Marc Randolph
| Marc Randolph | |
|---|---|
Randolph in April 2017
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| Born |
Marc Bernays Randolph April 29, 1958 (age 59) Chappaqua, New York, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Hamilton College |
| Occupation | Co-founder and former CEO of Netflix |
| Spouse(s) | Lorraine Kiernan Randolph |
| Children | 3 |
Marc Bernays Randolph (born April 29, 1958) is an American tech entrepreneur, advisor and environmental advocate. He is the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix.
A serial entrepreneur who helped found the U.S. edition of MacWorld magazine and the computer mail-order businesses MacWarehouse and MicroWarehouse, Randolph now serves on the boards of Looker Data Sciences and Chubbies Shorts. He previously served on the boards of Getable, Rafter, OpenEd and ReadyForce.
Randolph, who has equated founding companies to his experience as a mountain guide, is the chairman of the board of trustees of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Lander, Wyoming and a board member of the environmental advocacy group 1% for the Planet.
Randolph was born in Chappaqua, New York, the oldest child of Stephen Bernays Randolph, an Austrian-born nuclear engineer, and Muriel Lipchik of Brooklyn, New York. Randolph’s paternal great-granduncle was psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud and his paternal great-uncle was Edward Bernays, an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda. Randolph spent his summers during high school and college working for the National Outdoor Leadership School, becoming one of its youngest instructors. He graduated from Hamilton College in New York with a geology degree.
Randolph’s first job out of college in 1981 was at Cherry Lane Music Company in New York. Put in charge of the company’s small mail-order operation, Randolph taught himself direct mail and marketing techniques while tinkering with different ways to sell Cherry Lane’s catalog of sheet music directly to consumers. Randolph’s fascination with using computer software to track customers’ buying behavior would ultimately inform his decision to create a user interface at Netflix that doubled as a market research platform. He further developed his theories about using direct mail to influence and retain customers doing circulation work while helping found the U.S. version of MacUser magazine in 1984. While co-founding computer mail-order firms MacWarehouse and MicroWarehouse with Peter Godfrey and his partners about a year later, Randolph made the connection between overnight delivery and improved customer retention. The discovery later proved crucial to Netflix’s growth and survival: the company’s subscriber base first blossomed and cut into Blockbuster Inc revenues in cities where Netflix offered overnight DVD delivery.
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