Maybe you’ve read that investors like Warren Buffett became successful by seeing opportunity where others saw crisis. Well, it’s true — and it’s also just a tiny part of the story. …

Honesty isn’t just the best policy. It’s the only policy. Honesty isn’t just the best policy. It’s the only policy. A key tenet of the Netflix culture is something referred to as “radical honesty.” Simply put, it is the belief that if you think something, you should say it. This…

We ended the day with 200 customers. Today, Netflix has more than 200 million of them. Exactly 25 years ago today — on April 14th, 1998, at 8 am in the morning, Eric Meyer leaned forward, tapped a few keys on his laptop, and launched Netflix to the world. That…

Good times and bad, there’s always an opportunity to do well. Just don’t be greedy. “Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered” I first heard that from a banker friend of mine. It’s an old Wall Street expression. It’s so true. Ever since my first job in Silicon…

I just hit 200 days in a row on Duolingo. I know, it’s not that impressive. According to DuoLingo, more than 2 million people have streaks of more than 365 days. Still, I’m pleased with myself. I can’t think of many other things in my life that I’ve been able to do for 6…

This is one of the reasons that doing a hardware startup is particularly challenging. Once you start, and have converted your idea into something physical, it’s very hard to change direction. — In 1997, when Netflix was just starting, our first warehouse was an old walk-in safe that happened to come with our first office in Scotts Valley. …

Users and customers are frequently one and the same. When you go to a restaurant, you are both the user and the customer. But think about dog food for a moment; in this case the two are quite different; your dog is the user, but you are the customer. — You know your user . . . but who is your customer? Like most companies, Clicker began as little more than an idea: “wouldn’t it be great,” the founders thought, “if there was a way for customers to control the TV in crowded bars. No more fighting over what game…

But by far the hardest is having to fire decent people for reasons that may have nothing to do with them, except perhaps being in the wrong place at the wrong time. — I hate firing people. Of the hundreds of responsibilities that fell to me in my four decades as an entrepreneur, letting someone go was the most difficult. Unfortunately, I’ve had way more experience at it than I ever would have wished for.

It’s amazing it took as long as it did for subscriptions to eat the world. — There was a period in the early 2000s where almost every new-business idea I heard was a Netflix derivative. I heard hundreds of them: the Netflix of textbooks, the Netflix of designer clothing, the Netflix of financial services, the Netflix of gaming, the Netflix of anime, The Netflix of coffee…