Marc Randolph, Netflix co -founder: «Every big business begins with an impossible idea»

Marc Randolph (67 years old, New York), is the co -founder and first CEO of Netflix. Between 1997 and 2002, he played a key role in the transformation of the platform, from a small DVD rental company by mail to the main streaming service worldwide. «Every great business begins with an idea that seems impossible,» said the businessman during the second day of South Summit – one of the main meetings for innovation and entrepreneurship worldwide – which brings together until Friday at the ship of Madrid up to 600 speakers, 150 investors and 19 unicorns. Randolph, who is also dedicated to advising entrepreneurs in his initial phase, has insisted that the true engine of entrepreneurship is not the value or originality of an idea, but the ability to quickly test it, even if it is not perfect. «Success is proportional to the number of bad ideas that tests. We must assume this risk for it to work,» he said, before adding: «When we started in 1997, it didn't matter if we were wrong. If it was a bad idea, it failed. If it was good, customers proved it by buying.» This mentality was key in the first days of Netflix, when the platform was still dedicated to the rental of DVD by mail: “From one day to another we received 300 orders, overcoming our forecasts for the whole month, and the servers collapsed. But that initial chaos was not a failure, but a validation: it meant that customers liked our idea.” Randolph stressed that he found the success with reed with reissue Netflix co -founder who has also been executive director of the company – thanks to this environment and errors environment: «Every morning, we launched new ideas. Creativity is not only a moment of inspiration, but a daily process that is cultivated with discipline and openness to error,» he said. One of those ideas, which arose almost like a joke, would end up completely transforming the business model of the platform: » At customer's house? ”Randolph proposed. What seemed absurd later became the base of the subscription system without delivery dates or charges due to the company's delay. That decision, disruptive at the time, was the one that marked the birth of Netflix as a company. For Randolph, it was a clear example of how the best ideas sometimes «are not born from a plan, but of being willing to listen and experiment.» In addition to assuming risks and generating ideas, Randolph highlighted a third essential ingredient during his speech at South Summit: trust. «You have to believe because most of the time they will tell you no,» he warned. Employment, according to him, is not only to imagine solutions, but to have the determination to carry them out. He closed his speech with an appointment that summarizes his philosophy: «Everyone has ideas in the shower. What matters is who dries and does something with them.» Today, Netflix has 300 million subscribers and remains the world number one streaming platform in 2025, ahead of its Rival Disney+, which adds 235 million subscribers. In 2024, Netflix invoiced 39,000 million dollars, which represents a growth of 16% compared to the previous year. South Summit will end this Friday, June 6 with the choice of the winning startup of the startup competition, an annual global competition that brings together in this nineteenth edition to 100 finalists from 23 countries this year.