Technology >> CEO Interviews >> February 17, 2003

Reed Hastings – Netflix Inc (nflx)

REED HASTINGS is Chief Executive Officer and co-Founder of Netflix, Inc. He founded his first company, Pure Software, in 1991, after inventing the company's initial product, Purify. As CEO, he led Pure Software to go public in 1995, completed several acquisitions and made it one of the 50 largest public software companies in the world by 1997. Pure was acquired in the spring of 1997 by Rational Software. In the fall of 1997, Mr. Hastings and his co-Founders started Netflix. In addition to business, he is active in Silicon Valley politics. In 1997, he led a business coalition that got California to pass a strong charter school law. In 1998, he served for a year as CEO of TechNet, the high- tech industry's foremost political advocacy group. Governor Davis appointed Mr. Hastings to the State Board of Education, where he serves as President. He was a co-Chair of the victorious Proposition 39, along with John Chambers, John Doerr and Governor Davis, which makes it easier to pass local school bonds to build more classrooms. He is a co-Founder of Aspire Public Schools, NewSchools.org, and EdVoice.org. Mr. Hastings received an MSCS degree from Stanford University in 1988 and a BA from Bowdoin College in 1983, and holds several patents. Between Bowdoin and Stanford, he served in the US Peace Corps at a rural high school in Swaziland. Profile
TWST: Would you start us off with a brief summary of Netflix

today?

Mr. Hastings: Netflix is a consumer Internet subscription service

that costs $20 a month. Consumers can rent as many DVD