Jun 17, 2021
Today, our guest is a former NOLS Instructor and Chair of the NOLS Board of Trustees, but he is best known as the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, Marc Randolph. His incredibly successful career as an entrepreneur span more than four decades. He's founded or co-founded half a dozen other successful startups, including, most recently, Looker Data Sciences, which was sold to Google in 2019 for $2.6B. He is currently mentoring a handful of other early-stage companies, has advised hundreds of other entrepreneurs, is an active seed investor in startups all over the world. In 2019 he wrote the internationally bestselling memoir That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea, and now is the host of the new podcast called, That Will Never Work, where he dispenses advice, encouragement and tough love to struggling entrepreneurs.
When he's not surfing, mountain biking, or skiing, Mark often speaks at industry events and actively participates in programs targeting young entrepreneurs. He also sits on the board of an environmental organization 1% of the planet.
In this Episode:
- [04:00] Mr. Randolph talks about his first camping trip where he was 15 years old, and he made a mess with his macaroni noodles on the campsite, which was left unnoticed. After hiking to the next camp, Mark and his tent-mates were told that they had to hike back to the last camp and clean up the mess they made. This event taught him the lesson of how everything has consequences and everyone is destined to take responsibility.
- [07:20] Mark further shares his backpacking trip where it started raining, and his sleeping back was drenched in the rain. He beautifully continues this story and tells how this event alone taught him a lot about personal development. Since that day, Mark says that he has never left his car without a sleeping back properly covered and a raincoat even if it is sunny outside.
- [14:30] at the age of 17, Mark talks about a classic situation where he learned that no one should judge things based on their abilities and qualities – if you are in a group, your strength should be based on the group or your team. Leading this moral, Mark beautifully recalls how they were descending a mountain through a tightrope, and it looked pretty easy to Mark, but this trip turned out to be many hours long when the team wasn't on the same level as Mark of how easy It was.
- [33:50] He shares his climbing experience, which was led through a very narrow ridge. They ended up losing their rope and had another one stuck above them. So they had to spend the night on a ledge where people could only sit and not lie down. The rest of the story holds more mystery and adventurous spirits, and for that, you have to watch the podcast.
- [50:07] Marks further shares how his transition was from the field to the entrepreneurship life and how everything fell right into place for him.
- Later in the podcast, Mark plays a fun round of rapid-fire questions and interesting answers added to his wholesome personality.