Netflix Before Chill
“We’d been in trouble before, but the dot-com crash was different. Selling had seemed to be our only way out. And Goliath didn’t want to buy us—he wanted to stomp us into the ground. As long a shot as Blockbuster had been, I had genuinely held out hope that it would save us. Now it was clear that if we were going to get out of the crash alive, it was entirely on us. We would have to be ruthless in our focus on the future. As my father used to tell me, sometimes the only way out is through.” In Vanity Fair, Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph recalls a now infamous meeting between Netflix and Blockbuster. Netflix wanted to sell for $50 million. Blockbuster all but laughed them out of the room. (I still like Blockbuster’s chances…)