Marc Randolph

Randolph co-founded Netflix and was its first chief executive. His book's title is what an investor said about the idea, which is the point of it: the DVD-by-post plan was widely considered obviously bad, including by people whose job was judging such things.

His conclusion is not that you should back yourself against all advice. It is that opinions — including yours and including experts' — are close to worthless compared with a cheap test.

The famous test

Before building anything, they posted a disc to themselves to see whether it would survive the American postal system. It cost almost nothing and answered the question the entire business depended on.

What they teach

Nobody knows anything, so test it

The instinct is to refine an idea until it is convincing. The better move is to design the cheapest possible experiment that could prove it wrong, and run that this week.

Find the assumption the whole thing rests on

Every business plan has one load-bearing assumption. Identify it, test it first, and you either save yourself years or you find out early.

Have a lot of bad ideas

His account of Netflix's founding is largely a list of discarded ideas. Volume matters, because you cannot tell in advance which one survives contact with a test.

Where to start

1. That Will Never Work — The founding story, and much more honest than most.
2. marcrandolph.com — His writing and podcast on early-stage building.

These links go to their own work. We summarise and point — we do not republish it.

Who it suits

Anyone sitting on an idea they keep refining instead of testing.

And who it does not

It is one company's story, and survivorship bias applies — plenty of tested ideas still failed.

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