That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix by the first CEO and co-founder Marc Randolph

A disc: $20. A reputation for having every DVD and always being in stock: priceless.

You have to learn to love the problem, not the solution. That’s how you stay engaged when things take longer than you expected.

The truth is that no business plan survives a collision with a real customer. So the trick is to take your idea and set it on a collision course with reality as soon as possible.

It was the camaraderie and the challenge, the opportunity to spend your time solving hard, interesting problems with smart people. You didn’t work for us because you wanted a beautiful office. You worked for us because you wanted the chance to do something meaningful.

Reed looked at me. “Don’t remind me,” he said, shaking his head. “I just got nicked forty bucks by Blockbuster on a movie I returned late. But…” He let his voice tail off as he turned to stare again out the window, his face blank. Then his eyes arched upward and he nodded. “Maybe,” he said.

As you get older, if you’re at all self-aware, you learn two important things about yourself: what you like and what you’re good at. Anyone who gets to spend his day doing both of those things is a lucky man.

Focus. It’s an entrepreneur’s secret weapon. Again and again in the Netflix story – dropping DVD sales, dropping à la carte rentals, and eventually dropping many members of the original Netflix team – we had to be willing

to abandon parts of the past in service of the future. Sometimes, focus this intense looks like ruthlessness – and it is, a little bit. But it’s more than that. It’s something akin to courage.

The most powerful step that anyone can take to turn their dreams into reality is a simple one: you just need to start. The only real way to find out if your idea is a good one is to do it. You’ll learn more in one hour of doing something than in a lifetime of thinking about it.