EDGE25: Lessons in Tech Life from the Co-Founder of Netflix
- Eric Gemelli
- May 28
- 2 min read
By Eric Gemelli
The second annual EDGE technology conference was held in Las Vegas May 6-9. Attendees were treated to a keynote address by Marc Randolph, co-founder and former CEO of Netflix.
The trial-and-error experience of the founders of Netflix, Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings, have a lot to teach tech-focused organizations, including credit unions.
Sometimes roadblocks are the best thing that can happen. Randolph and Hastings were on a corporate retreat in Santa Barbara in 2000 when they got the call from Blockbuster: They would listen to the fledgling Netflix proposal to join forces and be acquired. Netflix had accumulated $50,000,000 of debt, so they reasoned that’s they needed to sell the company. Blockbuster laughed and instead decided to become competition. Blockbuster is down to one last store while Netflix’s market cap is now almost $500 billion.
If you don’t disrupt your business, there are scores of people who are willing to disrupt it. Randolph related Netflix is still obsessed with what is next and tries to stay nimble to address new challenges. He says the key is to watch kids and see what they are adopting.
Along with a tolerance for risk and confidence, leaders in the tech space need new ideas, said Randolph. Identify a pain point and solve it. Expect people to tell you your idea is no good. Randolph’s wife told him Netflix was a lousy idea.
The technology you need may not exist right now. Randolph and Hastings dismissed the idea of sending VHS tapes through the mail due to cost, but when the DVD was introduced, they could be mailed cheaply for the cost of one stamp in just a day.
Quoting the founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell, everyone who takes a shower had an idea for a solution to a problem many encounter. It’s the person who dries off and takes action who is worthy to be celebrated.
Randolph told the audience that Academy Award screenwriter William Goldman, who wrote The Princess Bride, is famous for saying, “Nobody knows anything.” You don’t know what will work until you try. The people telling you something won’t work don’t really know. “You might have to try 100s of ideas,” observed Randolph.
Netflix struggled for existence until Randolph came up with the ideas of “no late fees, no due dates and changed to a subscription model.” They exploded from 300 clients on their first day of business in 1997 to over 300,000,000 in subscribers in 2025.
After the session, one attendee summed up Randolph’s message for Finopotamus in two words: “fail forward.”
Kaushal Pandya, CTO at Identifi, told Finopotamus that his company is already applying the principle of learning quickly through failing fast. “We create a use case for artificial intelligence (AI), then test. We add a feature and ask clients for feedback,” he noted.
Jessica Gamache, head of research at Filene Research Institute, also in attendance added, “Don’t let not knowing keep you from trying, but do your research.”