Netflix has 151 million subscribers worldwide, but most of them have never heard of Marc Randolph, its first CEO and cofounder. Randolph stepped down as CEO in 1999—replaced by cofounder Reed ...

One was Marc Randolph, an entrepreneur and marketing specialist who had co-founded a start-up, Integrity QA. The other was Reed Hastings, then the head of the software company Pure Atria. It was 1997.