules. Number one, no such thing as a bad idea." Well, that is ridiculous. There are thousands of bad ideas. In fact, there's no such thing as a good idea. Every idea I get pitched is a bad idea. Okay? That's not what I'm looking for. The idea is not to come up with a great idea. What I'm looking for is someone's ability to start with that bad idea and start learning their way toward a good idea.

And it happens all the time. Uh, and you know, someone will come in and I'll go, "Well, that's good. Let's figure out a quick and cheap and easy way to try it." And they try it and they go, "Oh, wow. That was wrong, but here's what I learned. Well, let's try that. Oh, this didn't work either, but look what I learned." So, a lot of people get from these terrible ideas to great ideas. Thomas Edison. Yeah. I didn't coach him. Yeah. But, uh, he did okay on his own. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Hello. I'm Ray Johnson. It's very lovely to meet you this evening.

My question is about a dream I aspire to have. Uh, I'm into sailing. A little closer to the mic, please. Hello. Testing. Um, I— my big dream is to have my own show where I get my international captain's license and sail around the world so I can interview literally anyone anywhere. And because I know I can't exactly do that all after I graduate immediately in a month, my question for you is what would you tell someone like me that aspires to be in such a saturated market like media with TV and documentary style shows? So your— I think the question is your dream is to have a captain's license and a boat that you can sail people all around the world in, right?

And you're going where do I start? Right? So you can answer that question yourself. I think, is that if you back up and say what are some of the steps that I might need to take to get to that point and start in that dark— start down that path, and the path is not going to be how do I raise the money to buy a $30 million yacht. The step is, first of all, you back up and go, what would it take for someone to loan me $30 million? Well, they probably want to see a track record that you know what you're doing. So then you go, "Okay, how do I demonstrate I know what I'm doing?"

Well, I should captain someone else's boat. Are they going to hire you to captain their $30 million yacht? Probably not. They're going to look for someone who's already captained a bunch of smaller boats. But keep backing it up until you get to one that you can actually do. And that might mean, okay, I need to get some experience. I'm going to crew in a small boat for a couple years until I get the confidence to now I'm the captain of a small boat. I do that a bit and all of a sudden now I have the experience and I need to get some experience in international waters which are different.

You see what I mean? People have these ideas in their head and they keep them in their head where they got ornate and elaborate and beautiful, but that's really hard. You've got to match up your aspirations to your abilities. And I love the dream. Back it down and go, what's the first step I can take? And the other amazing thing, and I know it's— we're trying to go quick on these, is that you may not like that dream, and that would be a very, very valuable thing to know before you had borrowed $30 million. You have to match your— you have to match your aspirations to your abilities.

That's a much more articulate way to say that. And, well, no, that's what you said. I'm quoting you. And the question is one has to develop abilities, right? One has to do it through practice and energy and effort and so on. This is why we have these, um, these business, uh, events here on campus where students have an idea and a plan and they present it in front of some, uh, thought leaders and then you know, as you know, you can win. That's what happened to that young lady that you helped. They get 5,000, 10,000, $15,000 and start a business. We encourage our students to take a risk, to have an idea and do something with it because it is truly in the actualization of the idea.

It's not in the idea itself. That was sort of your point. Thank you so much. Oh, really quick. I'm so sorry. Um, my question was about taking the idea. Second question costs money. $9. 95. I'm so sorry. I'll pay up if I need to. Go for it. Um, to clarify, my question was about if I were to turn the idea of sailing around the world and interviewing people on the boat, if I were to make that a show, what would you recommend as far as breaking out into that in such a saturated market with media? So, it— do how to— how to market a show like a media show. Okay.

It's the same thing. Uh, it's the same thing which is that, uh, we— when people want to make a show they look for someone who knows how to make shows and, uh, it's not— the ideas count for nothing. What counts is you coming in and saying I've done these shows before. I produced them. I've had success. And Netflix won't even listen to a pitch if it doesn't come in from someone either who has deep experience or is represented by someone who has— can vouch for their ability to actually make it happen. And the same thing about the boat. So, start— get, if you really want to be a producer of shows, get a job working as a uh a gopher, a runner, you know, some anything to get you on the set and see what it's really like doing it.

And that's how it goes. Get in the zoom. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. Sorry, everyone. Thanks. Good job. But when you get the show, remember High Point University because there's a building here I want to name for you. All right. When you really succeed. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Mr. Randolph, for being here. My name is Isabella and I had a question. You talked about having good judgment and looking for people with good judgment. As a college-age student, uh what are some situations that you think we can put ourselves in daily to form good judgment and to um give ourselves some practice with that before getting into the business world?

How do you practice developing good judgment? Is that the uh Yes, sir. Um maybe um with not so much of simple decisions, but those complex decisions that you're looking for and those problem solvers. Do you have any um examples that you might be able to give outside of the classroom? I'm going to let you take that one. So So you want to have someone develop good judgment? Yes. On that um complex scale. For what scale? On a complex scale. On a complex scale. Yes, sir. Are you saying if there's a difficult situation, how do you develop judgment to deal with it?

Yes. Uh you pray. Um, I think the best advice I've discovered is that who you spend time with is who you become. So the way to develop judgment is to be in circles of influence where people who have good judgment reside. Right? So if you hang around people who are good thinkers, people good problem solvers, people who have passed that path before and made good choices, you learn from that. You you learn from their example, if you will. And that to me is how you learn. Now, of course, the simple answer to that question is trial and error. But that's a very expensive way to develop good judgment.

It's trial and error. You want to learn from somebody else's experiences. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Good luck. Yes, sir. Hello. My name is Remington Police. Is this volume okay? Good. Solid. Yeah. Need a little volume on that mic is what we need. Oh, you got it. Closer like this. Better. Solid. Uh Dr. Qubein. It's Randolph. So, this was inspired a question inspired from a different gentleman who asked a question about subscriptions, right? Everyone seemed to be upset in some sort of manner when you guys started to limit the devices, right? There's just a profit that needs to be met when accounts were being shared across what seemed like continents.

How do you have you guys found the best balance between customer satisfaction but also efficiency? You mentioned that there's a lot of efficiency people within larger uh you know corporate companies. Customer customer satisfaction always comes first. I don't you don't you really saying to yourself I said before that the trick is how do you figure out a quick, cheap, and easy way to try something? And you have to break down what am I really trying to prove? And you don't necessarily need to prove that I can do it this efficiently. I don't need to prove I can figure out how to make it cheaper.

You better prove that people actually care about what you're selling. They want your product, that it actually solves a problem for them. And it's very fine to say, I think when I'm at scale, I mean, I'm just making this up, you know, that when I'm doing 100,000 of these a year, I can do it for $5. So, I'm going to price it at five at, you know, $5 even though it's costing you $50 each time because you don't need to prove that. You need to prove that someone really wants what you're doing. That when I was saying before and someone asked about the important skill and I said focus, that's what to focus on.

It's a good answer because if the customers are satisfied, they're mad that you're efficient. Exactly right. Well, you'll be out of business, so who cares? You hope you have the luxury of worrying about efficiency. Yeah. Some a friend of mine in Connecticut owns a big grocery chain and he would say there's only three of those doing business. Number one, customer is right. Number two, the customer is always right. Number three, check out number one. Number two. Right. And it's you know it's an exaggeration, but it's a good point. Thank you so much. Yes. No is right.

Hi. How are you? My name is Jada Kadina and this might sound funny, but I like to call myself your company's fire extinguisher. And that's because I really love to solve problems with opportunities. I thrive in those fast-paced environments, and I really love to lead diverse groups of people.

1:06:53

With that, I have high self-confidence, but I truly believe in humble confidence. I know what I know, but I know I don't know everything. And I think that comes with having personal growth. So my question for you is how have your leadership styles changed throughout the previous decades? Oh, that's actually a very interesting question. Uh my leadership style has certainly changed and probably it's changed in that I've developed situational awareness. I've realized that leadership style is very dependent on what is going on. So, for example, if I was leading a hike, it was a nice sunny day.

We're just going for a mellow hike. I'd be extremely collaborative in my leadership style. How, where do you want to go? What do you think? Should we stop for lunch? I probably would hike in the back. Okay. But then if you tripped and developed a compound fracture in your femur, you would see a very different leadership style from me. You're saying, "Here's what we're doing. Now, do this." And I think I've learned that I have to be flexible in my style depending on the group, depending on the problem, depending on the time. And that took me a while to evolve away from a one-size-fits-all style, which I may have had at the beginning.

Thank you. Maturation of leadership, right, the experience. Thank you so much. Yes, ma'am. Are you a freshman or a sophomore, man? I'm a, well, I'm a terrific I love Netflix. A long-term uh subscriber and a shareholder. It's a terrific company. Um, and I left a pack of information for you. My name's Gail Dunham and I'm from Somerfield and I really appreciate that events like this are open to the public, but I've left something for you and I have a recommendation. Uh, when you shut down the by-mail um DVDs, you have a tremendous library there and I've recommended that you get uh Street Fight.

It's a a one-hour 20-minute documentary about Cory Booker's first political race when he was defeating the mob. It's a just a terrific documentary. Please ask people at, you know, at the corporate office, I know you have it. But in that vein, we learn from the past. And I would hope that Netflix would take a look at some of the things that you do have from the DVDs. There's such a rich library that you have. And I think um we learned from the past, too. But Street Fight. Got it. Thank you. Noted. All right. Thank you, ma'am. All right. So, this we're not going to take any more questions except those three.

So, yes, ma'am. Hello. My name is Lyanna Ki. I'm a sophomore here at High Point. And my question to you was, um, I sometimes what I call go down these research rabbit holes of curiosity. How do you manage your time when you go down these rabbit holes of like wait I need to get back to what I'm actually supposed to be doing? Ah, so the question I think is if I basically start going following my curiosity how do I keep myself just going down a rabbit hole forever? Yeah, I'm really bad at it. I mean, I'll be I'll be quite honest. I am I I I I'm the kind of person who sometimes will spend so much time on an email because I'm crafting something and I'll go why did I spend all that time on this?

But then I'll go oh look how good this is. But I I struggle with it. The better answer is I do go down rabbit holes all the time. Um, I'm really really careful though about how I balance my life and I have to use artificial things sometimes. I have to say I'm I'm only going to work on something this day and I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to look at my computer. I'm not going to open my email. Um, to try and focus myself on what I need to do. Um, but I I guess the answer is if you do that, it's human. Uh, and uh I think we all struggle with that somewhat.

I do have one more question if that's all right. Um, so recently the new show Adolescence came out on Netflix and there's been some groundbreaking records that have come with that pertaining to screenwriting along with even just how it was shot. How do you think how do you see that's going to affect the uh film industry in the future? Uh, it's it's kind of really cool to me the way Netflix has impacted the way films are made and the way movie TVs are made. Uh, and I think it's because they take risks and try things that haven't been done before. They're big enough they can put content out without knowing in advance it's going to be a hit.

They don't need to do Spider-Man 39. They could try things and uh that's an example and what it does is sets an example for other people that these things work. So I'll fall back on another one you heard which is that I can't predict the future. I just know that Netflix is willing to do whatever it takes to get that right in the future and we'll see where that where those innovations go. Yep. How was how do you think that impacted your ability in Netflix? Like did how did that come to fruition in that sense? I don't know. I don't I'm not I don't work there now, so I'm not privy to those that level of things.

All right. Thank you so much. Yes, sir. So, I So, hello. My name is Logan. I'm a CBL student graduate. And um one thing I noticed was that you left Netflix in 2003 and when they launched their streaming service, it was in 2007 and that is a large part of their success. So what are some practices you think that you set up that led to their success years after that you left? Uh, that's an interesting question. Uh, so a couple things. Number one is the culture at a company um is observational that people see what the founders are doing and that ends up setting a course.

And so a lot of the things that Reed and I did, and it wasn't things we designed, it was the way we acted, the way we treated each other, where we made decisions, what we demonstrated what risk-taking was about. And those things absolutely permeate the company still. Uh, it's like I sometimes joke that, you know, Netflix doesn't look like me anymore, but it definitely has my nose. So there's pieces of it that I can recognize. So that's one big thing. The second one though you mentioned streaming. The reason it was called Netflix. The reason we positioned the company as it was is we knew from day one.

We knew from a day negative 180 that eventually we'd be delivering movies digitally. And we laid a lot of groundwork when I was the CEO that began setting us up for that because we knew it was inevitable we'd eventually do it but we didn't know when. And we had to do a lot of things right that would make us be successful in a DVD world but would still make us successful when the world shifted. And I take a lot of pride in. How did you— did the word, the name Netflix just come to you drinking a beer, or did you hire an agency and come up with it? It's a brilliant, brilliant.

A little more old-fashioned than that, because getting a name is really hard, because you need something which hopefully is evocative of what you do. Got to be able to spell it. You need to trademark it. You need a domain name. It can't mean some obscenity in Lithuanian or something like that. Yeah. And it's— and we did it by saying, "Okay, we'll have two columns on the whiteboard. Brainstorm all the words that are evocative of the internet, web and net and etc. And a second column, words that are evocative of movies, and, you know, film. And basically began drawing lines between them all and trying to find one that wasn't taken.

And we didn't like Netflix. We didn't like Netflix. Those of us who are old enough may remember back in the 80s, a pornographic film was called a skin flick, and flicks, and we were going. And that big X at the end, it didn't help anything. Yes. But after researching them all, we ran out of ones that worked, and so, little corny, but there it is. That's not bad. That's bad. That's a good piece of trivia right there. I'm gonna take with me. Okay, last question. Yes, ma'am. Hi, my name is Olivia Stern. I'm a freshman here at High Point, and I was wondering how you identified opportunities that'd be very easy to overlook.

I'm sorry, I missed the question. How would you identify opportunities that would be easy to overlook? How— how do you identify opportunities that others may overlook? Oh, wow. Um, I've trained myself to, like, see the world as an imperfect place. I'm always looking for pain. I'm looking for things that don't work. And that's where most of my ideas come from. And most people jump on bandwagons. They'll look at a trend and try and feed into the trend. They'll go, "Oh, blockchain's hot. I want to do."

1:16:13

And I always start from the problem, because the idea is ephemeral. They're all bad. The— I— the problem. Oh, wow, that that's valuable, that the more you try, the deeper and richer the problem gets. Um, and I'll never stop brainstorming ideas once I'm focused on a problem. And that's how I find things that a lot of people overlook. Thank you so much. So, um, so you've given us a lot, and I think that what we can walk away from here today is knowing that all things have a beginning. All great things have a beginning. And you made the point that the beginning is not always a good idea, that ideas usually are not good ideas, but that you dissect them and do something with them.

That's a powerful notion for a college student to understand, that you don't begin at the highest level of achievement, that you have to work it through, that there's a tunnel, that it's a zigzag road, but eventually you mold it and develop it and evolve it into something that works and something that's good. And none of these things that I've done would have happened if I hadn't started. Starting is a critical, critical thing. Yeah. Yeah. You have to, you have to actualize what you're thinking. And the second thing I get from what you say, Marc, is that this is the land of opportunity.

And in America, all things are possible, that the American dream is alive and well for those who are willing to understand what it is, which is the achievement of your own goals. And that you got to take a risk, an appropriate risk, a calculated risk. Third thing I heard from you is that you believe in discovery. That discovery— you use the word curiosity and so on. That discovery is a very valuable gift for a human being, that you want to discover and uncover, because that's truly how we learn. We forget much of what we learn in college. But what we do remember is the application of what we learn, the development of our personhood, if you will.

And that is through a process of discovery. And I learned so many things from what you said. Um, and I hope that everyone here walks away with their own notion of what success is. This is the thing I always struggle with. When people say, "What is success?" I said, "Well, what do you want it to be?" You know, Ted Turner would say success is building a media empire called CNN. Um, Albert Einstein would say success is unraveling the secrets of the universe. Hank Aaron would define success as beating the record of Babe Ruth. Mother Teresa would define success as feeding the hungry and clothing the poor in the back alleys of Kolkata.

What do you want success to be? What is success to you? But ultimately it's not about success. It's about significance. It's about you sitting there giving your time, flying from California to come to High Point University. You heard him five years ago. You said five years ago, most of them didn't know what you were saying. I knew what you were saying. We had an innovation summit at High Point and you were our speaker and she remembered you for five years. You planted a seed of greatness in her mind, heart and soul. That's what it's all about, and that's what I appreciate about you so much, is a human being can take their success and turn it into significance.

They create enormous harvest, and the world keeps going on. New people come along, new graduates, new ideas, new companies, new discoveries, and all of us benefit because of that. I don't know where AI is going to take us. It'll have some good and some bad, for sure. But I do believe that it is up to us to take the bull by the horn, so to speak and say, uh, you know, we can make something happen here, and I will make appropriate noise because I made a contribution to society and to the world, and that's what we talk about. High Point, this is High Point, entrepreneurial university, life skills university, that is doing that with students every single day.

Students, I'm really really proud of you because no sooner than I said, if you have a question, you know, go to the microphone. You stood there in line and I saw what Elena and Roger did. They came in and stopped you from building any more, uh, cues there. These are two of our staff here. That was their way of saying no more questions. But I appreciate the fact that you stood tall front of all these people and you went to the microphone and you articulated your question. You were courageous. You were counted. You stood tall. That is what it's all about. You keep doing that, and you'll make anything good happen in your life come to be.

Marc, I thank you for your time again and again and again. And would you be willing to stay another 10, 15 minutes in case someone wants to chat with you? Absolutely. I'm right. Okay. So, we don't want to overdo it because our students will stay here till 3:00 in the morning. Life on a college campus begins at 11 o'clock. And so, uh, but for about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, uh, don't, don't don't capitalize all your time on him. Just a minute or two. Uh, he's very willing to do that. Uh, and those of you are visiting with us who wished that you were a freshman at High Point or a sophomore, I don't know how to tell you this.

You don't qualify. You know, I don't qualify to enter High Point University today. But thank you for being here. I hope this evening has been, and thank you. Thank you very much.

High Point University hosted Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph for a Life Skills and Leadership Series conversation with HPU President Nido Qubein. Randolph recounts how Netflix began, the DVD test that validated the idea, and the company's failed attempt to sell itself to Blockbuster, while discussing the traits—coachability, self-confidence, and good judgment—he values in employees and entrepreneurs. The conversation also explores risk-taking, disruption, AI's effect on business, and how to bounce back from failure, before opening into an extended audience Q&A with HPU students and community members.

HPU’s Life Skills and Leadership Series | A Conversation with Netflix Co-Founder Marc Randolph

HPU’s Life Skills and Leadership Series | A Conversation with Netflix Co-Founder Marc Randolph

Introduction

How did Marc Randolph come up with the Netflix idea?

What's the most important trait for a startup founder?

Why did Blockbuster fail to beat Netflix?

Why does judgment matter more than experience in hiring?

What's the biggest mistake first-time founders make?

How do you overcome failure and rejection in business?

How has Marc Randolph's leadership style evolved?

Why is starting more important than a perfect idea?