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

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:04)
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** (0:12)
His company is losing money, and he's running out 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 Tsjeng** (0:22)
The pitch 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** (0:34)
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 Tsjeng** (0:43)
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** (0:50)
We take them from zero to their first million, and then from a million on to a billion.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:54)
My name is Zing Tsjeng, and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

**Simon Jack** (0:56)
And I'm Simon Jack, I'm the BBC's business editor.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:59)
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, Reed Hastings.

**Simon Jack** (1:16)
Good idea, Thomas. Reed Hastings is 65 years old and currently worth $4.7 billion at the time of recording.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:24)
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** (1:34)
You're one of the 325 million? Me too.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:36)
Yes, I mean, I've watched so many good shows on Netflix, and bad ones.

**Simon Jack** (1:42)
Couple? Favourite couple?

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:43)
Ooh, I loved Stranger Things when it came out. It was so good. It was so nostalgic.

**Simon Jack** (1:48)
Well, I think you're too young to be nostalgic about that era.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:51)
I think I'm young enough to feel like I watched Indiana Jones as a kid. OK.

**Simon Jack** (1:56)
I liked, there's so many good ones, wasn't there? But I did like House of Cards, which was a breakthrough series for them.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:01)
It really was.

**Simon Jack** (2:02)
And also there was a one called Ozark with Jason Bateman. And it was really compelling. I loved that one.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:09)
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** (2:16)
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 Tsjeng** (2:37)
You're lucky it wasn't your daughter.

**Simon Jack** (2:38)
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 Tsjeng** (2:48)
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** (3:01)
Let's start at zero for Reed Hastings. He was born in 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts in the US. His father was a lawyer who became an attorney for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon administration.

**Zing Tsjeng** (3:13)
His mum was an East Coast debutante. Her grandfather had been a Wall Street tycoon who got even richer after anticipating the stock market crash of 1929 But despite that pedigree, Reed's mum was repulsed by the world of high society. She taught Reed to disdain these kind of elite circles, although they did deign to send Reed to private schools.

**Simon Jack** (3:34)
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 Tsjeng** (3:48)
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.