Wilmot Reed Hastings, Jr. was born on October 8, 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his first bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College in 1983 where he studied mathematics. During his college years, Hastings decided to serve his country by joining the Marine Corps in their Platoon Leader Class. He spent the summer between his sophomore and junior year in boot camp at Quantico, Virginia. Unfortunately, he found that the Marines were not to his taste and later joined the Peace Corps after his graduation from college. From 1983 to 1985 he volunteered in Swaziland teaching mathematics. In 1985, Hastings decided to go to graduate school in computer science (Zipkin). After graduating from Stanford, Hastings founded his first business in 1991. The company, Pure Software, “was one of the nation’s 50 largest public software companies” and was later bought by Rational Software in 1997 for $750 million (Hamilton).
After the purchase of his company, Hastings “found himself a bit adrift…Armed with a fortune but without a target, Hasting felt his public-service side stir” (Hamilton). Interested in educational reform, Hastings enrolled into Stanford’s School of Education and in 2000, Gov. Gray Davis appointed him to the State Board of Education. The next year Hastings became its president (Hamilton). “His activism advanced California’s charter school movement and he was instrumental in the passage of Proposition 39 In November 2000. That ballot measure lowered… the level of voter approval that local schools must garner to pass construction bond issues” (Hamilton). Unfortunately, Hastings ran into trouble when powerful legislators challenged his “advocacy of more English instruction and language testing for non-English-speaking students. This led to his resignation in 2005.
The idea for Netflix came to him after he incurred a late fee of $40 at Blockbuster for the movie “Apollo 13.” He figured that there must be a better way to earn money from movie renting without “gouging customers with late fees” (Hamilton). As all good entrepreneurs, he saw the future of movies in the internet and the DVD format provided a light and durable means of distribution. “Reed Hastings founded Netflix in 1997 and launched the subscription service in 1999. Netflix grew to one million subscribers in less than four years, and surpassed 6.3 million subscribers in December 2006” (Netflix). Today the number of DVD titles has reached over 100,000. What makes Netflix special is the sheer amount of documentary, foreign, and independent films as well as TV series that are available to rent. The incredible selection as well as its ease of use led to Netflix ranking number one in customer satisfaction in five consecutive surveys over three years (Netflix).
There are several things I admire about Reed Hastings. First is his love and appreciation of education. I also view education as an invaluable resource and try hard to do well in school. I believe that many of the world’s problems can be helped or partially solved through education and so I really respect Hastings’ work in Africa as well as the United States. But most of all, and I won’t lie here, I admire Hastings for creating Netflix because his service has provided me with many hours of entertainment, ranging from foreign films to the TV series I missed. Netflix, in my opinion, is a service before it is a business because it was created to give people a better means of movie rental instead of a means of gaining profit. After all, Hastings hardly needed the money at that point.
Bibliography:
Hamilton, Joan O'C. "Home Movies." STANFORD Magazine. Stanford Alumni Association. 02 Feb. 2009 [http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2006/janfeb/features/netflix.html].
"Netflix - Management." Netflix - Overview. 02 Feb. 2009 [http://ir.netflix.com/management.cfm?bio=8195#8195].
Zipkin, Amy. "Out of Africa, Onto the Web." The New York Times 17 Dec. 2006, sec. Job Market. The New York Times. 17 Dec. 2006. 2 Feb. 2009 [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/jobs/17boss.html?_r=2].
Nicely done Ksenia. When you re-write this essay for the next version you might want to use this incident in the development of Netflix. The company actually tried to go public for the first time at the end of 1999--and failed. It's actually really rare that a company will go through all the effort and expense of filing for an IPO and then not find enough buyers to complete the offering. Find out some stats on how often an IPO is "pulled" from the market and what Netflix had to do after that to salvage the situation.
ReplyDeleteStill seems to be a typo in the first sentence by the way, but for the next draft try eliminating most of that first paragraph anyway and launch directly into the profile of Mr. Hastings.
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