That will never work : the birth of Netflix and the amazing life of an idea / Marc Randolph.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Randolph, Marc, author.

Contributor:

Todd and Elizabeth Donovan Endowed Fund For Television and Broadcast Media.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Netflix (Firm).

Internet videos.

History.

United States.

Randolph, Marc.

Netflix (Firm)--History.

Entrepreneurship.

Internet videos--United States.

Streaming technology (Telecommunications).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

ix, 325 pages ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Little, Brown and Company, 2019.

Summary:

"Once upon a time, brick-and-mortar video stores were king. Late fees were ubiquitous, video-streaming unheard was of, and widespread DVD adoption seemed about as imminent as flying cars. Indeed, these were the widely accepted laws of the land in 1997, when Marc Randolph had an idea. It was a simple thought-leveraging the internet to rent movies-and was just one of many more and far worse proposals, like personalized baseball bats and a shampoo delivery service, that Randolph would pitch to his business partner, Reed Hastings, on their commute to work each morning. But Hastings was intrigued, and the pair-with Hastings as the primary investor and Randolph as the CEO-founded a company. Now with over 150 million subscribers, Netflix's triumph feels inevitable, but the twenty first century's most disruptive start up began with few believers and calamity at every turn. From having to pitch his own mother on being an early investor, to the motel conference room that served as a first office, to server crashes on launch day, to the now-infamous meeting when Netflix brass pitched Blockbuster to acquire them, Marc Randolph's transformational journey exemplifies how anyone with grit, gut instincts and determination can change the world-even with an idea that many think will never work."--Amazon.com.

Contents:

Against epiphanies

"That will never work"

Please, Mr. postman

Getting the band together

Show me the money

How it feels to deposit a check for almost $2 million

We were almost CinemaCenter

Ready for launch

A day in the post-launch life

Halcyon days

Two cents for Bill Clinton

"I'm losing faith in you"

Over the hill

Nobody knows anything

Drowning in our own success

Crash

The belt tightens

Going public

Epilogue: Randolph's rules for success.

Notes:

Includes index (pages 316-325).

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Todd and Elizabeth Donovan Endowed Fund For Television and Broadcast Media.

ISBN:

9780316530200

0316530204

9780316460668

0316460664

OCLC:

1119537047

Publisher Number:

99981959125