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Most Entrepreneurial Ideas Will Sound Crazy, Stupid And Uneconomic, And Then They’ll Turn Out To Be Right.

-Reed Hastings

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Most Entrepreneurial Ideas Will

Reed Hastings

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Most Entrepreneurial Ideas Will Sound Crazy, Stupid And Uneconomic, And Then They’ll Turn Out To Be Right.

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I Got The Idea For Netflix After My Company Was Acquired. I Had A Big Late Fee For Apollo 13. It Was Six Weeks Late And I Owed The Video Store $40. I Had Misplaced The Cassette. It Was All My Fault.

If You Look At Cable Networks, They Almost Always Start Licensing Content Wherever They Can, So They Can Build A Subscriber Base. But Then They Start Doing Their Own Content; It's A Pretty Well-trodden Path.

Our Brand At Netflix Is Really Focused On Movies And Tv Shows.

On The Internet You Get Continuous Innovation, So Every Year The Streams Are A Little Better.

Fibre Optic Is Becoming Like Electricity. If You Look At How Electricity Spread Around The Globe 100 Years Ago, That's What's Happening Now.

It Is Clear That For Many Of Our Members Two Websites Would Make Things More Difficult, So We Are Going To Keep Netflix As One Place To Go For Streaming And Dvds.

Tomorrow When You Come To Work, If It Doesn't Make The Customer Happy, Move The Business Forward, And Save Us Money - Don't Do It.

Interactivity Is A Big Part Of Video Games, Which Have Been A Big Part Of Entertainment For 20 Years. That's What We Think Of As A 'lean-forward' Type Of Entertainment. It's Much More Intense. But Tv Is More Of A 'lean-back' Entertainment - So The Big Improvement There Is On-demand, Because It Conforms To Your Schedule.

What's Got Me Excited About The Education Space Is The Growth Of The Internet Over The Next 10, 20, 30 Years.

Something Will Eventually Replace The Internet. But It's Hard To Know What And When It Will Happen.

When We Think About Online Learning, It's Such 'early Days.' Bill Gates Is A Wildly Smart Insightful Guy. Yet, Even A Guy As Smart And Insightful As That, 30 Years Ago Can Say Things Like,'who's Every Going To Need More Than 640k Of Memory?'

If The Starbucks Secret Is A Smile When You Get Your Latte... Ours Is That The Web Site Adapts To The Individual's Taste.

But As An Entrepreneur You Have To Feel Like You Can Jump Out Of An Aeroplane Because You're Confident That You'll Catch A Bird Flying By. It's An Act Of Stupidity, And Most Entrepreneurs Go Splat Because The Bird Doesn't Come By, But A Few Times It Does.

I'm An Hbo Subscriber, And I Watch A Bunch Of Great Shows On Hbo.

But It May Be One Of Our Best Markets In The Long Term Because When The Japanese Society Embraces A Brand It Is A Very Deep Connection, So We're Willing To Make That Investment Knowing That It's Not The Quick Route To Success That Might Be In Other Countries.

About Half My Work In Education Is U.s. Political Reform Around School Districts And Charter Schools, And Creating More Room For Entrepreneurial Organizations To Develop. And About Half On Technology, Which I Look At As A Global Platform.

I Hate The Photo Shoots. I Hate All That Stuff.

I Think There Will Be 20 Years Of Evolution From Linear Broadcast To Internet Television.

Comparing Apple To Netflix Is Like Comparing Apples To Oranges, Especially If The Oranges Made So Many Mistakes That People Stopped Eating Oranges And Just Went Back To Blockbuster.

I Learned The Value Of Focus. I Learned It Is Better To Do One Product Well Than Two Products In A Mediocre Way.

Don't Be Afraid To Change The Model.

Be Big, Fast And Flexible.

Not Every Show Has To Work Equally Well. It Just Has To Work Better Than Any Competitor Because Then We Can Outbid For The Content.

I Founded Netflix. I've Built It Steadily Over 12 Years Now, First With Dvd Becoming Profitable In 2002, A Head-to-head Ferocious Battle With Blockbuster And Evolving The Company Toward Streaming.

The Best Managers Figure Out How To Get Great Outcomes By Setting The Appropriate Context, Rather Than By Trying To Control Their People.

Truly Brilliant Marketing Happens When You Take Something Most People Think Of As A Weakness And Reposition It So People Think Of It As A Strength.

In Fact, Technology Has Been The Story Of Human Progress From As Long Back As We Know. In 100 Years People Will Look Back On Now And Say, 'that Was The Internet Age.' And Computers Will Be Seen As A Mere Ingredient To The Internet Age.

Broadcast Tv Is Like The Landline Of 20 Years Ago.

In The U.s., Hbo Is A Very Aggressive Service.

The Costa Rican Government Is Prioritizing Laying Fiber Optic Over Paving Roads. Costa Rica Is Trying To Become One Of The Internet Societies. This Is Happening Throughout The World.

I've Worked Very Hard, But My Life's Always Been Fun.

Do Not Tolerate Brilliant Jerks. The Cost To Teamwork Is Too High.

When There's An Ache, You Want To Be Like Aspirin, Not Vitamins. Aspirin Solves A Very Particular Problem Someone Has, Whereas Vitamins Are A General "nice To Have" Market.

Be Brutally Honest About The Short Term And Optimistic And Confident About The Long Term.

In The Long Term, You Have To Believe That Movies And Tv Shows Will Be Like The Opera And The Novel, Pretty Nichey Businesses.

Great Leaders, Like Steve Jobs Or Jeff Bezos, Also Focused On The Long Term.

The Netflix Brand For Tv Shows Is Really All About Binge Viewing. The Ability To Get Hooked And Watch Episode After Episode.

I Don't Know Of Any Internet Service That Opens On A Regional Basis.

I'm On The Facebook Board Now. Little Did They Know That I Thought Facebook Was Really Stupid When I First Heard About It Back In 2005.

Companies Rarely Die From Moving Too Fast, And They Frequently Die From Moving Too Slowly.

Interactivity And A Better Experience Aren't Always The Same Thing.

Don’t Get Distracted By The Shiny Object [and If A Crisis Comes], Execute On The Fundamentals.

Technological Revolutions Are Very Hard To Predict. My Favourite Example Is Someone In 1850 Taking Care Of Horses As A Farrier. They Would Have Said, "look, Horses Have Been Part Of Human Existence For 5,000 Years. We Are Horse People. It's Permanent." But All Of A Sudden, The Internal Combustion Engine Comes Along And, With It, Oil Fields And Automobiles, Which Basically Replace The Horse Completely. So We Often Have These Long Periods Of Stability And Then A Sudden Inflection Point.

I Watch Mostly Independent Films.

Human Entertainment Will Have Moved On To Something New. Then The Ultimate Challenge For Us Is, Can We Figure Out What That New Form Of Entertainment Is?

Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age. We Define Entire Epics Of Humanity By The Technology They Use.

Taking Smart Risks Can Be Very Gratifying.

When You Grow Up, As I Have, In The Shadow Of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates And Others, Success Is Defined As The Total Global Transformation Of A Market. To Achieve That, You Need Low Prices And An Attractive Offering. It's About Trying To Make A Positive Impact On A Big Scale.

At Netflix, We Think You Have To Build A Sense Of Responsibility Where People Care About The Enterprise. Hard Work, Like Long Hours At The Office, Doesn't Matter As Much To Us. We Care About Great Work.

Most Entrepreneurial Ideas Will Sound Crazy, Stupid And Uneconomic, And Then They’ll Turn Out To Be Right.

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