Netflix upended show business long before the pandemic hit. But with a highly unusual management style, its billionaire founder has now positioned his entertainment juggernaut to prosper like few companies in the world by DawnC331
for keeping the world entertained does so, at least this day, alone in front of a computer screen, in his son’s largely unadorned childhood bedroom. In some ways, it’s the perfect setting for Reed Hastings, the unpretentious cofounder and co-CEO of Netflix, whose global army of innovators has revolutionized entertainment in the home. While Hollywood measures people’s offices by their totems and grandeur, the analytical Hastings, a Silicon Valley interloper, values functionality over trappings.
All this has come to a head amid the most disruptive moment for entertainment in at least a generation. In some ways, Hastings, who clocks in at number 132 on The Forbes 400 with a net worth of $5 billion, has been preparing for this moment for the past two decades. What the 59-year-old does right now, and how he leverages this culture—an unusual one even by tech-industry standards—will determine what you will watch, laugh along with and cry over for the next two decades.
So what does this really mean in terms of how Netflix operates? First, it pays top dollar to secure the right talent. That practice began in 2003, when Netflix began competing with Google, Apple and, soon, Facebook for the “rock stars” whose highly refined coding, debugging and programming skills dramatically outperformed their average peers. It extended this generous compensation to creative executives working in Hollywood, from the well-connected to the visionaries .
“We describe it as like getting cut from an Olympic team. And it’s super-disappointing. You’ve trained your whole life for it, and you get cut, and it’s heartbreaking,” Hastings says. “But there’s no shame in it at all. You have the guts to try.” Ted Sarandos, a 20-year Netflix veteran and longtime chief content officer, was named co-CEO in July. Hours of TV viewing as a child and a job as a video store clerk helped him build an encyclopedic knowledge of film and TV.Again, this can be disconcerting. Ted Sarandos, Hastings’ co-CEO, talks about a coffee break with Hastings in the pre-streaming days, when he was the chief content officer and deciding whether to order 60 copies of a new alien movie or 600.
In 1991, Hastings founded his first company, Pure Software, which specialized in programs for measuring software quality. Back then, he was a “geek’s geek” who would sleep on the floor of the office after an exhausting coding session. “I’d come in in the morning and say, ‘Dude, if you’re going to sleep on the floor, in the morning go brush your teeth and look for blanket fuzz in your beard,’ ” recalls McCord, who was with him at Pure before helping him formalize the culture at Netflix.
That was Hastings’ mindset when, according to popular legend, he had an epiphany after getting socked with a $40 late fee onthe idea for Netflix emerged fully formed. Walt Disney remains the world’s largest entertainment company but Netflix is the company to beat when it comes to return on investment.
Instead, Netflix caught fire in 1999 with a subscription model—customers would rent up to three movies at a time without worrying about a specific return date or incurring late fees. A better mousetrap, albeit one that carried a huge burn—Hastings lured customers with month-long free trials. Randolph remembers flying with Hastings to Dallas to try to convince Blockbuster CEO John Antioco to buy Netflix for $50 million.
“When someone sits in front of a TV to watch Netflix, we have a moment of truth—a couple of minutes, maybe as little as 30 seconds, [in which] we need to catch their attention with something interesting,” says former chief product officer Neil Hunt, who deployed his 2,000-member team to solve this riddle—most working independently, in keeping with the company’s culture.
ONE FORMER EXECUTIVE DESCRIBES THE WORK ENVIRONMENT AS A “CULTURE OF FEAR” IN WHICH “EVERYBODY IS CHIPPING AWAY AT EACH OTHER.”
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