As the co-founder of five startups, I know when it’s time to step aside. President Biden, like I once did, now faces a momentous decision that will define his legacy.

Twenty-five years ago, I was the CEO of Netflix, the startup I had co-founded several years earlier. And for those first exciting years, my blend of passion and creativity was exactly what the company needed.

Then, late one September afternoon, my co-founder Reed Hastings popped his head into my office and told me simply, “We need to talk.”

He pulled up a chair, and for the next ten minutes laid out a clear-eyed assessment of my accomplishments and my failures. His analysis covered errors in hiring, accounting, and corporate communications. He noted the challenges ahead and made a meticulous argument for why the company was in trouble with me at the helm.

His proposal was straightforward: He would join the company full-time as CEO. I would step down to become COO and we would run the company together. “I’ll let you think about it,” he concluded.

As he left my office, closing the door quietly behind him, the sun was setting but I didn’t have the strength to turn on the light. I sat there in shock, alone in the dark.

It was unfair. This was my company. I came up with the idea, recruited the team, and launched the site. I bled for the company, worked hundred-hour weeks, suffered sleepless nights and prolonged bouts of anxiety. My bond with the company felt like parenthood. To let it all go felt like an enormous loss — even a betrayal.

As I sat in my dark office, feeling bitter and hurt, I considered two things.

First, while I was focused on the past, Reed was concerned about the future. The needs of the company had changed. And while I may have been the best founder, I might not be the best CEO for the challenges we’ll face tomorrow.

Second, like many entrepreneurs, I had always dreamed of being the CEO of a big, successful company. But that night I wondered if that dream might be two different dreams. And if I wanted the “big, successful company” dream to come true, I may have to give up on the CEO one.

I was in an impossible situation. My most important job as CEO was ensuring the right employees were in the right seats. And now I was being forced to turn that lens on myself.

I had often told people: “It’s the rule of the jungle: lead, follow, or get out of the way.” But I never thought it would ever apply to me.

At the time, my decision about whether to step aside for the good of the company felt cosmically significant. But, in President Biden’s cases, it actually is.

Despite his outward confidence, I’m sure President Biden is wrestling with this decision. I know he fears for the future of democracy and sees defeating Donald Trump as an existential imperative. I know he wants the United States to continue to be safe, prosperous, and equitable. I know that he firmly believes he is the best possible person to deliver on these promises.

And four years ago, he might have been.

But it’s becoming increasingly evident — to us, and probably to him — that this may no longer be the case. As he consults with family and trusted advisors, I’m sure Biden is struggling, just as I did 25 years ago, wondering if the best way to achieve his goals for the nation is to accept that he may not be the best person to bring us there.

I ultimately decided that if I wanted Netflix to be successful, I should be willing to do whatever that required — even if that meant stepping down as CEO.

And 25 years — and 270 million subscribers — later, I’m convinced that making way for Reed to step in as CEO was the best decision I ever made. The years where Reed and I ran Netflix together were the renaissance at the company, laying the groundwork for much of what Netflix has become. And working closely with him was the highlight of my professional life.

Whatever Joe Biden decides, I hope he can achieve the same peace that I have. Because whether you are an early-stage CEO transitioning to a later stage one, or a president transitioning to former president, true leadership is about more than recognizing a change is necessary. The most important thing is having the courage to act on it.

To find other things I’ve written and much more, check out MarcRandolph.com

Every few weeks, a numbered list of rules, or insights, or “things I wish someone had told me” stumbles into my feed. And for the most part, I like reading them — especially if they’re written by someone who’s doing something interesting.

Yes, doing a list like this is pretty cliché at this point, but it also forces whoever’s writing it to be concise and at least try to say something original. And sometimes they succeed.

The latest one to catch my eye was from Sam Altman at OpenAI, a guy who’s definitely doing something interesting. And while several of the insights are predictable, there’s one I wanted to dig into:

“It is easier for a team to do a hard thing that really matters than to do an easy thing that doesn’t really matter; audacious ideas motivate people.”

I’ve written before about the importance of giving people meaningful work. It’s one of the best ways to find and hang onto great talent, even if they could be making more somewhere else. I had this exact conversation just last week, in fact, with the head of engineering at a startup, concerned he couldn’t compete with bigger, better funded competitors. He was right, budget-wise, but also missing the point: above a certain pay level, the best talent is looking for the most interesting challenges with the greatest potential for impact.

But beyond this, Sam makes an even deeper point: for great talent, meaningful work is easier. Not just more rewarding, or worthwhile, but actually easier to do.

I agree. Making something new is hard work — especially the mundane parts that feel meaningless but still must get done (and there’s an endless supply of those).

But the genuinely important stuff? If you’re working with a team that’s up to the task, it just feels easier.

Securing the next round of funding? Hard. Solving a distribution problem that’s going to revolutionize how media is consumed? Easy. Even if it’s 10x the work.

But that’s just me — and there’s another good lesson here. There are plenty of people out there who find real meaning in securing funding. Or maintaining code. Or setting up databases. For them, that’s the stuff that’s easy.

So yeah, make sure you’re always seeking out ideas and problems that really matter to you, because it’ll make your job easier and the outcome better.

But also make a point of finding people who are different from you, and who find meaning in the things you don’t. Because those things have to get done too. And the best way to make sure different kinds of tasks get done is to make sure everyone’s got something meaningful to do…even if it’s not your meaning.

To find other things I’ve written and much more, check out MarcRandolph.com

How many times have I said, “You don’t need to move to Silicon Valley”? Dozens, at least, because it’s been true for probably a decade. I wrote this nearly five years ago:

Don’t move to L.A to become an actor — you’ll just be a waiter. Don’t drive to Nashville to become a country music star — you’ll just end up playing empty dive bars at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday.

And don’t move to Silicon Valley with a twenty-page business plan and a head full of ideas. You’ll just run out of money somewhere in San Mateo, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with six or seven other aspiring entrepreneurs.

Well, now I’m going to amend that. Not because it’s stopped being true, but because we’ve gotten to the point where the best advice is nearly the opposite: if you want to succeed with an early-stage startup, your best move might be far away from Silicon Valley, to a small city with an active startup community of its own. Someplace like Greenville, South Carolina.

No, I’m not from there (or anywhere near), and I don’t have any special connection to it. But I do think that places like Greenville offer a lot of things to budding entrepreneurs that the Bay Area (along with Austin, New York, L.A., etc.) can’t. Things like low overhead, good quality of life, a less competitive and more supportive business environment, and the potential to make partnerships with local institutions and companies that will actually return your phone calls.

At the same time, a lot of the things that made relocating to Silicon Valley so necessary back in the day have mostly evaporated. Need a deep talent pool? The best developers are just as likely to be working from a cabin in Montana as from an overpriced rental house in San Francisco. Need to raise money? The 95% of the process that doesn’t involve in-person pitching is just as easy to do in Greenville. How about networking? It used to mean going to the right party or tech meetup; now it’s more likely to mean joining the right Discord or Slack channel.

Don’t get me wrong — I loved the energy of Silicon Valley in those days of “irrational exuberance” when Netflix was starting out. But I also realize that it put up a high barrier for anyone who didn’t have the time, money, or flexibility to move there. A recent article in The Economist — the one that features Greenville’s startup scene — points out that startups are more likely to be Black or Hispanic owned now than at any point in history. And if I had to guess, I’d venture that you’re probably seeing more women founders, more founders with kids, and more older founders too. I certainly am.

Silicon Valley’s not going away anytime soon: that’s still where the money is, and the concentration of energy and talent you’ll find there is unmatched. But for anyone starting out, I’d rule out the expensive tech centers unless there’s a really good reason not to. Because there are plenty of Greenvilles out there, and more popping up every week.

My advice? Go find yours.

To find other things I’ve written and much more, check out MarcRandolph.com

To the graduates of the class of 2024: congratulations on landing your first job! Unfortunately, you’re going to have to quit.

Not right now, but soon. For some of you it will be in six months; for others it might be in a year or two. But eventually, nearly all of you are going to have to give notice.

Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with you. It happens to every newly employed graduate. And ironically, the smarter you are and the harder you work, the more quickly it will happen.

Here’s the problem: You’re going to outgrow everyone’s expectations.

That’s unfortunate, because you’ve been raised and taught to “exceed expectations” and almost all of you will do so. But this won’t be because you are so talented. It will be because everyone’s expectations are so low.

They just don’t expect that much of you. But why should they? You don’t know anything! Sure, you’ve taken a bunch of classes, you’ve done the homework, you know the theory, and maybe you even squeezed in a summer internship. But you’ve never done it for real. You’re basically clueless.

They will expect you to learn quickly, but since they know your productivity is going to be low for a while, they aren’t going to pay you much.

Then an amazing thing will happen. You’ll start to figure things out. You’ll understand how all the theory you learned applies to the real-world problems you’re solving. You’ll see how the pieces come together so you can finish more and ask for help less. And little by little, you’ll earn that real world merit badge called “competence”.

But here’s the problem: in your mind, you’re now 90% as productive as the person with the better title and the much higher salary. But in everyone else’s mind, you’re still just a newb…a slightly more productive newb for sure, but a newb nonetheless.

So when you confidently walk into your boss’s office to ask for a promotion and a raise, they’ll tell you how great you are, how much they value you, and because you’ve done such an exceptional job, you’re going to be offered…wait for it…a 10% raise! They’ll tell you how proud you should be of that. “It’s more than double the average raise the rest of the employees are getting!” they’ll say.

If you’re disappointed at this point, you should be. Because you’re not 10% better than you were on day one. You are orders of magnitude better.

And while your current employer will disagree with that assessment, you know who won’t? A new company.

At your next employer, you won’t be judged by who you were. Instead, they’ll see you — and pay you — for who you are and who you will be before too long. They won’t be obsessing over what you were paid before and how big of a raise you are getting, but instead will be considering what you know right now, and what you can contribute.

I know, the thought of having to leave the job that you spent months getting isn’t encouraging. But it’s the way of the world for people just starting out.

Don’t worry, you won’t need to quit your job every year, forever. In fact, the older you get the longer it takes to outgrow people’s expectations. So, while you will need to switch sometimes, it’ll happen a lot less frequently.

And this is about more than just pay…it’s also about challenge and learning. Yes, you will quickly outgrow your salary, but you also get bored and stop learning. Your employer will want you to be in a role that’s easy for you, where you’ll just crush every task they give you. You, however, should want to be challenged every day, to feel like you’re struggling to keep your head above water, to be somewhere you can keep learning. This difference is another reason to leave.

So, what are you waiting for? Get to work! Show up on time. Do 10% more than you are asked. Follow the rest of Randolph’s rules for success. Make yourself indispensable.

But most importantly, keep your resume updated. Unfortunately, you’re going to need it.

To find other things I’ve written and much more, check out MarcRandolph.com

Other than streaming and “Netflix and Chill,” the most enduring (and surprising) Netflix legacy must be its corporate culture.

In the famous Netflix Culture Memo, we describe our culture as being one of “Freedom & Responsibility” in which every employee is given the freedom to meet their objectives in whatever manner they see fit, so long as they accept their responsibility to achieve those objectives.

Some of the more dramatic manifestations of Freedom & Responsibility are the Netflix employee policies. For example, are you aware of the Netflix travel policy? There isn’t one! How about the Netflix vacation policy? There isn’t one! Or the Netflix expense policy? There isn’t one!

For the most part, there are no Netflix policies. It’s what my co-founder Reed Hastings describes as the “No Rules Rules”. In almost every case, the policy consists of the same four words: “Use Your Best Judgment.” This isn’t something unique to Netflix either — Nordstrom famously used those same four words in their employee manuals at one point as well.

But within the world of startups, nearly every company starts off this way, not because of some philosophical commitment, but because they don’t really have a choice. There are so many things to do when you’re early-stage — and so few resources to do them with — that the only workable management style is to tell people what you need and when you need it, and then turn them loose.

With a hand-picked all-star team, this works just fine. But as the team gets bigger, eventually someone falls short, and the well-meaning CEO thinks, “I wish I’d known that in advance. So from now on I need weekly status reports.” And reluctantly, the all-star team starts doing status reports.

The team gets bigger still and someone eventually overspends. The well-meaning CEO thinks, “I can’t have that. From now on we’ll require my pre-approval on anything over $5000.”

And soon there is a travel policy. And a vacation policy. And all manner of other policies, all designed with the best of intentions. Every policy is a guardrail, designed to protect the company from people who lack the judgment to know they need to communicate that they’re going to be late, or know how much is appropriate to spend on something, or decide what level hotel to stay in.

The Netflix culture experiment simply asks, “Instead of putting up guardrails to protect ourselves from people with bad judgment…what if we built a culture designed for people with good judgment?”

Because while “guardrails” might protect you from people with bad judgment, it also drives away the people with good judgment. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This doesn’t mean that the solution to too many guardrails is to simply get rid of them, though. Freedom and Responsibility is a tremendously powerful culture, but as Uncle Ben Parker explains, “With great power comes great responsibility.” So before you make the decision to do away with travel policies, expense policies, and vacation policies, start by asking yourself if you already have most important component in place: the good judgment.

The only way a “No Rules Rules” culture works is if everyone has the judgment to make good decisions, and that doesn’t happen automatically…or even easily. It means that if you don’t have good judgment, you can’t work there. It often means letting go of a lot of people, which most managers (and corporations) don’t have the strength to do.

But if you do have the stomach for it, it’s worth it. Because there is nothing that a high performer wants more than to be to be given freedom and responsibility, and to be surrounded by other high performers.

Eliminating your superfluous policies won’t be a magic bullet. Dismantling the policy is easy. Making sure that everyone the policy applies to has the maturity and judgment to deal with it…that’s the hard part.

Good luck.

To find other things I’ve written and much more, check out MarcRandolph.com

Since the first of the year, two of the companies I’ve been involved with have decided to wrap things up. In both cases, these two young CEOs had developed strong ideas, tirelessly pitched their concepts, raised significant amounts of money, recruited first-class teams, launched, pivoted two or three times, only to ultimately find out that their carefully nurtured idea was not such a great idea after all.

But what I found most impressive, was that both of these CEOs managed to come to this decision while they still had ample amounts of money in the bank, and therefore had time to wind down their companies gracefully, while there was still time to create a reasonable outcome for their employees, their investors and their customers.

It made me realize that while we all seem to chatter endlessly about what it takes to build a company, we almost never talk about what’s involved in taking one down.

Part of that is because entrepreneurs are relentlessly optimistic — a necessary trait for overcoming the years of adversity and naysaying that accompanies getting a startup off the ground — so it certainly cuts against the grain for any of us to say “enough.”

Perhaps like a test pilot, we’re hesitant to acknowledge failure or even the slightest lack of confidence in our abilities, perhaps scared that others will think that we are somehow lesser as entrepreneurs.

And maybe we’ve been overly influenced by survivor bias, since we mostly hear about the one company that completed their hail-Mary catch, rather than the 10 companies that choose to drive full speed ahead until the very moment they ran out of gas.

Despite my desire to back CEOs who are going to be bulldogs about pursuing every last lead and chasing down every last pivot, I also have to respect a leader who not only has the smarts to recognize when he is going down a dead end road, but also the discipline to be just as aggressive about engineering a safe landing for all of his stakeholders.

There’s more than just reputation at stake when you leave yourself options. You get to . . .

-Sell a living company — In many ways a start up is like a shark, if it’s not moving forward, it dies. So while your company may not be growing fast enough to remain viable as a stand alone, starting your wind-down early lets you keep the doors open while you consider your other options. It allows you to keep your existing customers happy, allows you to keep your current team together, and allows you to show potential acquirers a more accurate picture of exactly what they are getting.

-Sell your technology, not just your team — In the late ’90s two of the smartest guys I know built an incredible tool that did auction pricing arbitrage. When they failed to get follow-on funding and closed up shop, the team landed on their feet. But the technology? Last I heard it was on a hard drive in the founder’s attic. There’s no question that technology acquisitions usually require longer and more extensive due-diligence than pure talent acquisitions, so leaving yourself time for suitors to adequately appraise you, makes it more likely that the fruits of all your efforts will eventually see the light of day.

-Be more aggressive about your price. Nothing undermines your negotiating power like desperation. Having money in the bank allows you to say no, which dramatically strengthens your hand.

-Look after your own reputation. Sure, nothing will cement your reputation in the valley like success. But it’s still possible to get points for the manner in which you’ve managed all those alternate scenarios.

Maybe you didn’t generate the 10X return your investors were hoping for, but fighting to at least return their original investment is still a materially better outcome than a complete wash out.

Maybe you didn’t get your employees the payday that sets them up for life, but at least you landed them in a promising new opportunity as well as getting them “a little something extra” that made their last 18 months of hard work well worth it.

And for you, while you may not have ended up as “the next Zuck” like you always dreamed you would, you’ll still did the very best you could under the circumstances. Your employees will know it. Your investors will know it. And most important of all, you’ll know it.

To find other things I’ve written and much more, check out MarcRandolph.com

Quite a few years ago, I came to the sad realization that I was never going to be a great angel investor. And for a simple reason: I like every idea I hear.

Obviously, liking everything I hear is not because my deal flow is so spectacular. The law of averages suggests that I should be getting a mix of hits and misses, and as an entrepreneur, I know that the misses are a lot more common. In fact, since I’m not a full-time investor, it’s even more likely that I’m missing out on most of the best deals.

And no, I’m not incapable of saying “No,” either. I do that all the time — just ask my kids.

The simple reason I like every idea is that I’m an optimist. And not just a run-of-the-mill optimist who sees the glass as half full. I’m an over-the-top optimist: the guy who insists on ordering a whole case of extra glasses to handle the overflow.

In my past life as an entrepreneur, this optimism was a critical tool. I just always believed we would succeed. I believed even when everyone else said my ideas were ridiculous. Even when we were almost out of money. Even when the metrics were all upside down. I always had confidence that I’d figure something out, and things were going to work out fine.

The problem, though, is that I have that confidence in every other entrepreneur’s idea too. It’s even more pathetic because I have enough experience to clearly see the flaws in their reasoning and the gaps in their execution. But then I have that moment where I lean back in my chair, stare into space for a second, and say, “Wait a minute…you know, there just might be a way to make this work.” And pretty soon I’m up at the whiteboard, sketching out a possible path to daylight and getting just as excited as they are.

This is not a new realization, by the way: I actually wrote a blog post a lot like this all the way back in 2011, so I’ve known about my “optimism problem” for years. If I haven’t learned my lesson by now, I probably never will.

But while my experience as an entrepreneur might be setting me back as an angel investor, I know that it’s helpful in other ways. Perhaps because of my operating experience, I have a better idea than most of what constitutes a “doable” idea. Or maybe my experience helps me recognize a fellow optimist when I see one.

I have no intention of giving up, though, despite my mixed record. Because the biggest benefit of being an angel investor isn’t the financial return, which is unpredictable at best. It’s having a front row seat to watch other entrepreneurs struggle to make their dreams come true. And what can I say? I just have that confidence that things are going to work out fine — if not this time, then eventually.

Now where did I leave my checkbook?

- I originally posted a version of this 2011, and to be quite honest, not much has changed since then, but hey, at least I am consistent too!

To find other things I’ve written and much more, check out MarcRandolph.com

I’ve been a part of starting six companies. I’ve mentored several dozen founding teams. I’ve invested in more than 100 early-stage companies, and I’ve heard countless pitches. All of that has given me a finely tuned sense of the factors that really matter for the success of an early-stage company.

Here are my top three (in order):

1. The Team
2. The Team
3. The Team

Hopefully this comes as no great surprise (well, maybe that third one does). And if it does, then let me explain for a minute why your team matters more than everything else combined.

When you’re in your early stages, there are a lot of unknowns, and plenty of elements that are guaranteed to change. Your initial product is just a hunch, you don’t have product/market fit, and you’re basically guessing about pricing, go-to-market, and customer type. Eventually, you’re going to realize that the only constant is your team.

What really matters at this stage isn’t what you’re making, or how well-funded you are. Instead, it’s all about execution, flexibility, and persistence. And that all depends on the quality of your team.

Not only that, but you’ll also realize that employee talent works on a power-curve: the best people are not just marginally better than average…they are many orders of magnitude better.

So while my “Top Three” list is obviously tongue-in-cheek, my belief in the importance of talent isn’t. And if you’re curious, I’ve put together another (more genuine) list, of the Top Six Ways I go about attracting and retaining the best possible talent:

-Interview for what you expect someone to accomplish for you, rather than just reviewing what they accomplished elsewhere. My friend Patty McCord used to suggest picturing what every new hire will have accomplished a year from now, then imagining all the things they would have to do — and the skills they would need — to get there.

-Be thoughtful about why someone may want to come work for you. The best people are not motivated by money, title, or perks. They want to be excited about what they are building and the role they will play in building it.

-Exceptional people put a premium on working with other exceptional people. This requires that you not only hire well, but cut smartly. It means taking the “no jerks” policy seriously, even for high-performing jerks.

-A high-performing team needs a manager that they respect. A good manager’s job is not to make decisions for their team (or worse, review decisions). It’s to make sure that the right people are in the right seats, and that everyone has the information and context to make great decisions on their own. And after that, their job is to clear away roadblocks.

-Treat your people like adults. If you’re trusting someone to manage one of your most important initiatives or land that million-dollar contract, you should also be able to trust them to make decisions about how they travel, what hours they work, or what they can spend money on. To insist otherwise is ridiculous, and it’s disrespectful. Be ruthless about freeing your top performers from ridiculous policies.

-Be relentlessly honest. The best performers have the most finely attuned BS detectors. Once you lose their trust and respect, you’ll never get it back.

Good luck!

To find other things I’ve written and much more, check out MarcRandolph.com

I’ve never been a good student. When I was in 4th grade, I pulled the fire alarm because I was curious what would happen. (Hint: it didn’t go over well). I finished high school with a 2.6 GPA. In college, I got a D in economics twice (in micro and macro) and completely failed two other classes.

But since then, bad student or not, I’ve turned out to be a pretty good entrepreneur. So what should we make of that?

Well, to start with, I’m not saying that being a bad student is guaranteed to make you a good entrepreneur — but neither does being a good student. The thing I want to emphasize is that being a bad student doesn’t mean you can’t be a great entrepreneur.

The problem with generalizing about the correlation between grades and entrepreneurial success is that you can be a bad student for a lot of reasons. If you’re a bad student because you lack grit and give up easily, that’s not a good sign. If you’re a bad student because you just want to be stoned all the time, that’s not a good sign either.

But if you’re a “bad student” because you follow your curiosity rather than your syllabus? That’s good. And if you’re a bad student because you find that starting and running things is more interesting than doing your Sociology 101 homework? That might be a good sign too.

In my case, it was both of those things. And maybe the best evidence I can offer is that I didn’t major in business or economics…I majored in geology. I had zero interest in making geology my career or going to grad school. But since I spent almost every spare moment in the mountains with the Outing Club, I just found geology interesting.

But even that wasn’t enough to make me a good geology student, since I was so easily distracted. The night before an important exam, you were most likely to find me in the library going deep down a rabbit hole following some obscure thread that had piqued my curiosity but had absolutely nothing to do with the material I knew was going to be on the test.

And that, in a nutshell, is why our educational system is completely at odds with what it takes to be a great entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship is about risk-taking. It’s about doing things without knowing in advance how they will turn out. It’s about “getting it wrong” time after time since you know in your heart that each failed experiment is getting you closer to solving the real problem.

But that’s not the way our education system works. It’s inherently competitive, for one thing. You need great grades in high school to get into the “right” college, and then into the “right” grad school, and then into the “right” job. Even a tenth of a point of GPA can mean the difference between getting into the college you (mistakenly) believe will change your life, and getting rejected. After all that grubbing for grades, it’s no wonder that by the time you’ve finished your education you’ve had all the risk-taking scrubbed out of you.

The smarter you are, the worse it gets. You know exactly what the teacher wants and what you need to do to get the grades you need, so that’s what you do. GPA is the sole metric you’re measured on, which discourages you from pursuing things that fascinate you. The smart kids know that if a digression or personal interest moves you toward an answer (or essay topic, or class, or major) that’s different from what your teacher expects, it’s going to cost you.

The trend in classrooms to incorporate online grade books like Schoology and Infinite Campus has made the problem even worse, by shrinking opportunities for students to experiment. These tools allow parents and students to see grades as soon as they are posted, so that every assignment — even one with little bearing on a students’ ultimate grades — feels like a make-or-break moment. Everything counts.

But this focus on grades and test scores misses the fundamental goal of education, which is to develop the mind. Instead of incentivizing students to learn, and improve their thinking and reasoning skills, it reinforces the importance of figuring out what the person in charge wants and giving it to them.

I was lucky enough to come of age at a time when an anemic 2.6 GPA was enough to get me into a college that I could never get into today. I think my parents barely knew what college I went to, much less what my individual grades were. I never felt the slightest fear that my Ds in economics or my Fs in English Lit would impact my job prospects. And they never did.

Back then, I liked to tell people, “I’m not majoring in geology . . . I’m majoring in extracurriculars.” And I might’ve been the only student at my school who didn’t mean that as drinking and chasing women. I meant that I used my extracurricular opportunities to experiment. I wrote and put on a play. I started a humor magazine. I ran the Outing Club. And on and on. And I made no secret of the fact that doing these things, and doing them well, was more important to me than my grades.

Those were the experiences that honed my entrepreneurial abilities. They’re where I learned to ask for money, and to convince people to help me, even when I couldn’t compensate them adequately (or at all). They’re where I learned to express to others where I was going with clarity and confidence — even when I was neither clear nor confident of it myself.

Now I’m certainly not saying “don’t go to school.” I’m not even saying you shouldn’t take it seriously. My public speaking and English composition classes taught me skills that I still use every day, even 45 years later. And even though I don’t use much of what I learned in my history and philosophy classes, writing those essays taught me critical skills, like how to evaluate sources, and to make a persuasive argument and then defend it. And just as much as it taught me how to spin bullshit of my own, it also taught me how to detect it in others.

I’m also a realist, and I know that until colleges and employers start ignoring GPA and class rankings, those things are going to have a real impact on people’s careers. So it’s not helpful or responsible to blithely say, “Follow your dreams, grades be damned!”

So instead, make sure you balance the rigor of your education with other opportunities to learn. Do things on weekends, evenings, and over the summer. Use your high school and college experiences to seek out opportunities to make things, test things, and try things. School is a great place to practice, and one of the few opportunities you’ll have to take risks with minimal consequences.

But whatever you do, don’t let school dampen your curiosity. Don’t let it extinguish your spirit of adventure, or make you hesitate to try things if you don’t know in advance whether they’ll work. And most importantly, to paraphrase Grant Allen (not Mark Twain), “Whatever you do, don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education.”

I promise you, 20 years from now, nobody will care about your SAT scores or what your GPA was. But your ability to think for yourself? That will never, ever be irrelevant.

To find other things I’ve written and much more, check out MarcRandolph.com

Were all lessons I learned from businesses that weren’t trying to make a profit.

There are about 1.8 million active nonprofit organizations in the United States, and it feels like I’ve been hit up by pretty much all of them. But that’s OK. I’m happy to help where I can, a lot of them do great work, and — maybe surprisingly — they’ve taught me some valuable lessons.

Over the last four decades, I’ve worked with dozens of schools and organizations and served on the boards of nonprofits trying to cure diseases, protect wild lands, and literally save the planet.

Initially, I thought my main contribution would be teaching skills I learned in the for-profit world to people in the nonprofit one. But they ended up teaching me at least as much. And not just about the problems facing the world, or the goodness of people’s hearts. Some of the most important things I’ve learned about working to make a profit came from organizations that weren’t even trying to make one.

This is one of those things that’s easier to explain with specific examples than general discussion, so let me show you what I mean.

The Importance of Passion

When I left Netflix, I suddenly had time on my hands and so I said “yes” a lot. Too often, it turned out. I ended up joining several boards that were doing good work . . . but that I didn’t really care that much about. It was a mistake to think that just because they were doing things that were important and meaningful that I would find them so.

And this couldn’t be truer for a start-up. Before we landed on video-rental-by-mail, Reed Hastings and I spent months brainstorming ideas for what business we wanted to start. Although I considered things like market size, competitive advantage and potential margins . . . I was mostly waiting to find a problem that would fascinate me. But that’s been the pattern for every startup I’ve done. In deciding what I’m going to spend time on (and with a startup, I know that time will be substantial) it can’t just be a good idea — it must be something that I care deeply about. I know I’ll never survive the long hours, the grind, and the inevitable disappointments if I don’t.

Getting Things Done

Many years ago, in one of my earliest board roles, I was assigned to the board’s marketing committee. Every meeting followed a similar pattern: the head of marketing advised us on what he was doing, and my fellow board members and I would tell him what he was doing wrong and what he should do instead. But quarter after quarter, none of it ever seemed to get done. Looking back, I now see that our meetings were basically drive-by-shootings. Show up, pepper the VP with ideas, and leave. Figuring out what the organization needed to do was easy. The hard part, I leaned, was figuring out how to actually get it done.

That simple insight has not only shaped my approach to every board I’ve sat on since, but it has also shaped my approach to my start-up work as well — and particularly to the way I treat the people working for me. It’s simply not enough to know what to do — the harder part is figuring out what it will take to get it done — and then making sure that the resources are there and the roadblocks removed. In the movie Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss informs one of his advisors that “Surviving in Washington is about knowing how to get things done.” It’s no less true in Silicon Valley.

The Power of Motivation

If you think that startups are resource-constrained, wait until you see what a nonprofit manages to get by on. The pressure to do more with less is relentless. But that’s what makes nonprofits so good at leveraging other kinds of motivation.

When you’re managing an all-volunteer board or relying on underpaid staff, you learn quickly how to motivate people to do things when “for the money” is not an option.

Spend time on a school board, for example, and you’ll quickly realize that we need to pay our teachers more. But just as quickly, you realize that the business model of education simply won’t support it. And so you learn that if you want to attract and retain the best teachers, you must have reasons for them to come to work that transcends money. This is one reason why good administration is so critical in schools: when good teachers feel like they’re supported, given flexibility, and recognized for their hard work, they can deliver incredible results on a meager budget.

That same dynamic turns out to be true for your top salesperson or your star engineer. If you’re a startup, you probably can’t pay them what they’re worth. You should try, of course, but you must realize that for a star performer, their compensation is only a small part of why they choose to come to work every morning.

So, you better figure out what those other things are. In my experience, they’re often the same things that motivate teachers: support, flexibility, recognition, and the ability to do meaningful work.

The “Silent Phase”

When nonprofits need to raise a really big sum of money — to build a new building, endow a scholarship, fund a huge initiative, whatever — they usually start with a “silent phase.” This means they start their fundraising process, but they don’t announce it or publicize it. Instead, they quietly approach their biggest donors to see what level of support they can count on. Only after they have commitments for the majority of the money will they launch the public phase of the campaign to raise the rest.

The main reason for this is straightforward: they need to know that they’re not going to embarrass themselves. By talking directly with a few large donors, they can test out the request in a conversational setting that gets them immediate feedback, about both the viability of what they’re asking and the approach they’re using in asking for it. It also has the advantage of making the donor feel a lot more special than if they’d just received a mass email or random phone call, and that never hurts.

I’ve found this approach particularly useful when raising money for startup ventures as well. There’s nothing worse than making a big splash about raising a round, only to fall flat on your face and give the world the impression that something’s wrong. Position your early meetings as opportunities to get feedback on your positioning or pricing or structure. It will quickly tell you whether you are on the right track.

The Real Reason for Being an Entrepreneur

The most important thing I learned from nonprofits, though, was simply that entrepreneurship doesn’t need to be all about profit. In fact, it shouldn’t be. There are better ways to make money, that have far more certain outcomes and a lot less stress. I’ve said it before several times: if you’re an entrepreneur primarily because you want to get rich, you’re in the wrong business.

The real reason to work on a startup — the reason that’s kept me engaged in them for four decades — is to get to solve interesting problems with smart, passionate people. Figuring out a better way to rent a movie was ultimately profitable; so was figuring out a simpler way to perform complex analytics. A lot of the other ventures I participated in weren’t. All of them were worthwhile, though.

What nonprofit work showed me is how much wider the range of interesting problems is when you remove the need for profitability. Without having to focus on making money, I’ve been able to help address issues that I care about deeply: How do we continue to have wild places to enjoy? How does the world support a massive population in a sustainable way? How do we teach people to communicate and work with people who think differently than they do? I’ve had the opportunity to work with organizations tackling all these problems, and it’s some of the most gratifying work I’ve ever done.

This is ultimately the biggest lesson the for-profit world can take from the nonprofit one, I think: picking the right problem to solve can make all the difference in the world. It can mean the difference between staying committed through tough times and burning out. It has a huge impact on the kinds of people you attract to work with you. And it’s probably the most important factor in determining whether you look back on the work you did with pride and a sense of meaning.

That’s why I commit so much of my time and effort to nonprofit work. It’s an entire world of new opportunities to solve important problems — which is exactly what I got into entrepreneurship for.

To find other things I’ve written and much more, check out MarcRandolph.com