Reed Hastings: Netflix’s co-founder and media disruptor

Summary

Good Bad Billionaire – Reed Hastings: Netflix’s Co-Founder and Media Disruptor

Podcast: Good Bad Billionaire (BBC World Service)
Hosts: Simon Jack & Zing Tsjeng
Date: July 13, 2026
Episode Theme: An in-depth look at Reed Hastings, his journey from math teacher to tech billionaire, and the immense impact of Netflix on global media — with a playful scorecard judging his wealth, power, controversies, and legacy.

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Episode Overview

Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng delve into the story of Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix and one of the most influential figures in modern media. The episode traces Hastings’s early life, his first million, his rise to billionaire status, the cultural revolution Netflix sparked, industry controversies, and his philanthropic work. The hosts discuss whether Hastings is “good, bad or just another billionaire”, scoring him across four key categories.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Life and Background (04:12–06:48)

• Reed Hastings born 1960, Boston, into a well-to-do but unconventional family.
• Father: lawyer, Nixon’s administration; mother: debutante from a wealthy family turned anti-elite.
• He credits his mother for teaching him to “disdain these kind of elite circles,” although he still went to private schools.
• Describes himself as a “pretty average kid with no particular talent” and “a late bloomer.” (04:45–05:00)

2. First Forays into the Working World (05:00–07:14)

• Sold vacuums door-to-door and attended small college in Maine, studying mathematics (“I found the abstractions beautiful and engaging.”)
• Tried officer training with the Marines: “I’m not good at following orders.”
• Joined Peace Corps, taught math in rural Swaziland (Eswatini). Returned home after a few years.
• Attended Stanford for a master’s in AI. “Big thing Stanford did for me was turn me on to the entrepreneurial model... having a license to dream.” (06:35–06:48)

3. Early Tech Entrepreneurship (07:13–09:48)

• First startup after Stanford failed: “One customer. They never even installed it. What a sad tale.” (07:13–07:14)
• Founded Pure Software (debugging tools) in 1991. Describes it like “inventing an X-ray machine.”
• Successful IPO in 1995, made him a millionaire (roughly 20–35% stake).
• Admits he was “definitely underwater and in over my head” running the merged Pure Atria.

4. From a Million to Netflix (09:48–13:57)

• After Pure Atria was acquired, Hastings used his payout to create Netflix.
• Netflix origin: inspired by $40 late fee on Apollo 13 VHS.
  • “I didn’t want to tell my wife about it… I’m going to compromise the integrity of my marriage over a late fee.” – Reed Hastings, recounted by hosts (10:43–11:24)
• Netflix launched 1998 as an online DVD rental by mail service, after testing that DVDs could be shipped cheaply.
• Early offer from Amazon ($15 million) turned down: “We said no, and then worked our ass off for 20 years.” (13:57–14:28, paraphrasing Hastings)

5. Tipping Points and Industry Disruption

• Subscription Model: Introduced in 1999, fixing repeat business.
• Surviving the Dot-com Crash: "Investment came just in the nick of time." (15:09–15:33)
• Blockbuster Rejected Netflix (2000):
  • Offered 49% for $50 million; Blockbuster “struggled not to laugh.”
  • “When I got into bed and closed my eyes, I had this image of all 60,000 Blockbuster employees erupting in laughter…” (16:03–16:50: paraphrasing Hastings)
• Personalization & Recommendation Engine: Early use of algorithms to drive rentals, a foundation for today's streaming.

6. Going Public and the Streaming Revolution (17:51–20:51)

• IPO in 2002; raised ~$100 million. Going public gave competitors an inside look — “That was the moment Blockbuster said we should go competing… If they had launched two years earlier, they would have killed us.” (17:51–18:51: paraphrasing Hastings)
• Blockbuster only launched online in 2004; too late.
• Netflix focused on streaming as soon as broadband tech allowed.
  • "For Reed, streaming over the Internet… had always been the plan.” (19:18–19:57)

7. Defining Company Culture (21:25–22:53)

• The notorious Netflix Culture Deck, 125 slides, “one of the most influential management documents in Silicon Valley.”
  • "Adequate performance gets a generous severance package.” — Netflix Culture Deck
  • Operate like a “professional sports team, keeping only top performers.”
  • "It sounds a lot like Squid Game." – Zing Tsjeng (22:30–22:31)

8. Triumph and Stumbles (23:08–24:24)

• Blockbuster bankrupt in 2010 — “Only one winner.”
• Error: Price hike (60%) and Qwikster split caused loss of nearly a million subscribers, massive devaluation, and negative press.
• “Everything we’d built was crashing down because of my bad decision. It was the lowest point in my career.” – Reed Hastings, paraphrased by hosts (24:24–25:00)

9. Original Content, Binge-Watching, and Global Expansion (25:00–30:00)

• Move into content creation: House of Cards (2013): $100 million commitment before one episode filmed.
  • Data-driven greenlight based on viewership predictions.
  • “They released all 13 episodes… introduced the concept of binge watching.” (27:08–27:45)
• Netflix revolutionized TV: altered how shows are made and delivered.
• Major international expansion (2016), COVID-19 boost (2020): subscriber base soared.

10. Industry Disputes and Legacy (33:33–36:27)

• Growing competition: Disney+, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Apple TV.
• Hastings: “Movie theaters are strangling the movie business. There’s no innovation in the movie business.”
• Spielberg argued Netflix films shouldn’t qualify for Oscars; Netflix circumvents by limited theatrical runs.
• Reed shifted to chairmanship (2023), then stepped down (2026) to focus on philanthropy.

11. Philanthropy and Personal Life (35:51–37:12)

• Signed Gates/Buffett Giving Pledge before becoming a billionaire.
• Over $2B donated, heavy focus on education, largest single US philanthropic gift in 2024: $1.1B in Netflix stock.
• “Patty (his wife)… remains substantially indifferent… to her husband’s business success. I like that a lot.” – Simon Jack (37:12–37:16)
• Currently lives in Santa Cruz with Patty, five goats, and 10 chickens.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “His company’s biggest competition was sleep.” – Simon Jack (03:49)
• “Be kind, please rewind.” – Simon Jack, on VHS rental era (11:24)
• “No one’s ever done it like this before. Consumers can watch it when they want, how they want…” – Reed Hastings (28:24–28:52)
• “Netflix and chill.” – Zing Tsjeng, explaining the phrase to Simon (43:42–44:12)
• “Patty… remains substantially indifferent… to her husband’s business success. I like that a lot.” – Simon Jack (37:12–37:16)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [04:12]: Hastings' family and formative years
• [07:13]: First failed startup, first taste of Silicon Valley
• [09:48]: Creation of Netflix and the late-fee origin myth
• [13:57]: Amazon’s offer and subscription model innovation
• [16:03]: Rejection by Blockbuster — “all 60,000 employees erupting in laughter”
• [17:21]: Personalization algorithms and early AI at Netflix
• [19:57]: Shift to streaming, hiring Ted Sarandos, deal with Starz
• [21:25]: Netflix’s culture deck controversy
• [23:08]: Blockbuster bankrupt, Netflix’s ascent
• [23:35]: The Qwikster debacle and market backlash
• [25:00]: “House of Cards”, binge-watching, Netflix Originals era
• [32:22]: Global expansion and COVID-19 subscriber surge
• [35:26]: Last DVD shipped; Hastings steps down
• [36:27]: Major philanthropic gifts; personal life details
• [37:22]: Playful scorecard and verdict discussion

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The Billionaire Scorecard

Wealth

• $4.7B, around 900th worldwide; little bling, low-key (“poses on a Porsche… sold it for a Toyota Avalon, now drives a Tesla”).
• "Maybe the first billionaire we've covered who has goats and chickens." – Zing (38:29)
• Score: 3/10

Controversy

• Ruthless performance-focused culture: "Adequate performance gets a generous severance package."
• "Atmosphere… ruthless, demoralizing, transparent to the point of dysfunctional," according to some former employees.
• Industry struggle over effects on cinema/theatrical experience and quality of content.
• “If you don’t fit in, you get out.” – Zing (39:43)
• Score: 6/10

Power

• Remains influential in tech/media: Microsoft, Facebook, Bloomberg, Anthropic boards.
• “If you're in Hollywood and… Reed Hastings is on the other line, you are running to pick that up.” – Zing (42:41)
• Score: 8/10

Legacy

• Changed how the world watches TV/movies, created binge-watching culture.
• Sparked shift away from scheduled TV, empowered non-English global content (e.g., Squid Game, Money Heist).
• “When people talk about when television and entertainment changed, people will say it was the Netflix moment.” – Simon (43:42)
• Score: 8–9/10

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Hosts’ Final Reflections & Listener Interaction

• “Is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? That's up to you.” (44:25–44:49)
• Inviting listener feedback on their verdicts.
• Read a message from Isla, age 12, Barcelona, inspired to learn about business thanks to the show.

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Summary Table

| Category | Score (/10) | Notes | |--------------|-------------|-----------------------------------------------------| | Wealth | 3 | Not flashy, substantial giving, middle-of-road | | Controversy | 6 | Netflix employee culture, effect on cinema/TV | | Power | 8 | Huge industry influence, key board member | | Legacy | 8–9 | Media revolution, global impact, Netflix & Chill |

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Conclusion

This episode paints Reed Hastings as a brilliant and sometimes ruthless media disruptor whose drive and foresight radically changed entertainment. While admired for innovation and philanthropy, his approach to corporate culture and his role in upending cinema are more divisive. Hosts conclude with a playful but rigorous analysis, ultimately leaving it up to the audience to decide: Is Reed Hastings good, bad, or just another billionaire?

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Feedback encouraged:
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Transcript

[Simon Jack]

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[Zing Singh]

It's the year 2000, Dallas, Texas. On one side of a massive glass conference table sits a 40 year old entrepreneur from Silicon Valley.

[Simon Jack]

His company is losing money and he's running a of options. Across from him sits the man that could save it. The chief executive of the most powerful company in home entertainment, Blockbuster.

[Zing Singh]

The picture is simple. Buy this tiny failing company for $50 million. Well, the blockbuster executives exchange glances and one of them smiles. The answer is no.

[Simon Jack]

But that no will be the making of our entrepreneur. In just over a decade, Blockbuster will be bankrupt and he will be a billionaire.

[Zing Singh]

Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode we take a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.

[Simon Jack]

We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million onto a billion.

[Zing Singh]

My name is Zing Singh and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

[Simon Jack]

And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.

[Zing Singh]

And this week's Billionaire was suggested by one of our listeners, Thomas, who wrote in to say good day. I've been listening to your podcast for a while now and I find it really fascinating. I wanted to propose a billionaire who is such a big part of our lives but may be unknown to many. The co founder of Netflix, Netflix, Reed Hastings.

[Simon Jack]

Good idea, Thomas. Reed Hastings is 65 years old and currently worth $4.7 billion at the time of recording.

[Zing Singh]

And Netflix currently has 325 million subscribers worldwide. That is a stupendous number. I have to admit. I am One of those Netflix subscribers.

[Simon Jack]

You? One of the 325 million? Me too, yes.

[Zing Singh]

I mean, I'm. I've watched so many good shows on Netflix and bad ones.

[Simon Jack]

Favorite couple? Favorite couple.

[Zing Singh]

Ooh, I loved Stranger Things when it came out. It was so good. It was so nostalgic.

[Simon Jack]

Well, you're too young to be nostalgic about that era.

[Zing Singh]

I think I'm young enough to feel like I watched Indiana Jones as a kid.

[Ad Voice]

Okay.

[Simon Jack]

I liked there's so many good ones, wasn't there? But I did like House of Cards, which was a breakthrough series for me.

[Zing Singh]

It really was.

[Simon Jack]

And also there was a one called Ozark with Jason Bateman, and it was really compelling. I would love that one.

[Zing Singh]

I mean, one of the interesting things about Netflix is that it introduced people to so many non English language shows. Like Squid Game, for instance.

[Simon Jack]

Correct. Yeah. Well, anyway, whatever your favorite shows are, it, one thing's for sure, it completely changed the way we consume content. Binge watching wasn't a thing. Really? Before this, I have to confess, my partner said something. My wife said something the other day, and I said, what time is it on? And she laughed in my face.

[Zing Singh]

You're lucky it wasn't your daughter.

[Simon Jack]

Yes. Yeah. Because it's disrupted the entire industry. And in fact, Reed Hastings once declared that his company's biggest competition was sleep.

[Zing Singh]

But the Netflix journey all started out with DVDs. So let's hit rewind on the DVD player to find out how Reed Hastings did it.

[Simon Jack]

Let's start at zero for Reed Hastings. He was born in 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts, in the U.S. his father was a lawyer who became an attorney for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon administration.

[Zing Singh]

His mum was an east coast debutante. Her grandfather had been a war tycoon who got even richer after anticipating the stock market crash of 1929. But despite that pedigree, Reid's mum was repulsed by the world of high society. She taught Reid to disdain these kind of elite circles. Although, you know, they did deign to send Reid to private schools.

[Simon Jack]

He described himself as a pretty average kid with no particular talent or standout ability. He was a late bloomer, and as such, he didn't do well in sport or dating girls. In fact, he said that classmates from high school are shocked that he became so successful and rich.

[Zing Singh]

He took a year off after graduating, selling vacuums door to door. And at the age of 19, he attended a small liberal arts college in Maine. In the States, he studied maths because, he said, I found the abstractions beautiful and engaging. And while he was there, he joined the Marine Corps officer training, spending summers at Marine boot camps. He said, however, I'm not good at following orders. He wasn't clearly cut out for military discipline.

[Simon Jack]

Instead, he joined something called the Peace Corps, which is a volunteer program that sends Americans American students mainly overseas. He's perceived as sort of idealistic and liberal. After graduating, they sent him to rural Swaziland, now called Eswatini in Africa, where he taught math at a high school. And he describes this motivation as a combination of service and adventure, and only returned home once in a couple of years.

[Zing Singh]

But in 1986, he attended Stanford University for a master's in computer science, specifically artificial intelligence. Stanford, of course, famously the one university that almost all of our billionaires seem to attend.

[Simon Jack]

It's a billionaire machine. It just churns them out, doesn't it?

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, well, he'd actually never been to California because he was an east coast kid. But he said he quickly fell in love with the west Coast. And he also fell in love full stop. At a party, he met Patty Quillen, who would go on to become his wife.

[Simon Jack]

And studying at Stanford placed him, of course, at the heart of the emerging Silicon Valley scene. Just as the personal computer revolution was taking off, Apple had just launched the Macintosh. There was a generation of young nerds creating new technologies. For example, CR Ellison episode who was busy growing Oracle in the area. And importantly, venture capital firms were pouring money into these young founders. And Reid said the big thing Stanford did for me was turn me on to the entrepreneurial model. And learning both science and business, he said was, according to Reid, like having a license to dream.

[Zing Singh]

Well, after graduating in 1988, he got a job as an engineer for a startup that was creating artificial intelligence for customer support systems. He is now in his late 20s. At this point, he describes the tech startup life fondly. So he loved the all night writing code. But like most startups, it also ended in failure. One customer, that's all of one customer bought the software and they never even installed it.

[Simon Jack]

What a sad tale.

[Zing Singh]

I mean, Reid described seeing his beautiful code, the one he'd worked so hard on being thrown away as a scarring lesson. I mean, sounds downright traumatizing.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. But instead, age 31, he decides to start his own company. He founded something called Pure software in 1991 with two other entrepreneurs. And the company made a debugging tool for computer engines and re described it as like. Like inventing an X ray machine. No one had been able to see a Broken bone before. And suddenly they could.

[Ad Voice]

Right.

[Simon Jack]

Broken code, broken bone. And it solved a massive problem in Silicon Valley and was therefore incredibly popular. So the company grew pretty quickly.

[Zing Singh]

And in 1995, Pure Software went public. And that IPO was very successful. They raised over $30 million. Now, we don't have exact details of Reid's share in the company, but he co founded it with two others, and there seems to have been relatively limited ven before going public. So, you know, ballpark figures, we're probably talking he had somewhere around 20 to 35% of the company back then. Anyway, whatever the percentage, it's safe to say that at this point of the ipo, Reed Hastings became a millionaire.

[Simon Jack]

So he is a millionaire. He's passed that milestone. Let us now take him on to a billion. He's the head of an incredibly successful company that's just gone public. But Reid was finding his role challenging. He said he never set out to be chief executive. In his words, I just wanted to do the product. But by 1996, his company had grown significantly. It had merged with a competitor, becoming Pure Atria. He was now overseeing 600 employees. And he said he was definitely underwater and in over my head.

[Zing Singh]

Reid only had a single gear, work hard. So when things got challenging, he would just work harder. He was coding at night, which left him little energy for running the actual business during the day. And he also admits to hiring the wrong people, especially in sales, which are really so important for enterprise software companies because you're having to go out there and sell companies on your software. So revenue had started to dip below analysts expectations, and their lunch was basically being eaten by another competitor called Rational Software.

[Simon Jack]

And in 1997, Pure Atria, which is hasty listings company, was acquired by Rational Software, their rival, for $750 million. Again, we don't know his exact share in the company at the time, but that deal likely made him tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of or $100 million. It sounds pretty good. But not everything was happy for Reid. Around this time.

[Zing Singh]

He was having marital issues with Patty, whom he had married in 1991. So they'd had a young daughter. And understandably, Patti was frustrated with her husband for always working. And through counseling, Reid realized that Patty didn't care about the money. She missed the idealistic young man she'd fallen in love with. So not long after Prior Atria was acquired, Reid had another idea for a new company. He left his old company behind, taking that fat paycheck and using it to start a brand new venture, Netflix Right.

[Simon Jack]

Enter Netflix. Like all good founders, Reid has an origin story for the company Netflix. He got the idea after getting a $40 late fee for not returning his rented copy of a VH cassette of Apollo 13.

[Zing Singh]

Wow.

[Simon Jack]

Do you even know what a VHS cassette is?

[Zing Singh]

I think I may have seen them before.

[Simon Jack]

You have seen them?

[Zing Singh]

I have seen them. I've glimpsed them like dinosaurs through the mist.

[Simon Jack]

You know, this is making me very upset, I must say. Anyway, he. He said I didn't want to tell my wife about it. The fine that is, I'm going to compromise the integrity of my marriage over a late fee. So, net result, he wanted to make video rental more convenient. Now, this talking my language. This is, this is, this trip to the video store. You have quite a relationship with the man or woman in the video store. They kind of know what you like to rent. You pick up a physical copy of your VHS cassette, you go over to that, they sign it out and it's due back, I don't know, the next day or two days or whatever. You take it home, and then physically you bring it back. Hopefully you've rewound it because it says, be kind, please rewind.

[Zing Singh]

So in a sense, it's almost like a library.

[Simon Jack]

Exactly.

[Zing Singh]

Okay.

[Simon Jack]

It's like you've got it.

[Zing Singh]

I think everyone knows the concept of a library anyway.

[Simon Jack]

All right, with that, a little blast from the past. Let's carry on.

[Zing Singh]

Well, this market, well, this market for VHS rental was completely dominated by a company called Blockbuster, and that was a multi billion dollar company that had over 6,000 stores worldwide. So clearly the whole film TV rental space is a really lucrative bit to get into. But how do you compete with a Goliath like Blockbuster?

[Simon Jack]

Well, Reid's idea was fully fleshed out with Netflix co founder Mark Randolph. Mark had been head of marketing at Puratria. They worked together before. They often commuted together to the office, and they spent their time trying to come up with big new e commerce ideas. Now, E commerce was a hot new thing every entrepreneur wanted in on. And Reid described himself as someone who likes to solve crossword puzzles. And this is how he viewed video rentals, saying, it almost doesn't matter what the domain or the market is. It's mostly a puzzle to figure out. So we're not talking about a cinephile here. He's not some great movie buff. He's not Steven Spielberg. Reid at heart is a tech entrepreneur trying to solve a problem.

[Zing Singh]

So Netflix would be an E commerce video rental company. Videos were sent and then they were returned. In the mail. So there was one big issue with this. VHS cassettes are really heavy. They cost about $4 to ship, and there's no way customers would pay an $8 return shipping fee on top of the RE. But fortunately, there was also a new technology that was about to emerge to solve this problem. A mutual friend of theirs tipped them off about this new thing called DVDs. Now, I remember these. So to be sure, DVDs could travel in the mail because they are smaller, they're kind of CD sized. Reid bought some CDs because he couldn't yet buy DVDs and mailed them to himself. And when they arrived intact in an envelope, he was like, okay, let's go.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, light bulb moment. So he invested $2 million and got a few other investors, including Mark's mum, who gave them $25,000. And netflix.com launched in 1998 with about 800 titles in its inventory, in its library. But they were too early. DVD players had only just hit stores in the US they were expensive at around $700. Only 1% of US households actually owned one. So the success of Netflix was dependent on this new technology taking off. And remember, many other technologies had failed, like laserdisc, like, you know, Betamax, whatever. No, it wasn't a slam dunk that DVDs were going, but what Netflix did

[Zing Singh]

have was an infrastructure. And so later that year, one of our other billionaires, Jeff Bezos, came knocking. Now, at this point, Amazon was only four years old. It recently gone public. Bezos had just become a billionaire, and he was actively diversifying Amazon beyond just being a bookshop. Right. And he saw Netflix as a really quick route into video. According to Mark, they were being offered something like $15 million. Netflix wasn't yet profitable, but they knew they were on the brink of something. And so, as Reid said, we said no, and then worked our ass off for 20 years.

[Simon Jack]

Yes, if Jeff Bezos comes knocking from Amazon, you know you're onto something if you've got his attention and you know he's probably going to try and lowball you with an offer. So anyway, the next problem they had to solve, though, was a repeat was a lack of repeat business. People would rent four or five times and then just stop using it. So in 1999, Reid introduced the subscription model. For a set fee every month, customers could get unlimited DVDs. When they returned a DVD, Netflix automatically sent them the next one from their list. Suddenly, customer attention shot up. This new model worked.

[Zing Singh]

And actually, interestingly, that's the motto that Netflix is built on for streaming, right? You pay a subscription fee, you get as much as you want.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, exactly.

[Zing Singh]

Well, at the very start of the new millennium, Reed secured $30 million in a major growth financing round, which was led by yet another of our billionaires, Bernard Arnault, the head of lvmh. Now, this cash injection was very much needed because Netflix was burning through money as they grew their DVD by mail logistics system. Investment came just in the nick of time. In March 2000, the dot com bubble burst and no one could get any investment.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, I remember that happening very well. Reid knew that he wasn't going to be able to raise any more money for anytime soon. But it was costing them to get new customers through marketing. It was costing them to buy new DVDs, it was costing them to package the shipments, plus they have to pay the staff. Of course. Netflix had 300,000 subscribers at that time, but they were on track to lose tens of millions of dollars. So he turned down Amazon. But now Reed was looking for a new alliance. It was time to meet the Goliath in their market.

[Zing Singh]

Reid, Mark, and their CFO took a private jet to Dallas to put in an offer to Blockbuster. Reid made his pitch that Blockbuster should buy 49% of Netflix for 50 million. And he'd run the online service under blockbuster.com. according to Mark, Blockbuster's CEO struggled not to laugh at their offer. The company just were not interested. They were over 100 times larger than Netflix, and the dot com bubble bursting meant that they were highly skeptical of any future in digital media. Reid was crestfallen. He said, that night, when I got into bed and closed my eyes, I had this image of all 60,000 Blockbuster employees erupting in laughter at the ridiculousness of our proposal. Ouch. Why would a powerhouse like Blockbuster be interested in a flailing wannabe like Netflix?

[Simon Jack]

Oh, this guy's always got a movie script written into it, hasn't it?

[Zing Singh]

He's writing that line in his head as I speak.

[Simon Jack]

Well, so Netflix was gonna have to go it on their own as the rental underdog. But fortunately, DVDs were now exploding in popularity. DVD players had got much cheaper. People preferred them. They were higher quality. There were bonus features on those DVDs. The studios liked them because they were cheaper to manufacture. So there's wind behind DVDs. So Reed opened regional warehouses across the US which meant customers could get overnight delivery.

[Zing Singh]

Netflix had also been focusing on personalization by building a recommendation engine. Now, at this point, using algorithms in this way was really innovative. And remember, Reed's masters was an AI. And by 2002, Netflix had around 600,000 subscribers. And 70% of the movies that customers rented were recommended to them on the site. And that's something that still continues to this day. This was helpful for the business. It decreased demand for popular new releases, which cost more for Netflix to buy from the film studios.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, well, so this was a period of fast growth, which meant he needed money. So Reid took Netflix public. When you sell shares to the public to raise extra cash, and he raised just under 100 million. And Reid said he took it public because that's what companies did. We didn't question it. In hindsight, I tell other entrepreneurs, don't be in a hurry to go public because it gives your competitors. This is interesting, a lot of information. That was the moment Blockbuster said we should go competing. And that's interesting. One of the reasons companies stay private for longer is A, there's much more money available which you can raise privately, and B, when you go public and sell shares to the public, you have to basically print out a prospectus which gives a lot of information about the company, some of which, you know, might be helpful to competitors. So, but Blockbuster, they had been pretty short sighted about digital. It took them, it took them until 2004 to launch their own online subscription service. They were slow to respond. And Reid himself said, if they had launched two years earlier, they would have killed us.

[Zing Singh]

Over the next few years, Netflix spent aggressively on marketing. They created strong branding. There was a distinctive red envelope for those DVDs. I bet those are collectibles now. There were TV ads, one of which featured Polly from the Sopranos, and a traveling roadshow with screenings of famous movies in the places that they were set. So they screened Jaws in Martha's Vineyard, for instance. And by the end of 2006, this all seemed to be working. Netflix had 6.3 million subscribers.

[Simon Jack]

And personally, in an interesting move for the chief exec of a rapidly growing company, it was around this period, the early 2000s, that Reid moved his wife and their two children to Rome for a year just because they wanted to. He commuted to Silicon Valley two weeks each month. And Reid's talent seems to be recognizing the direction of travel in his industry. He said DVDs will continue to generate big profits in the near future. Netflix has at least another decade of dominance ahead of it. But movies over the Internet are coming, and at some point, it will become big business. How right was he? For Reid, streaming over the Internet into customers home had always been the plan. But the tech technology just hadn't been available yet.

[Zing Singh]

Well, it was all about to change. In 2007, with higher speed broadband becoming available in the US streaming on personal computers became possible. And so Netflix got into streaming and quality was low to start with. There were only about a thousand movies available, compared to the 70,000 titles customers could rent on DVD. And it was difficult at first for Netflix to gain access to recent films. Studios had exclusive long term deals to sell them to TV channels like hbo.

[Simon Jack]

But fortunately, Reed had hired a guy called Ted Sarandos as chief Content officer quite early on. And he, Ted, had strong ties with the studios. He made a deal with us TV channel stars, for example, to stream the movies they had acquired at $30 million annually for four years, which the industry called a bit of a steal. And Ted said it was three times his budget. But it did give Netflix popular new releases including Ratatouille and Superbad.

[Zing Singh]

And there was hype growing around Netflix, but many media executives were still in denial about the threat it posed to the industry. Jeffrey Butes, the then CEO of Time Warner, who owned HBO and Warner Brothers, told the New York Times, and this is a quote that is probably going to come back to haunt him, if not already. It's a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world? I don't think so. Oh, that has aged badly, hasn't it? Yeah, well, Reid said the comment was a badge of honor. And he even wore Albanian army dog tags around his neck for a year. It was my rosary beads of motivation.

[Simon Jack]

Now, as his company grew, Reid set about defining the company's culture. And this was not without controversy. In 2009, he published an infamous 125 slide internal presentation called the Netflix Culture Deck, which he co authored with Netflix's chief talent officer, Patty McCord, a close friend who he drove to work with every day and socialize with at weekends. Now, Reid argued that Netflix should operate like a a professional sports team, keeping any top performers stating adequate performance gets a generous severance package. In other words, you're sacked. So brutal. It's interesting this, isn't it? Culture, I think, is quite important in companies, and there are some companies which all have a rule to basically sack the 10% lowest performing work members of the workforce every year.

[Zing Singh]

Do you know that? Do you know when you're in the bottom 10%?

[Simon Jack]

I think you do by the end.

[Zing Singh]

But at the midpoint you want to know?

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe you'd hope they would have some kind of appraisal process where they would just say, listen, you're in the drop zone, so buck your ideas up.

[Zing Singh]

I mean, it sounds a lot like squid game.

[Simon Jack]

Some people say, oh, we're one big happy family. You know, we, you know, you know, we socialize. We socialize together. We have barbecues together. So his brutality, in a way, his sort of, you know, professional sports team, rather, if you're not playing well, you drop was a little bit counter to the culture of, like, we're one big happy family. And he's. It became one of the most influential management documents in Silicon Valley.

[Zing Singh]

I bet There are some LinkedIn executives right now who are talking about the 125 slide Netflix presentation.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. But going back to our David versus Goliath, Netflix versus Blockbuster. Well, there's only one winner.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah. Well, by 2010, Reid had defeated Goliath because Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. Now, the company had been losing money steadily. You know, it relied on physical stores, which were expensive and was far too slow to adapt to this changing digital market. And store after store closed until finally the whole business shuttered. Although today, a single Blockbuster store does still exist in the world in Oregon, usa. And I think it's become a bit of a pilgrimage stop now.

[Simon Jack]

I bet there's all sorts of people outside with that, taking selfies outside that store. Anyway, Reed's riding pretty high. The Albanian dog tags have definitely worked, but he's about to show he has feet of clay sometimes, too. He's about to make a series of public missteps. First, a 60% price increase in one go for subscriptions from $9.99 to $15.98. Second mistake. He announced in a surprise email that Netflix was splitting in two. A new company, Qwikster, would take over the old DVD rental business. And customers hated the idea of having two different websites and two different charges. They also hated the fact that they 60% increase of subscriptions, and within months, Netflix was down 800,000 subscribers, nearly a million. So he's lost nearly a million customers, and he had to reverse the split.

[Zing Singh]

Well, Reid had pushed hard because, in his words, I was so obsessed with not getting trapped by DVDs the way AOL got trapped, the way Kodak did, the way Blockbuster did. We would say every business we could think of died because they were too cautious. But the stock market reacted badly. Netflix's market value fell from 75%, from 16 to $4 billion in months. Yep, and Reid went from Fortune magazine's Business Person of the Year to the butt of the joke On Saturday Night Live. Talk about a fall from grace. Yeah, Reid said, everything we'd built was crashing down because of my bad decision. It was the lowest point in my career.

[Simon Jack]

But despite these missteps, Netflix was still at the forefront of a big shift in the industry. And that is streaming. And major Hollywood studios are beginning to recog the scale of its growing power. One by one, Netflix signed deals with the big Studios, even enticing DreamWorks to end its TV deal with HBO. Their biggest coup came when Netflix beat traditional TV networks to secure exclusive rights to stream Disney's new movies, including blockbuster releases from Pixar and Marvel. The deal reportedly cost them around $300 million a year.

[Zing Singh]

And eventually they lost the rights because Disney went off and set up its own streaming platform.

[Simon Jack]

Correct.

[Zing Singh]

Well, Netflix was no longer just focusing on film. It needed needed hours and hours of content to keep viewers streaming. So they started buying TV shows. And far from cannibalizing those TV audiences, Netflix often expanded them. So viewers would discover a show through the back catalog on Netflix and then they would tune in on traditional television to watch when the new series would air.

[Simon Jack]

But buying its competitors content was expensive. So they got into original programming. In 2013, they released a political drama, House of Cards. Everything about this seemed fresh. You had an Oscar winning film starring Kevin Spacey in a time when film actors wouldn't usually dream of appearing on tv. TV was very much the poor relations of film at that point. Boy, that's changed.

[Zing Singh]

And in a move that stunned Hollywood, Netflix committed roughly $100 million for two seasons of House of Cards before a single episode had ever been filmed. Wow. I bet there were a lot of panicked meetings in LA about this because this is the opposite of the traditional TV model. Because executives will test a pilot, they'll monitor the ratings closely. If audiences don't tune in, they will just pull the plug if they if the show fails to find that audience. And the question is, why did Netflix have such faith in House of Cards? The algorithm. So they'd applied this algorithm to the original BBC series House of Cards, which the Kevin Spacey show is based on. The West Wing, another show about the White House and movies featuring Kevin Spacey. So crunching all these numbers and data points, the company was convinced House of Cards was going to be popular.

[Simon Jack]

And they were right. Netflix released all 13 episode of the first season globally, all at once, and introduced the concept to which I'm very familiar, of binge watching. We're totally used to it now, but it was a pretty radical departure from the Traditional weekly television schedule. Now, traditional TV or commercial TV is paid for by adverts. BBC is slightly different. It's paid for by a license fee. Advertisers payment more for the prime time slots where more people are watching, like between 7 and 9 o'. Clock. And so shows had to be released over the course of weeks so that everyone was watching at those prime times.

[Zing Singh]

And this release schedule actually changes and shapes the content itself because episodes have to be a certain length, they have to fit the rhythm of adverts and the number of them. They have to have a cliffhanger to keep viewers coming back week after week. But Netflix has a different model. It doesn't need advertisers. Right, because their motto is based on subscriptions. And so they're freed from the shackles of the TV schedule. So Netflix shows can be radically different. They can be different lengths to fit the story. They don't necessarily need to have cliffhangers. In the same way, if viewers were choosing to binge watch episode after episode, a lot of showrunners felt like they could be more sophisticated. You know, they didn't have to do, for instance, recaps.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, and it did change tv, didn't it? I mean, it has changed content for sure, all of that stuff. I mean, TV just looks and feels different than it did before Netflix and the others came along. Reid said, no one's ever done it like this before. Consumers can watch it when they want, how they want, and it listen, it worked. House of Cards won three Emmys. They followed it up with two more original programs that year, Orange is the New Black. They revived Arrested Development, which had been dropped by Fox years earlier. So they're having a string of hits.

[Zing Singh]

By the end of 2013, Netflix had made net profits of $112 million, and they had nearly 50 million subscribers in over 40 countries. The stock market reacted very well to this. Netflix shares surged over 300% and investors saw Netflix as the future of television. Now, all this meant that in 2014, Forbes announced that Reid had become a billionaire. Over 900 million of his net worth was in Netflix stock and options, plus his other assets, which included about 120 million in post tax profits from from stock sales over the last five years. So at the age of 53, Reed Hastings is officially a billionaire.

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[Simon Jack]

Let us take Reed Hastings Beyond a Billion over the Last Decade Netflix is now the Goliath on the block. In 2016, it announced a major international expansion into 130 new territories, making them truly global. They're also been helped by the proliferation of smartphones, smart TVs in particular at super fast Internet all around the world. And the COVID Pandemic was also a big success story for Netflix, everyone forced to stay at home. What's on telly? They added a record 36 million subscribers in 2020, the year of the pandemic. And at the start of 2021, after Netflix passed 200 million subscribers, Reid celebrated with a steak from the chain restaurant Denny.

[Zing Singh]

Keeping it simple While Netflix didn't initially reveal subscriber viewership numbers for their original series, unlike traditional television. But for the third series of Stranger Things, Netflix revealed that it smashed their records, with 40.7 million account holders watching the show in its first four days after release. And Squid Game smashed that record and remains the most watched show on the streamer. Netflix now measures in hours with Squid game getting over 1.6 billion hours within its first 28 days. That is a stupendous number, especially when you take into account how many people now watch terrestrial tv.

[Simon Jack]

Amazing what a lot of eyeballs that is. By this point, the traditional studios and networks were entering the streaming space. So Disney had seen what had happened. Disney plus came along, hbo, Max, Netflix though, had the first mover advantage. People tend to stick with a subscription service, but competition is pretty fierce. Amazon, Apple have got streaming services and these are companies with extremely deep pockets. Multi trillion dollar companies. And in 2022, because the field is getting much more packed, Netflix reported its first loss decline in subscribers since 2011.

[Zing Singh]

To compete, Netflix are spending heavily on content, including spending a reported 100 million on a deal with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But Meghan's lifestyle and cookery show did not, unfortunately, do very well. In recent years, Netflix, however, has turned its attention back to film. And as with television, it's completely disrupted the traditional cinema. It's done this by financing and releasing high profile films direct to streaming, often completely bypassing traditional theatrical windows. And this has made it much harder for cinemas to secure exclusive long runs, especially for mid budget films that once depended on box office performance. Reid, however, has argued that movie theaters are strangling the movie business. There's no innovation in the movie business.

[Simon Jack]

In the last 50 years, Hollywood Resistance took some interesting form. Figures like Steven Spielberg, another one of our billionaires, argued that films debuting on streaming platforms like Netflix shouldn't qualify for Oscars. Now Netflix gets around this by sometimes having very brief, very limited cinema runs for those films. So they do qualify. And by 2020, Netflix had 24 Oscar nominations, more than any other media company that year. And viewers, in a way, expect this kind of home first viewing. And they often choose convenience and immediate access over the theatrical experience. Which is sad. But yeah, I must confess, because I love going to the movies, but there's no doubt I go less.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, it's interesting. I've definitely noticed among my generation there is this perception of a film you can watch on television or your laptop, I. E. On Netflix or another streamer and a film you simply must watch in cinemas. And I think that's what filmmakers are starting to cotton onto. If you look at marketing for certain films, films, it gives a sense of like, you've got to see this in a cinema, you've got to go to a movie theater. You know, the new Christopher Nolan film, you know, the Odyssey comes to mind that is being marketed really heavily as something you simply have to See on this big screen.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. Anyway, in 2023, Netflix shipped its last DVD, ending the service that began it all. And that year, age 62, Reed Hastings stood down as Netflix chief executive serve as the company's chairman, which is quite a normal passage to go from CEO to chairman. In his statement, Reid said it had part of a years long succession plan to leave day to day management to Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters.

[Zing Singh]

Then in April this year, 2026, Reid stepped down as chairman. He said Netflix changed my life in so many ways. But he wanted to spend more time on his philanthropy. To date, he's donated over $2 billion. That is nothing to be sneezed at. He had signed Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's giving pledge in 2012, and he signed that before he even became a billionaire. In 2020, him and his wife Patty donated 120 million million to two historically black colleges and the college fund UNCF. He's been an active philanthropist in education for decades, including serving on the board of the California Charter Schools Association.

[Simon Jack]

Quite impressive stuff. In 2024, he gave the largest single donation by any US philanthropist that year, giving away 2 million shares of Netflix, which is worth $1.1 billion to their education focused Hastings fund. The gift comprised about 40% of Reed's Netflix stock and he now owns less than 1% of Netflix shares. He may be gone, but Netflix continues now as a dominant but mature beast. If you like, less the disruptive upstart, more a profitable mainstream media company. And after more than 30 years together, Reid lives in Santa Cruz with Patty, who remains substantially indifferent is the quote we have to her husband's business success. I like that a lot. Ah, extra stat for you. They've got five goats and 10 chickens.

[Zing Singh]

I like the sound of Patty.

[Simon Jack]

Patty sounds cool, doesn't she?

[Zing Singh]

Yeah. Well, now it's time to ask the big question. Is Reed Hastings good, bad, or just another billionaire?

[Simon Jack]

And at this point, what we like to do for a bit of fun is we score them in certain categories between naught to 10 in wealth, controversy, power and legacy. So the name of the game is billionaire. So we'll start with wealth. Currently worth $4.7 billion makes him around the 900th richest person in the world.

[Zing Singh]

Well, he is giving away quite a lot of it.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

So he might not be very rich for very much longer. He came from a well to do family. That's important to note. So he did. So, you know, he was born to a debutante, you know.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

But silver spoon in his mouth.

[Simon Jack]

But her, her hatred of high society seems to have rubbed off on him because he's not particularly flashy. The New York Times reported the height of his flashiness was posing on a Porsche in 1995. On the COVID of USA Today, he said he put aside that kind of super fun, immature and sold the Porsche in favor of a Toyota Avalon. And now he drives a Tesla. Wealth middling by our standards and not too much bling. Flashy spending.

[Zing Singh]

No, I mean, I think he's maybe the first billionaire we've covered who has goats and chickens.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, maybe.

[Zing Singh]

I would give him a 3 out of 10.

[Simon Jack]

3 out of 10. I agree. 3 out on wealth controversy. I suppose the most controversial areas will be around the sort of company culture, the layoffs, that kind of stuff.

[Zing Singh]

Stuff. I mean, but now, having seen what's going on in the tech industry, redundancies seem to be part of the culture in tech now too. So, you know, maybe he was just ahead of the curve.

[Simon Jack]

The Netflix culture deck was appreciated by some, lauded by some. But in 2018, the Wall Street Journal spoke to more than 70 current and former Netflix employees, some of whom described an atmosphere that was ruthless, demoralizing, and transparent to the point of dysfunctional. Netflix pushes back on the charge that its culture is cutthroat, noting that it ranks second Comparably's Happiest Employees list on in October 2018 based on anonymous employee feedback.

[Zing Singh]

Well, interestingly, during his time at Netflix, Reid also fired close friends, including the person he co wrote the Netflix Culture deck with, Patty McCord.

[Simon Jack]

Oh, he fired the person who helped write the deck about firing people?

[Zing Singh]

Yeah. Ouch. I mean, maybe he just didn't want to give her a lift to work anymore.

[Simon Jack]

Reid has said that he doesn't want anyone to feel unhappy in their job, which is why we are always clear that working at Netflix is not for everyone. Everybody.

[Zing Singh]

If you don't fit in, you get out.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, I suppose the other controversial thing is about what Netflix has done to the industry, in particular to cinema.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, I mean, you know, if you speak to movie critics, they will. Some of them will argue that Netflix has completely flattened cinema. You know, that there's this idea, I think, that Netflix, that with the algorithm driven entertainment that it puts out, it's just creating slop for people to binge watch, to have in the background as their cooking, cooking dinner or doing something else or cleaning the house, that it's giving people lazy, uncreative content as opposed

[Simon Jack]

to, and quite homogeneous homogenous kind of content where all the shows, the Production values kind of feel the same. We've already talked about its impact on the cinema model, which, you know, every now and then has a resurgence. But people, I just feel like there's a sort of corrosive onward slide away from cinema and towards home watching. I would say. I'm going to say that, you know, Netflix as a thing has really changed the industry. Well, maybe that comes in legacy controversy. I'm going to say six.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, I would say six out of 10, I think, depending on how. How you feel about Netflix. Depends on how you feel about the old world of cinema and television.

[Simon Jack]

That's right, yeah.

[Zing Singh]

You know, prestige, how much it matters to you about stuff like this. But I. I still think six out of ten.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, fine. Power is our next category. There's no doubt the Netflix, for the reasons we've just been discussing, was an incredibly powerful force in the industry and has changed the industry. He himself has been on the board of some pretty influential tech companies, on the board of Microsoft. He's on the board of Facebook for a time. He's currently on the board of Bloomberg and Anthropic, which could end up being, you know, another mega corporation. We shall see. You know, being a board member there means that you can't. The board is there to basically represent the interests of the shareholders of that company and as such is there to basically kind of keep the chief executive from doing something stupid. That's basically what their job is. And so they do wield quite a lot of power. And also with his, you know, background, he would be a particularly powerful board member. So you. You're not actually got the steering wheel of the company of that you're a board member of, but you definitely can put up, you know, a hand on the tiller and give it a little nudge left and right. So it is quite an influential. An influential position.

[Zing Singh]

So as an individual, he probably wields quite a lot of respect.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

And, you know, expertise.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Singh]

In that particular industry.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. So power. Yeah, I. Let's have a think.

[Zing Singh]

I feel like a lot of people would know the name Reed Hastings, but if you are in Hollywood and your assistant picks up the phone and goes, reed Hastings is on the other line. You are running to pick that up.

[Simon Jack]

You definitely are for sure. Okay, I'm going to give power. I would say eight.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, I think I would give him an eight out of ten for power, too.

[Simon Jack]

Legacy. It's changed the industry forever, hasn't it?

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, I think it's probably changed viewing habits forever. You know, I don't think people are gonna go back to a kind of everyone sitting around the television waiting for the Friday night show. Yeah, I don't think that exists anymore.

[Simon Jack]

I know we all at the binge binge watching. What I'm going to do, I'm going to watch five episodes of something. You could never do that in the past.

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[Zing Singh]

Where your only enemy is sleep.

[Simon Jack]

I mean, that's the only competition is sleep.

[Zing Singh]

Netflix certainly popularized binge watching.

[Simon Jack]

Mind you, they've got a fight on their hands. You know, the apple of this world, the Amazon's prime video, Disney. Disney are fear, fear, formidable competitors. So we'll see how they got on. So anyway, but when people talk about when was the moment that television and entertainment changed, people will say it was the Netflix moment.

[Zing Singh]

Oh, and you know what? We haven't even mentioned Netflix and Chill and What? Netflix and Chill.

[Simon Jack]

What the hell are you talking about?

[Zing Singh]

Basically, Netflix and chill. I don't know if anyone uses it quite.

[Simon Jack]

This is like what you do for a date.

[Zing Singh]

Yes. So basically, rather than, you know, the date used to be be you'd get taken to the cinema, you buy some popcorn, you sit together, maybe you like hold hands or whatever. Now people, Netflix and chill, where you just go over to someone's house, you chill out watching Netflix.

[Simon Jack]

Why do I do this show with you? You made me feel so old.

[Zing Singh]

Well, now you've learned.

[Simon Jack]

Okay. Legacy pretty high. I would say an eight for me.

[Zing Singh]

Yeah, I think it's. If anything, I think it's probably a nine out of 10.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, nine for Netflix and chill lady over there.

[Zing Singh]

Yes, exactly.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, so the final question is, is he good, bad or just another billionaire? That's up to you. What do you think? Email, good, bad, billionaire. That's all. One [e-mail] or drop us a text or WhatsApp on to 001917-686-1176 and tell us what you think.

[Zing Singh]

And don't forget to include your name as we may read out your message on a future episode.

[Simon Jack]

And thanks again to Thomas, who did write in and suggested retasting it in place. The first first place.

[Zing Singh]

So we've got some listener feedback and the first message comes from Isla, who goes. Dear Simon and zing. Hi, my name is Isla. I'm 12 years old and I'm currently living in Barcelona. Hola. I absolutely adore your podcast. I've learned so much about business and your podcast has sparked a passion for business and mathematics. I've loved learning about many different ways of making billions. I was Particularly inspired by the episode on Warren Buffett, I'm hoping to purchase some shares. I think you might be a little bit too young for that right now, Isla. To see if I can make some money, I was interested in the idea of moving my money through different currencies to test if I'm able to make money out of having money like George Soros. I love your show and keep up the good work, Isla. Thank you for listening in. If you are about to do any of that stuff, I suggest you speak to your parents first.

[Simon Jack]

Although I must say, I bought my first shares when I was 11 years old.

[Zing Singh]

Is that even legal?

[Simon Jack]

Well, I think my parents did it for me or something, but I used to. I was very interested in the share prices at the back of the newspaper back in the old days. Well, there you go. I ended up in the right job. Job, I guess. Yes. But there's a definite potential Soros in the making. There. There's a. There's a. There's a natural born trader I think is going to. Isla is going to turn out. But thank you very much for getting in touch. Next week we have a very special episode, an episode we recorded live at the Crossed Wire Festival.

[Zing Singh]

It's sort of like the Woodstock or Glastonbury of podcast festivals, I would say.

[Simon Jack]

And appropriately enough for that analogy, Our billionaire is a musician. Sir Paul McCartney good bad billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Elena Boateng. The editor is Paul Smith and it's a BBC Studios production for the BBC World Service. The senior commissioning producer is Sarah Griffin Green and the commissioning editor is John Manell.

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