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Mark Randolph: My wife said Netflix was stupid idea when she first heard about it

30 September 2025 10:49 (UTC +04:00)

When I first mentioned the idea of Netflix, my wife said it was the most absurd idea, said Netflix co-founder and first CEO Mark Randolph, who spoke at the "INMerge" Innovation Summit held in Baku, APA-Economics reports.

According to him, innovation is not a complicated process and mainly consists of two conditions: the tolerance for risk-taking and having a direction. "Sometimes you have to try hundreds of ideas to find the successful one. But these ideas do not have to be great or perfect. The main thing is that you try them," said Randolph.

Randolph recalled that so far he has participated in the creation of seven companies: "Two of them have reached a market value of billions of dollars, three have made an IPO, and one has completely failed. But at the beginning of the work, no one could say which ones would be successful and which ones would fail. Because, truly, 'no one knows anything.'"

He also mentioned the attitude he faced when he founded Netflix: “When I first told my wife about this idea, she said it was the dumbest idea she had ever heard.”

Randolph added that it is impossible to predict a successful idea in advance: “As the famous Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman said, ‘nobody knows anything.’ An idea can be good or bad, but only testing will tell the result.”

According to him, business plans are often worthless because they change after the first contact with a real customer: “The best way is to test ideas quickly, cheaply and simply. Because what you learn in one day in practice is more useful than a month of discussion.”

Randolph also gave an example from Hollywood: “The film ‘Blair Witch Project’, which was made for $35,000, brought in more than $250 million. On the other hand, films made with a budget of $100 million can be completely unsuccessful. Because no one knows the result in advance.”