Reed Hastings Biography
Reed Hastings is an American prominent entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the founder, CEO, and Chairman of Netflix. He also serves as a board member of Facebook and a number of non-profit organizations. He is an advocate for education reform through charter schools.
Reed Hastings Age
He was born Wilmot Reed Hastings Jr. on October 8, 1960, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is 58 years.
Reed Hastings Wife | Kids
He is married to Patrician Ann Quillin in 1991, and together they are blessed with two children.
Reed Hastings Family
He was born to Joan Amory and Wilmot Reed Hastings. His maternal great-grandfather Alfred Lee Loomis was an attorney, scientist, inventor, philanthropist, and financier.
Reed Hastings Early Life
He was born in Boston and attended Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He spent the summer of 1981, in Officer Candidate School at Marine Corps Base Quantico, after joining the Marine Corps officer training via their Platoon Leader Class. He never completed his training and was never commissioned into the Marine Corps, instead he chose to pursue service in the Peace Corps.
From 1983-1985, he joined the Peace Corps “out of a combination of service and adventure”, and went to teach high school math in Swaziland after he graduated from Bowdoin College. He credits part of his entrepreneurial spirit to the time he served in the Peace Corps.
He later attended Stanford University after he returned from the Peace Corps mission. In 1988, he graduated with a master’s degree in computer science.
Reed Hastings Founding of Pure Software
His first job was at Adaptive Technology where he invented a tool for debugging software. In 1990, he met MacLean when she was the CEO at Adaptive Corp. From her, he learned the value of focus. He learned its better to focus on one product well than two products in a mediocre way.
In 1991, he left Adaptive Technology to found his first company Pure Software which produced products for troubleshooting software. The company was taken public by Morgan Stanley in 1995.
Pure Software merged with Atria Software in 1996. His goal was to unify the two companies sales force. Rational Software acquired Pure Atria in 1997 and triggered a 42% drop in both companies’ stocks after the deal was announced. He was appointed Chief Technical Officer of the combined companies and soon left after the acquisition. He spent two years after he left Pure Software thinking about how to avoid similar problems in his next startup.
Establishing of Netflix
He co-founded Netflix together with Marc Randolph, offering flat rate movie rental-by-mail to customers in the United States by combining two emerging technologies; DVDs, which were much easier to send as mail than VHS-cassettes, and an online Web site to order them from, instead of a paper catalog.
Netflix is headquartered in Los Gatos, California. It has amassed a collection of 100,000 titles and over 100 million subscribers.
Netflix Customs
As Netflix grew the company began being noticed for its innovative management practices. The company’s custom is Freedom and Responsibility. Netflix pays higher salaries than customary in order to attract the best talents. It’s among a few companies where employees can choose annually how much of their compensation they want in cash versus stock.
Netflix they treat their employees who don’t meet their targets with a generous severance package by doing so managers don’t feel too guilty to let average performers go. Hastings meet each new employee and discuss the culture and his theories about it.
Reed Hastings Other business interests
Since 2011, he has been a director of the board of Facebook. He is reported to own over US$10 million worth of Facebook shares. From 2007 to 2012 he also served on the board of Microsoft.
Reed Hastings Net Worth
He has a net worth US$3.8 Billion as of 2019.
Reed Hastings Twitter
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