Trails to Success
Meet Marc Randolph
Entrepreneur, Mentor, NOLS Grad
Although best known for starting Netflix, Marc Randolph’s career as an entrepreneur spans more than four decades. He is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, advisor, and investor.
He’s been a founder of more than half a dozen other successful start-ups, a mentor to scores of early stage entrepreneurs, and an investor in numerous successful tech ventures (and an even larger number of unsuccessful ones). At Netflix, he served as the founding CEO, as the executive producer of their website, and on their board of directors until his retirement from Netflix in 2004.
Most recently, Marc co-founded the analytics software company Looker Data Sciences, and currently advises several other startups, serving variously as a mentor, CEO coach, and board member. He often speaks at industry events, works extensively with young entrepreneur programs, and is a trustee of the environmental advocacy group One Percent For The Planet.
Marc took the first of more than half a dozen NOLS courses when he was 14 and went on to work as a NOLS instructor for several years in the early 1970s. He came back to the school in 2006 with a two-week backcountry snowboarding course in the Tetons and an alumni climb of Rainier in 2008. Marc served on the NOLS Advisory Council prior to joining the NOLS Board of Trustees in 2011, where he served as the board chair from June 2016 to Aug 31, 2020.
He recalls, “NOLS is responsible for almost all of the professional accomplishments that I have made. All the skills that come from being successful as an entrepreneur are all things that I learned with NOLS. I owe a huge debt to the school for that, which is why I feel so strongly about ensuring other people have that opportunity.”
Marc lives with his wife Lorraine in the Santa Cruz mountains and remains an avid climber, surfer, mountain biker, and snowboarder. His three children have taken a collective seven NOLS courses. His daughter Morgan is currently an instructor for the school.
