Don’t let 2020 be a year your credit union regrets
Even though we’re less than halfway through the first quarter of 2020, it’s a good time to start thinking about the opportunities that will present themselves to you throughout the rest of the year. But wait! How can you prepare for opportunities you know nothing about? Pause on that question. We’ll come back to it.
Before we go any further, let’s look back to the fateful day in September 2000 when Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph met with John Antioco, the CEO of Blockbuster. (You remember that company, right?) Keep in mind, Netflix wasn’t the entertainment giant it is today. In September 2000, Netflix was a DVD-by-mail rental service, and it was in trouble. The company’s innovative business model, which was all that was possible in the era of slow download speeds, was catching on, but not quickly enough for the company to be anywhere near profitable. Randolph and his Netflix team came up with a solution: They would try to be acquired by Blockbuster.
In Randolph’s new book, That Will Never Work, he describes the pitch he made at that September meeting:
“We should join forces,” Randolph told Antioco. “We will run the online part of the combined business. You will focus on the stores. We will find the synergies that come from the combination, and it will truly be a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.”
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