EntrepreneurshipAidan Syto9/12/11

Reed Hastings

Wilmot Reed Hastings jr.

Founder and CEO of Netflix

Born October 8, 1960 in Boston Massachusetts

Graduated Buckingham Browne & Nichols high school in 1978

Earned his undergraduate degree at Bowdoin College

He is on the board of Microsoft

Lives in the San Francisco Bay Area

Married and has two kids

Experience

Served in the Marines shortly then went to serve in the Peace Corps. He traveled to Swaziland to

After high school, he went door to door selling Rainbow vacuum cleaners

He majored in Mathematics at Bowdoin College(Brunswick, Maine)

Interesting tidbits

He still visits the good ol’ video store to rent movies for his two kids

Hastings says, just like the newspaper and the gas engine, DVDs will always be around even when technology goes ahead no matter how “obsolete” they are

From 2001 to 2005 he was president of the California State Board of Education

One of his favorite movies is Gloomy Sunday, a German/Hungarian movie about a love triangle in Budapest during WW2 and the infamous song Gloomy Sunday.

He’s seen more than a thousand movies but the one he remembers most is Sophie’s Choice. Hastings was taking European history in college at the time, and found it to be very boring. When he saw the movie he started to care. It changed his perspective as he could relate to the trauma more after seeing the movie in a way that he couldn't by studying it in a classroom.

Pure Software

• WAY before Netflix was even thought of, Reed Hastings worked at Adaptive Technology a company that makes and sells computer debuggers.

• Then he left to create his first company, Pure Software. It also made and sold computer degugging software.

• Pure Software soon merged with Atria Software and became Pure Atria which was bought by IBM.

• When Hastings sold Pure Software, he earned a fortune and had invaluable business experiences enough to start another business of his own.

Peace Corps Service

How NETFLIX Began

Reed Hastings rented the movie ‘Apollo 13’ but he misplaced the tape. Six weeks later, he returned the movie and was charged a late fee of about $40.

He remembered that fee because he was “embarrassed about it,” and he didn’t want to tell his wife about it. He thought to himself, ‘I’m going to compromise the integrity of my marriage over a late fee?'

This got Hastings thinking about how big the market was, how many people paid late fees, and how much money wasted. Later on, he went to the gym and he realised they had a much better business model. You pay a flat rate of 30$ or 40$ per month and you can work out as little or as much as you wanted.

CD based DVD discs were about to release and so Hastings went to mail CDs to himself. The next day when the mail arrived he found all the CDs in great shape. This was when he realized he could have a business.

• Netflix offers flat rate DVD and Blu-ray rental by mail as well as video streaming

Netflix Changing

• The first model of Netflix was simple rental by mail and it worked much like Blockbuster. It still wasn't very well-known and used and Hastings thought to himself that Netflix might soon go down.

• Netflix became subscription based in Sept. 23, 1999. They had a 90% renewal rate

• With new technology since 1997, like x-box, blu-ray, and iPhones, Netflix is adapting to meet customer needs and

• Limited to the US and Canada and more recently Spain and Brazil, Netflix hopes to be available to other countries worldwide.

Earned undergraduate degree in mathematics from Bowdoin College, 1983; earned master's degrees from Stanford University, in computer science, 1988, and in education.

Addresses: Office —970 University Ave., Los Gatos, CA 95032.

Hastings’ father was a attorney who once served in the Nixon administration as general counsel of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare

Success and Failures

Entrepreneur

Works CIted

How Netflix got started-Fortune Magazine, June 13, 2005, p. 34.

Netflix, Reed Hastings-Wikipedia

Encyclopedia of World Biographies: Reed Hastings http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2006-Ei-La/Hastings-Reed.html

Forbes- http://people.forbes.com/profile/reed-hastings/53620

Title page for document

Reed Hastings

Entrepreneurship

Aidan Syto

9/12/11