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.”
-
HMRC confirms crypto ETN ISA rulesWith crypto ETNs now technically available for UK retail investors, HMRC has confirmed they can be held in an ISA – but there’s a complication
-
Pensioners targeted in fine wine scams – the tactics to watch forWine has emerged as the latest lure in investment fraud, with pensioners being specifically targeted by scammers
-
Pierre-Édouard Stérin wants to make France great againConservative billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin is seeking to lead a political and spiritual renaissance across the Channel. The planning looks meticulous
-
Jair Bolsonaro, the 'Trump of the Tropics', sentenced to 27 years in prison for staging a coup in BrazilJair Bolsonaro, the US president’s friend and fellow right-wing populist, has been handed a 27-year prison sentence in Brazil. But the drama looks far from over
-
Prabowo Subianto: Indonesia’s Deng XiaopingPrabowo Subianto, like his Chinese hero, is taking power in his 70s with big ambitions for his country. Yet many view his return to politics with dread
-
Giorgio Armani: the irreplaceable Il SignoreGiorgio Armani started his fashion business in 1975 and built it into the world’s largest private luxury brand. Where can it go without him?
-
Crypto mogul Do Kwon pleads guilty to fraudSouth Korean entrepreneur Do Kwon, who used to call critics cockroaches, faces a long spell in jail after pleading guilty to fraud relating to the collapse of two digital coins
-
The rise of Robin Zeng: China’s billionaire battery kingRobin Zeng, a pioneer in EV batteries, is vying with Li Ka-shing for the title of Hong Kong’s richest person. He is typical of a new kind of tycoon in China
-
Scotland's former first minister Nicola Sturgeon leaves behind a toxic legacyOn the left, Nicola Sturgeon is seen as something of a political hero. That makes sense… but only if you exclude her actual record in office
-
Sachin Dev Duggal's Builder.ai – the first big bust of the AI boomSachin Dev Duggal's Builder.ai start-up claimed it could use artificial intelligence to build apps. Its revenues turned out to be equally artificial
