Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph has a surprising link to Sigmund Freud: All about his unlikely family legacy
Image credits: Getty Images
Ever since it was created as a mail-order DVD rental service in 1997, Netflix has grown to become the largest over-the-top media service in the world. As of 2025, the platform boasts 260 million subscribers and a significant market share in the streaming industry.
Netflix is the brainchild of Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings who created the service in Scotts Valley, California. Hastings, a computer scientist and mathematician was a co-founder of Pure Software, which was acquired by Rational Software in 1997 for $750 million, making it the biggest acquisition in Silicon Valley history back then. Randolph, on the other hand, Randolph worked as a marketing director for the same company.
The duo came up with the idea of Netflix during their carpool rides as Randolph admired Amazon and wanted to find a category of portable items to sell over the internet, using a similar model.
Who is Marc Randolph?
Image credits: Getty Images
Marc Bernays Randolph is the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix. Randolph was born on April 29, 1958, to a Jewish couple in Chappaqua, New York. His father, Stephen Bernays Randolph was an Austria-born nuclear engineer turned financial advisor and his mother Muriel Lipchik from Brooklyn, New York ran her real estate firm.
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He has been married to Lorraine Kiernan since 1987 and has three children.
Randolph began his career in 1981 where he was in charge of Cherry Lane Music Company's small mail-order operation. In 1984 he helped found the U.S. version of MacUser magazine in 1984. He also co-founded computer mail-order firms MacWarehouse and MicroWarehouse. In 1988 he worked at Borland International and in 1996 he was retained as vice president of corporate marketing at Pure Atria.
It was finally in 1998 that Netflix launched out of an office park in Scotts Valley, California.
How is Marc Randolph related to
Sigmund Freud
?
Image credits: Getty Images
Marc Randolph is related to some of the most iconic men the world has ever seen, Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud and American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, Edward Bernays.
Freud who is credited as the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method of evaluating and treating pathologies originating from conflicts in the psyche, is Randolph's paternal great-grand uncle.
Bernays, the father of public relations who is credited for advancing the profession of public relations, is Randolph's paternal great-uncle.
In an interview with Dan Schawbel, he shared how his household had always had an attitude of risk-taking and how if someone said "no" it was more of a cue to figure out a way to do that thing, which made him as a person who doesn't take no for an answer.
It is extremely interesting to know how three generations of Randolph's family have analysed, worked and used the mind and its actions to create theories and concepts that have overtaken the world.
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