Many of the world’s brightest minds in modern marketing will arrive at The Fess Parker next week to attend Ontrapalooza, the annual summit put on by Santa Barbara-based business automation company Ontraport. Among the speakers are Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso, whose online clothing retail empire made her one of the richest women in the country, and Marc Randolph, the Santa Cruz entrepreneur who co-founded Netflix, where he served as CEO from 1997 to 2004. The latter chatted with The Independent last week, and this is a streamlined version of the conversation.
What’s your Netflix connection? Reed Hastings and I came up with the idea together. We were co-founders, and for the first year and a half, I was running the company and Reed was working on other things.
So Hasting’s story about being inspired by a $40 late charge for renting Apollo 13 isn’t true? With origin stories, most companies have very, very convoluted parentages. It’s not as if everything comes fully formed from one man’s mind. Lots and lots of people chime in with many ideas. But most people don’t want those nuanced details, so you come up with a story that shows what the reasoning of the company was. It’s like a Greek fable, in a way.