![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Yet even with 200,000 subscribers, Netflix still lost money and was forced to trim its staff the layoffs, writes the author, were painful. For a few years, the company was “almost always on the razor’s edge between total success and total failure.” When individual rentals failed to put the company on secure footing, Randolph and his team came up with the idea of a monthly subscription service with no late fees, a move that proved popular. ![]() Inventing a name for the new company (NowShowing and CinemaCenter were possibilities) was the least of their problems: Only by contracting with Toshiba and Sony to offer free rentals with the purchase of a DVD player did they entice customers, but even then, sales of DVDs were stronger than rentals. Videotapes, it turned out, were prohibitively expensive to mail, but the upcoming new technology of DVDs seemed viable. When his friend Reed Hastings, looking to fund a new company, expressed mild interest, Randolph gathered a dozen “brilliant, creative people” to see if the idea made sense financially. Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, makes an engaging book debut with a candid memoir recounting the history of the company as it evolved “from dream to concept to shared reality.” After co-founding the magazine MacUser and working in direct marketing for a software giant, Randolph, eager to work for himself, had been coming up with new business concepts (e.g., personalized dog food) when he hit on the idea of renting videotapes. The rocky road from startup to colossal success. ![]()
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