Reed Hastings Quotations

There is a revolution happening, and within two years I think that Wi-Fi and Netflix will be built into all the televisions.

At Netflix, we think you have to build a sense of responsibility where people care about the enterprise. Hard work, like long hours at the office, doesn't matter as much to us. We care about great work.

Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they’ll turn out to be right.

I think there will be 20 years of evolution from linear broadcast to internet television.

In fact, technology has been the story of human progress from as long back as we know. In 100 years people will look back on now and say, 'That was the Internet Age.' And computers will be seen as a mere ingredient to the Internet Age.

I founded Netflix. I've built it steadily over 12 years now, first with DVD becoming profitable in 2002, a head-to-head ferocious battle with Blockbuster and evolving the company toward streaming.

It turns out that all Netflix streaming peak on Saturday night can fit inside a single fiber optic, which is the size of one human hair.

My first company, Pure Software, was exciting and innovative in the first few years and bureaucratic and painful in the last few before it got acquired. The problem was we tried to systemize everything and set up perfect procedures.

School districts in the US don't adopt technology very quickly.

But as an entrepreneur you have to feel like you can jump out of an aeroplane because you're confident that you'll catch a bird flying by. It's an act of stupidity, and most entrepreneurs go splat because the bird doesn't come by, but a few times it does.

If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte... ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual's taste.

In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.

I've worked very hard, but my life's always been fun.

Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age. We define entire epics of humanity by the technology they use.

Fibre optic is becoming like electricity. If you look at how electricity spread around the globe 100 years ago, that's what's happening now.

There's a finite market for DVD-by-mail, and the growth over the next 10 years will be in streaming.

In 20 years from now we will all be able to click and watch TV.

Broadcast TV is like the landline of 20 years ago.

Our brand at Netflix is really focused on movies and TV shows.

On the Internet you get continuous innovation, so every year the streams are a little better.

Think of Internet on the TV like the Web browser. The amount of time you spend on the PC in the browser is just going to grow continuously.

Great leaders, like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, also focused on the long term.

When we think about online learning, it's such 'early days.' Bill Gates is a wildly smart insightful guy. Yet, even a guy as smart and insightful as that, 30 years ago can say things like,'Who's every going to need more than 640K of memory?'

How much has it been your experience that Americans follow what happens in the world?

We tried not to get drunk on the future, but actually to predict it accurately.

(Last year) was another year of solid achievement and continued momentum. We enter 2006 confident we can reach our goal of 20 million subscribers within the 2010 to 2012 time frame.

If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte, ... ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual's taste.

Our outlook for the future reflects the continuing rapid subscriber growth and the increasing impact of the cost advantages and other financial benefits that flow from our market leadership.

Our record first-quarter performance provides additional evidence of the strength of our business model and our market, and reinforces our confidence that we can achieve our aggressive goals for subscriber and earnings growth. It has also led us to increase our near-term guidance for subscriber and revenue growth.

I think the stock will trade down significantly because of lower profits for the next year, but the long term value (will rise) -- in two years -- because of our actions today, being decisive and taking the steps to ensure our continued leadership in this larger market with larger competitors.

Most companies that are great at something - like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores - do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business.

will be ready to launch when the content climate begins to thaw.

Well, we're about 24 million subscribers today, and that's up from about 15 million a year ago, so it's a very high rate of growth, and that's what's exciting about the business - more and more people are getting smart TVs, they're watching Netflix on their iPads.

We have a very wide range of content, but the brand-newest movies, what's happening with those is a $30 pay-per-view option - not from Netflix but from DirecTV and others - of movies that are in the theater.

We believe that Amazon is going to enter this market in the near future. It could happen before the holidays.

We are seeing the beginning of things. Web 2.0 is broadband. Web 3.0 is 10 gigabits a second.

We are seeing the beginning of things, ... Web 2.0 is broadband. Web 3.0 is 10 gigabits a second.

Bill Henderson is about the only person on the planet who looks at our volume of mail as a trickle. We'll look for him to extend our current competitive advantages in this area, particularly as our mail volume increases with our forecasted growth to at least 5.65 million subscribers this year and 20 million by 2010-2012.

Blockbuster is succeeding, ... But the market is plenty big for both of us.

There's some great charter schools and some not-so-great charter schools. I looked at quality, and I was impressed by the dedication of the people involved.

So much of the downstream revenue is linked to that initial excitement, to how much revenue is produced in the domestic box office. For example, what we pay for a film three years later is highly correlated to how well it did in the box office.

once you subscribe, our interest is purely your happiness.

About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.

In the U.S., HBO is a very aggressive service.

In the States, there's ESPN3, and each country has different options, and other than premiere league football, there tends to be very little global content. And movie and TV rights are pretty broad content.

Something will eventually replace the Internet. But it's hard to know what and when it will happen.

But it may be one of our best markets in the long term because when the Japanese society embraces a brand it is a very deep connection, so we're willing to make that investment knowing that it's not the quick route to success that might be in other countries.

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

The Costa Rican government is prioritizing laying fiber optic over paving roads. Costa Rica is trying to become one of the Internet societies. This is happening throughout the world.

About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.

I hate the photo shoots. I hate all that stuff.

I'm an HBO subscriber, and I watch a bunch of great shows on HBO.

I watch mostly independent films.

I'm on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.

In the U.S., HBO is a very aggressive service.

Comparing Apple to Netflix is like comparing apples to oranges, especially if the oranges made so many mistakes that people stopped eating oranges and just went back to Blockbuster.

What's got me excited about the education space is the growth of the Internet over the next 10, 20, 30 years.

I don't know of any Internet service that opens on a regional basis.

Don’t get distracted by the shiny object [and if a crisis comes], execute on the fundamentals.

The Netflix brand for TV shows is really all about binge viewing. The ability to get hooked and watch episode after episode.

Be big, fast and flexible.

When there’s an ache, you want to be like aspirin, not vitamins. Aspirin solves a very particular problem someone has, whereas vitamins are a general ‘nice to have’ market.

Truly brilliant marketing happens when you take something most people think of as a weakness and reposition it so people think of it as a strength.

The best managers figure out how to get great outcomes by setting the appropriate context, rather than by trying to control their people.

Don't be afraid to change the model.

Tomorrow when you come to work, if it doesn't make the customer happy, move the business forward, and save us money - don't do it.

Be brutally honest about the short term and optimistic and confident about the long term.

I learned the value of focus. I learned it is better to do one product well than two products in a mediocre way.

I got the idea for Netflix after my company was acquired. I had a big late fee for Apollo 13. It was six weeks late and I owed the video store $40. I had misplaced the cassette. It was all my fault.

Do not tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is too high.

Taking smart risks can be very gratifying.

Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly.