Editor’s note: Ahead of ISACA Virtual Conference: Digital Trust World, which is set to take place 21-22 June 2023, ISACA Now visited with opening keynote speaker Marc Randolph, a national bestselling author, executive mentor, angel investor, and the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, which radically altered the way people experience media today. He is also a judge and investor on Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Elevator Pitch” series and the host of the top-10 Apple Podcast “That Will Never Work.” The following interview has been edited for length and clarity:
ISACA Now: When you co-founded Netflix, did you ever imagine you would help fundamentally alter the way the world experiences media?
When we started, we had absolutely zero idea what Netflix would become. When we initially came up with the idea of doing video rental by mail, I was just looking for something to sell on the internet. And even after we launched, the big audacious goal I set for the company was to be “one of the 10 largest video rental chains.” Not exactly earth-moving stuff. But that's the nature of startups—you never really know what they will become. No startup ever succeeds by doing the thing they started with. They try things, they back up, they pivot … and eventually, if they are very lucky, they end up somewhere special.
ISACA Now: You are the host of the top-10 Apple Podcast “That Will Never Work,” where you provide 1:1 mentoring to entrepreneurs. In your experience, how influential is mentorship to entrepreneurial success?
It’s yet one more example of the (tricky) nature of entrepreneurship. On one hand, it’s a cardinal truth that nobody knows anything. Nobody knows in advance if an idea is going to work or not. The only real way you find that out is by trying it. So going to people and asking them their advice—and blindly taking it—is a recipe for disaster.
Yet on the other hand, entrepreneurship is a lonely business. And having someone who understands you, understands your business, and knows what you’re working on can be a tremendous resource. It’s someone you can bounce your thinking off, someone who can help you work through a problem, someone who might be able to suggest a few things you might try based on their having wrestled with similar problems in their past.
I’ve been hugely fortunate to have multiple people mentor me. I know how valuable it was to my growth as an entrepreneur. And it’s why I'm so committed to paying it forward by doing everything I can to help others.
ISACA Now: As someone who was very much involved in the digital transformation of media via the internet over the past several years, what do you think we have to look forward to next? And what lessons from your past work do you think we should take with us into the future of media?
Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned from my four decades as an entrepreneur—and my 30 years in tech—is that it's impossible to predict the future. We just can’t know what the future is going to bring us: what’s going to be useful and what’s not, which products will win and which will be afterthoughts. So, it’s not helpful to commit to a specific vision and lock into it.
Instead, the most important thing you can do is put yourself in a position where you can respond to whatever the future brings you. Staying nimble. Making sure that the people you have on your team are willing to try new things, drop whatever’s not working, turn on a dime. It’s what startups excel at. And it’s why the largest companies that are successful have learned that—no matter how large they get—they can’t ever stop acting like startups.