“That’ll Never Work”—And Why You Should Build It Anyway
Marc Randolph’s That Will Never Work shows how Netflix began with a CD-in-the-mail experiment, not a master plan. From failed ideas to Blockbuster’s rejection, the lesson for indie hackers is clear: test small, pivot fast, and keep building—even when the world laughs.
It starts with a CD and a stamp.
Not a pitch deck. Not a visionary memo. Just a car ride, a rant about Blockbuster late fees, and a weird little test: mail a CD in an envelope, see if it survives.
That’s how Netflix got started—before the red envelopes, before streaming, before anyone believed renting DVDs by mail could even work.
Marc Randolph tells the story in That Will Never Work, and at its heart, it’s not a tech fairy tale. It’s an indie hacking story. Small bets. Endless experiments. Pure persistence.
Start With the Question, Not the Answer
Randolph and Reed Hastings didn’t set out to build Netflix. They tried shampoo subscriptions, custom dog food, personalized baseball gear. Most of it flopped. But they kept asking, what if? Then testing. Not in theory—in the real world.
That’s the indie edge. Not chasing the “right” idea. Just shipping something tiny, fast, and seeing if reality flinches.
That’s what the CD test was. Not a big bet. Just enough signal to keep going. And that’s often all you need.
You’re Not Marrying the Idea
Netflix’s first version was unrecognizable from what it became. No subscriptions. No queue. Just one-off rentals. A website with little polish. But they launched. Learned. Pivoted.
They didn’t fall in love with the first draft. They fell in love with the problem: making movies easier to rent.
The solution? That changed a hundred times.
That’s the real lesson. Hold your ideas loosely. Obsess over the problem. Be willing to kill what doesn’t work—even if you built it.
The World Will Laugh. Keep Building Anyway.
Netflix tried to sell to Blockbuster for $50 million. They were laughed out of the room.
They pushed through server crashes. Customer confusion. Internal doubt. They even borrowed money from their own families to keep the lights on.
The only way forward was to keep shipping. To keep solving the next bottleneck.
That’s how most great indie projects survive. Not through grand plans. Through stubborn motion. Through tweaking what’s broken. Through just… showing up again on Monday.
Culture Isn’t a Poster. It’s What You Ship Together.
Randolph’s team didn’t win because they were geniuses. They won because they tested constantly, stayed curious, and treated failure as signal.
There was no solo founder myth here. It was messy, collective, in-the-trenches work. Try. Break. Adjust. Repeat.
That’s the culture. Not words on a wall. Just habits, built one release at a time.
Small teams, especially indie ones, thrive on that energy. If something breaks, nobody hides. Everyone’s hands go on the problem. And that’s how you grow—together.
Know When to Let Go
Eventually, Randolph stepped down. Netflix grew past the early chaos and needed a different kind of leadership.
He didn’t fight it. He knew the goal wasn’t to cling to control. It was to help something bigger than him get built.
That’s a hard truth for indie hackers: sometimes your role changes. Sometimes your MVP becomes a community project. Sometimes what you built moves beyond you.
And that’s okay. If it’s real, it belongs to the people now.
The Indie Litmus Test
When you’re lost in the weeds of your own idea, step back and ask:
Am I testing a real-world behavior, or just guessing from the sidelines?
Am I willing to throw out my best idea if users say no?
Am I building this with the right people—users, collaborators, believers?
Am I treating every “that won’t work” as a nudge to test again?
Because most good stories start where logic ends. In half-formed ideas. In odd little hacks. In mailing a CD just to see.
What matters is what you do next.
So: test it. Ship it. Learn from the silence. Build anyway.
That’s how Netflix started. That’s how anything real does.