How I Took On Hollywood & Won

He turned Netflix into an entertainment superpower. Now CEO Reed Hastings has revealed the ruthless techniques he used to propel his firm to the top

- Ben Hoyle

It started out as a scrappy mailorder film rental firm but today the company literally looms over Hollywood. When you drive down the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles most of the huge advertising hoardings that used to trumpet films and TV shows from every studio and network now tout offerings from just one entertainment giant: Netflix.

And this is exactly what its founders were planning when they launched the business in the ’90s – it was never their intention to remain a mail-order DVD rental firm for long.

Even back than Reed Hastings and his business partner, Marc Randolph, were looking to a 24/7, binge-viewing future where fast internet would allow customers to stream content on demand. It wasn’t yet possible but the pair could see more clearly than anyone that it was coming.

“Oh yeah,” Reed says, striding across the Silicon Valley headquarters of the global empire built on their idea. “That’s why we named it Netflix and not DVDs by Post.”

But others thought they were overreaching.

A decade ago, Jeffrey Bewkes – at the time chief executive of Time Warner, home of HBO, CNN and Warner Bros – still thought that the threat Netflix posed to the incumbent Goliaths of the entertainment industry was rather exaggerated.

“It’s a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world?” he told The New York Times.

“I don’t think so.” He really, really should have thought so. For a while Reed, who’s Netflix’s chairman and co-CEO, wore Albanian army dog tags round his neck as motivation. He doesn’t need to anymore.