Technology >> CEO Interviews >> February 17, 2003
REED HASTINGS is Chief Executive Officer and co-Founder of
Netflix, Inc. He founded his first company, Pure Software, in
1991, after inventing the company's initial product, Purify. As
CEO, he led Pure Software to go public in 1995, completed several
acquisitions and made it one of the 50 largest public software
companies in the world by 1997. Pure was acquired in the spring
of 1997 by Rational Software. In the fall of 1997, Mr. Hastings
and his co-Founders started Netflix. In addition to business, he
is active in Silicon Valley politics. In 1997, he led a business
coalition that got California to pass a strong charter school
law. In 1998, he served for a year as CEO of TechNet, the high-
tech industry's foremost political advocacy group. Governor Davis
appointed Mr. Hastings to the State Board of Education, where he
serves as President. He was a co-Chair of the victorious
Proposition 39, along with John Chambers, John Doerr and Governor
Davis, which makes it easier to pass local school bonds to build
more classrooms. He is a co-Founder of Aspire Public Schools,
NewSchools.org, and EdVoice.org. Mr. Hastings received an MSCS
degree from Stanford University in 1988 and a BA from Bowdoin
College in 1983, and holds several patents. Between Bowdoin and
Stanford, he served in the US Peace Corps at a rural high school
in Swaziland. Profile
today?
Mr. Hastings: Netflix is a consumer Internet subscription service
that costs $20 a month. Consumers can rent as many DVD
