MARC RANDOLPH

Pitching a concept well is certainly important, but ultimately you have to build it.

The lessons I learned starting Netflix - and over a lifetime of entrepreneurship - are broadly applicable to anyone with a dream.

Companies become what they want to become.

No one has ever asked me to give a graduation speech. But in my years of working with aspiring entrepreneurs, many of them in college, I've gotten used to giving advice.

Companies make a big point of how their culture is all about 'bad news first,' but when it comes to people, they are suddenly scared to communicate bad news out of some mistaken feeling of politeness or political correctness.

I came from years and years in the direct marketing industry where everything is layered.

When we were kicking around the idea for Netflix in 1997, proving out an idea was expensive and labor-intensive. There was no Squarespace, no cloud. If you wanted a website, you had to build it from scratch. If you wanted an online store, you had to completely design it yourself.

I personally believe that a critical part to innovation is that exchange of ideas so when you say, 'Here's my idea,' someone else at the next table, who is in a different party, will go, 'Oh, these guys are trying that,' so that comes.

I'm this big believer that culture is not what you say, it's what you do. Who cares about your PowerPoint and about what you've carved into your cornerstone? If it's not being modeled, it won't be readable.

I'm not sure I want to preserve the old ways just for the sake of saying, 'I don't believe in change.'

Now, I love a good factory tour. Drop me into a bottling plant, an automotive assembly line, or a jellybean factory, and I'm happy as a clam at high tide.

When I was 23, I was quite possibly the worst real estate agent in New York. I was working for my mother's agency in Chappaqua, and no one was buying houses. In eight months, I made zero sales. I rented one apartment.

Diversity is not a skin thing, necessarily. Diversity is you have people around the table who have different backgrounds and different experiences and think differently.

It was a long, circuitous route from my mom's real estate business to Netflix. It didn't happen overnight. Or in a year. Or even in ten years. But it happened.

Culture is a critical piece of success.

The most powerful step that anyone can take to turn their dreams into reality is a simple one. You just need to start.

Certainly when I was starting, it required being in a community where, when you tried to rent a building, and they looked at your balance sheet and saw it was negative, that didn't scare them away.

Most people have a kind of survivor bias about luck. When something wonderful happens - when preparation meets opportunity, with excellent results - we think: 'How lucky!' But we don't usually acknowledge all the times when things just... fizzle out. All the times when preparation comes to nothing.

When entrepreneurs talk about their success, they rarely talk about luck. I think that's because most of them think the concept denigrates the hard work and smart thinking they put into their projects. But luck is a huge part of any successful business.

I played second base.

You pick what your customers want, not what your entrenched business model may require you to do.

Take any job in a growing, exciting company. You'll learn so much.

I'm definitely a note taker.

I certainly don't only watch Netflix. I enjoy the fact there is multiple companies producing content. I think it's great for consumers.

That became the Netflix culture: radical honesty.