Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm definitely a note taker.
Culture is a critical piece of success.
Silicon Valley loves a good origin story.
Luck was a huge part of the Netflix story.
Learning and the exchange of ideas is dramatic.
That became the Netflix culture: radical honesty.
My father was an investment banker, a stock broker.
Collaborative decision-making is very poor in crises.
Usually, when I give talks, I'm 100% there, 100% present.
The simple reason I like every idea is that I'm an optimist.
No one knows what's a good idea or a bad idea until you try it.
I still have long lists of things that I want to accomplish every day.
One of the key lessons I learned at Netflix was the necessity of focus.
When someone uses 'low eight figures,' that means barely eight figures.
Long story short: I didn't start out thinking I'd be a tech entrepreneur.
Companies have centers of gravity. Where they are is part of their identity.
I am the luckiest guy you will ever meet. The most fortunate guy you'll ever meet.
Pitching a concept well is certainly important, but ultimately you have to build it.
My first real job lasted for three years. It ended the day I was unceremoniously fired.
I came from years and years in the direct marketing industry where everything is layered.
Risk taking in business is one thing. Risk taking in your personal safety is a different thing.
People are always advised to follow your dreams, but in 'That Will Never Work' I show them how!
You pick what your customers want, not what your entrenched business model may require you to do.
I'm not sure I want to preserve the old ways just for the sake of saying, 'I don't believe in change.'
Netflix is famous for its corporate culture, which rightly emphasizes directness and personal responsibility.
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.
The most powerful step that anyone can take to turn their dreams into reality is a simple one. You just need to start.
The real story of Netflix is complicated: an epic tale full of struggle, disappointment, drama, humor, and achievement.
In a two-sided market, focusing on the customer will increase a business's ability to extract value from the supply side.
By being courageous enough to state the difficult truth, the most important reputation that you will preserve is your own.
The role of a founder-CEO is extremely lonely. You can't always be fully forthcoming with your board or investors or employees.
The lessons I learned starting Netflix - and over a lifetime of entrepreneurship - are broadly applicable to anyone with a dream.
Banks and investors don't usually view a high-ranking executive in the company selling off massive amounts of stock as a good thing.
I certainly don't only watch Netflix. I enjoy the fact there is multiple companies producing content. I think it's great for consumers.
The number of people who have successfully scaled a company from dream to post-IPO success - you could list them on the fingers of two hands.
When an opportunity comes knocking, you don't necessarily have to open your door. But you owe it to yourself to at least look through the keyhole.
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.
There's nothing worse than the guy who at the party goes, 'Oh, I had that idea two years ago.' Well, then, why didn't you do something two years ago?
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.
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.
Here's a simple truth: When you surround a good idea with brilliant people, it changes. No matter how much you plan, great ideas have a mind of their own.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I wanted to use my story of starting Netflix - the whole thing, warts and all - to show how a dream could make it from the inside of one's head out into the real world.
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.
Diversity is not a skin thing, necessarily. Diversity is you have people around the table who have different backgrounds and different experiences and think differently.
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.