In 2010, The New York Times asked Jeffrey Bewkes, then the boss of Time Warner, whether he thought the threat posed by Netflix was exaggerated. That was like asking whether “the Albanian army” was “going to take over the world”, replied Bewkes. “I don’t think so.”
For a while, co-founder Reed Hastings “wore Albanian army dog tags round his neck as motivation”, says The Times. “He doesn’t need to anymore.” Netflix’s subscriber base has now swelled to nearly 193 million paying members in 190 countries – more than any rival. Its shares were the top-performing major US stock of the 2010s and have surged another 50% this year, valuing it at around $215bn. These days, Netflix quite literally “looms over Hollywood”: the huge advertisement hoardings on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles “now tout offerings from just one entertainment superpower, because Netflix bought the billboards outright”.
The Gates and Bezos generation
“With a laid-back air and a goatee that almost predates the internet,”, Hastings, 59, “is one of the Valley’s improbable survivors,” says the Financial Times – “the miscast impresario behind a Hollywood institution”. A techie who admits to seeing the world in “numbers and algorithms”, he hails from the generation of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Hastings, who grew up in an affluent Boston suburb, describes himself as an “average kid with no particular talent”. But he hails from a family of achievers. His “polymath great-grandfather”, Alfred Loomis, “made an unlikely fortune” during the Wall Street crash, then invented a navigation forerunner to GPS – bankrolling a laboratory that attracted luminaries such as Albert Einstein.
MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Hastings studied computer science at Stanford – where he “tried to patent a computer ‘foot mouse’” – then in 1991 founded his first company, Pure Software, which specialised in programs for measuring the quality of software. He made a small fortune selling Pure in 1996, then had the idea for a subscription service that offered DVD rentals by post after being whacked with a $40 late fee by Blockbuster. Netflix was launched in 1997 and caught on immediately – yet when Hastings attempted to sell it to Blockbuster for $50m in 2000, he was turned down. In 2007, “Netflix delivered its billionth DVD”, says Wired. The same year the company announced the launch of a revolutionary new “streaming service”. The rest is history.
Enough is not enough
Marc Randolph, who co-founded Netflix, once compared Hasting to Spock from Star Trek. He certainly seems to lack traditional “people skills”, says the FT. When he ousted Randolph, he laid out his partner’s “weaknesses in a PowerPoint demonstration”. Netflix’s “smash-the-conventions culture”, laid bare in a new book No Rules Rules, still divides the critics – some former staff have compared it to a cult. But Hastings sees it as central to the firm’s success. He’s always hired (and then frequently fired) “rock stars”, says Forbes, usually paying over the odds. But as a strategy it helped him crack Hollywood.
Having revolutionised an industry, Hastings has pledged to stay on at Netflix until 2030. Why keep going? For him, enough still isn’t enough. “We are very much still in challenger status.”
-
‘Sandwich generation’ carers losing £6,000 a year to support elderly relativesMiddle-aged adults are often caught between caring for children or grandchildren and their elderly parents, leaving them taking time out of the workforce and facing a huge hit to wages while they are still trying to save for retirement. We look at the true cost of caring.
-
Ground rents to be capped at £250 a year – what does it mean for you?The government has published draft legislation which would see ground rents capped at £250 per year for leaseholders. We examine what it means for homeowners and the housing market.
-
Michael Moritz: the richest Welshman to walk the EarthMichael Moritz started out as a journalist before catching the eye of a Silicon Valley titan. He finds Donald Trump to be “an absurd buffoon”
-
David Zaslav, Hollywood’s anti-hero dealmakerWarner Bros’ boss David Zaslav is embroiled in a fight over the future of the studio that he took control of in 2022. There are many plot twists yet to come
-
The rise and fall of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's ruthless dictatorNicolás Maduro is known for getting what he wants out of any situation. That might be a challenge now
-
The political economy of Clarkson’s FarmOpinion Clarkson’s Farm is an amusing TV show that proves to be an insightful portrayal of political and economic life, says Stuart Watkins
-
The most influential people of 2025Here are the most influential people of 2025, from New York's mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to Japan’s Iron Lady Sanae Takaichi
-
Luana Lopes Lara: The ballerina who made a billion from prediction marketsLuana Lopes Lara trained at the Bolshoi, but hung up her ballet shoes when she had the idea of setting up a business in the prediction markets. That paid off
-
Who is Christopher Harborne, crypto billionaire and Reform UK’s new mega-donor?Christopher Harborne came into the spotlight when it emerged he had given £9 million to Nigel Farage's Reform UK. How did he make his millions?
-
Why Trustpilot is a stock to watch for exposure to the e-commerce marketTrustpilot has built a defensible position in one of the most critical areas of the internet: the infrastructure of trust, says Jamie Ward
