By Stan Linhorst | Syracuse.com
Marc Randolph is a serial entrepreneur, most famous for co-founding Netflix in 1997 with Reed Hastings. Netflix now has more than 130 million streaming subscribers worldwide.
Randolph left Netflix in 2002 and later moved off the board. Since then, he has devoted himself to helping people start companies and grow them.
Randolph graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton in 1981 and returns to Central New York again Oct. 2 for the “2018 Upstate Unleashed Conference” at the Oncenter in Syracuse.
Upstate Venture Connect runs the annual conference. Sessions are devoted to TED-style talks by founders of fast-growing Upstate companies and to panels explaining how entrepreneurs can find supports. Randolph gives a lunchtime keynote. Get tickets here.
Tell me about starting Netflix.
The first thing you need to know is that most of the time when companies achieve a level of success they have a founding story. Netflix is no different. The story is somebody had a late fee on a movie, and that boils it down to a nice, tidy, two-sentence package.
The reality is companies’ beginnings are considerably more complicated. There are multiple people involved. The idea you have when you start ends up being completely different once the company achieves some success.
