Reed Hastings

Wilmot Reed Hastings Jr. was born October 8, 1960, in Boston, and studied mathematics at Bowdoin College before joining, on a recruiter's suggestion, the Peace Corps rather than the Marines, teaching high school math in rural Swaziland for two years in his early twenties. He returned to earn a master's degree in computer science at Stanford in 1988, then founded Pure Software in 1991 to build debugging tools, a company that grew through a difficult 1995 merger before Rational Software acquired it in 1997 for roughly 750 million dollars, leaving Hastings, still in his mid-thirties, wealthy and between jobs. He has said the idea for his next company came partly from a 40-dollar late fee on a video he forgot to return.

Hastings co-founded Netflix with Marc Randolph in 1997 as a flat-rate DVD-by-mail service, an alternative to Blockbuster's late fees that survived the dot-com crash and went public in 2002. He served as CEO from 1999, and in 2007 pushed the company into streaming video years before most of the entertainment industry treated the internet as more than a marketing channel, a bet that eventually reduced the DVD business he had built to an afterthought. Netflix's early swing into original programming, starting with House of Cards in 2013, remade how studios thought about television seasons, and by the early 2020s the company had more subscribers than any pay-TV provider in American history. Hastings shared the CEO role with Ted Sarandos from 2020, then moved to executive chairman in January 2023 after more than two decades running the company he started.

In September 2011, Hastings tried to split Netflix into two brands, DVD service Qwikster and streaming Netflix, raising prices roughly 60 percent for customers who wanted both; the backlash cost the company more than 800,000 subscribers within three months and cut the stock by more than half, and Hastings apologized publicly and killed Qwikster within three weeks. He rebuilt the company's reputation largely by outspending Hollywood on original content, a strategy that made Netflix rich and, by the late 2010s, made it Hollywood's rival rather than its customer: directors including Steven Spielberg lobbied the Academy in 2019 to bar streaming-only films from Oscar eligibility, a fight the Academy's board ultimately declined to settle in Spielberg's favor.

Hastings has given away enormous sums since stepping back from daily operations, including more than a billion dollars in Netflix stock to a community foundation in 2024 and over 170 million dollars combined to Bowdoin College and historically Black colleges, while remaining Netflix's largest individual shareholder. Whether he is remembered chiefly as the man who killed the video store or as the executive who forced an unwilling film industry to compete online is not yet settled; both readings coexist in nearly everything written about him, and Netflix itself, the company that will eventually decide the argument, is still being run by people he chose.

Reed Hastings's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Pure Software company
  Software debugging tools company, sold in 1997 for roughly 750 million dollars 1991
• Netflix company
  Co-founded with Marc Randolph as a flat-rate DVD-by-mail service 1997
• Netflix streaming service other
  Pivoted the company from DVDs to internet video years ahead of competitors 2007
• House of Cards television
  Netflix's first major original series, releasing a full season at once 2013

• October 8, 1960 aged 0 Born in Boston, Massachusetts
• 1983 aged ~23 Graduates Bowdoin and joins the Peace Corps in Swaziland
• 1991 aged ~31 Founds Pure Software
• 1997 aged ~37 Co-founds Netflix with Marc Randolph
• 2002 aged ~42 Takes Netflix public
• 2007 aged ~47 Launches Netflix's streaming video service
• September 2011 aged 50 Announces the Qwikster split, then reverses course within three weeks Netflix lost more than 800,000 subscribers and half its stock value in the fallout.
• 2020 aged ~60 Shares the CEO title with Ted Sarandos
• January 2023 aged 62 Steps down as co-CEO to become executive chairman

• Warren Buffett b. 1930
  Value investor whose disciplined approach built one of the largest personal fortunes in American history. Giving Pledge co-signatory
• Bill Gates b. 1955
  Co-founder of Microsoft who, through the Gates Foundation, has donated billions to global health and education. Giving Pledge co-signatory
• Steven Spielberg b. 1946
  Director and producer whose blockbusters and dramas have defined American cinema for five decades. opposed
• Barack Obama b. 1961
  44th President and first African American to hold the office, known for the Affordable Care Act. signed a production deal with