Reed Hastings is the co-founder and CEO of Netflix, a media rental service based on his creative ideas. The company’s services are accessible all over North America, various parts of Europe and also in Australia, South America, and New Zealand. As of July 2015, Netflix reported a user count in excess of 65 million.
Early Life and Education
He grew up to be an adventurous and bright and young man. He studied mathematics at Bowdoin College. Overcome by a sense of both adventure and service, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps and joined the Peace Corps and traveled to Swaziland to taught high school mathematics for two years. He took admission in the Stanford University while returning from the Peace Corps and graduating he knew that he would soon start his own business. He earned his Master’s degree in 1988 in computer science. In 1990, he started his first firm Pure Software which was later affiliated with another business and sold off. He took another risk and collaborated with Marc Randolph to co-found Netflix, however, this time his risk taking paid off immensely well as it became a highly successful project with millions of users from all over the world.
Family Background
Parents
Reed Hastings was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Wilmot Reed Hastings and Joan Amory. His father was prominent attorney in Boston for the U.S. Department.
Marriage and Children
Reed is married to Patricia Ann Quillin in 1991 and has two children.
Career
Reed accepted a job at Adaptive Technology and started his career as a software developer under Audrey MacLean, the CEO at that time. Audrey taught him the value of concentration. He left this job in 1991.
Reed Hastings always wanted to start his own company. Hence, he joined Raymond Peck and Mark Box, to start his first company, in October 1991, Pure Software. Though, his company was growing rapidly, soon he realized that he was unable to handle such raising expectations and demand of the company at that time. As he was an engineer by profession he was unable to take the responsibilities of a CEO without prior training. Pure Software went public in 1995 and combined with Atria to become Pure Atria Corporation in 1996. But, due to some unforeseen situations, after the merger, Rational Software acquired the company in 1997.
Reed Hastings deemed his experience with Pure Software to be a crucial lesson in his entrepreneurial profession. He then merged with Marc Randolph, in 1997, to co-found Netflix. From the next year, the company started mail-order DVD operations. Originally, customers were permitted to rent each DVD for a 7-day period. This method was reformed in 1999—now users were able pay a fixed monthly fee to rent a limitless number of DVDs.
The company grew rapidly over the years, and Reed is known for his creative management strategies he executed in Netflix’s management. He proffered exceptionally high packages to workers in order to engage the best talents and was also fast to fire those who were not giving in their best effort.
He employed energetic expansion strategies and developed Netflix through marketing campaigns that highlighted the company’s catalog of documentaries, indie films, and other movies not easily accessible through other services. Today, Netflix has more than 65 million users. In 2007, Reed joined the board of Microsoft and served there until 2012. Since June 2011, he is, additionally, a director of the board of Facebook.
About Netflix
Netflix is a media rental system, which gives on-demand internet streaming media accessible to viewers in various countries in the world. Built in 1997 as a single rental service, the web-based mail-order service is today accessible in nations around the globe, and a large share of the credit for its victory goes to its extremely creative co-founder Hastings who thinks that taking intentional risks is the key to entrepreneurial victory.