That'll never work by Marc Randolph, the founder of Netflix - a few take aways

 That'll never work is the story of the birth of Netflix as told by its founder, Marc Randolph.

Amongst the anecdotes and reminiscences of the founding and early years of Netflix when it was a DVD-by-post company, there are some real insights:

• Ideas and Start-ups
• "The truth is that for every good idea, there are a thousand bad ones." p.5
• Nolan Bushnell, co-founder of Atari, "Everyone who has taken a shower has had an idea, but it is the people who get out of the shower, towel off and so something about it that make the difference." p.301
• The key to initial success is to get a highly talented start-up team together.
• Start ups are about OPM - Other People's Money

• Culture
• The importance of company culture. "Culture isn't what you say, it is what you do." p75
• "People want to be treated like adults.  ....  What they want is freedom and responsibility. They want to be loosely coupled but tightly aligned." p.78
• Codifying Culture - HR Issues
• "Most companies end up building a system to protect themselves from people who lack judgement. Only that ends up frustrating the people who have it." p.189
• Vision for the HR Department as "a proactive agent for culture" p.190
• Self-Care: 
• Importance of prioritising relationship with wife/ family even when work is really tough. p.87
• Factors in Netflix's success
• The importance of data analytics
• The importance of testing. 
• "Take your idea and set in on a collistion course with reality as soon as possible." p.32;  
• "When it comes to ideas, it's more efficient to test ten bad ones than spend days trying to come up with something perfect." p.200
• "A culture of freedom and responsibility coupled with radical honesty." p.189
• The importance of focus.  "The Canada Principle":  Netflix could have gone into Canada at an early stage but didn't because the amount of work to do so could have been better used in focusing on developing the US market.
• Randolph being willing to step back from being CEO to become President to allow Reed Hastings (major founding investor) to run the firm. pp.169-182
• Meetings:
• Jeff Bezos "two pizza meetings" - if it takes more than two pizzas to feed a group of people working on a problem, then you have hired too many people." p.143
• Pitching
• "In a pitch, perfection isn't always the goal, projection is. You don't have to have all the answers if you appear to be the sort of person to whom they'll eventually come." p.150
• Belt-tightening:
• "Companies are like boats: sometimes you have to put them in dry dock to remove the barnacles that have accreted on the hull, slowing down forward progress." p.246