How Netflix changed entertainment -- and where it's headed | Reed Hastings

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2018

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Netflix changed the world of entertainment -- first with DVD-by-mail, then with streaming media and then again with sensational original shows like "Orange Is the New Black" and "Stranger Things" -- but not without taking its fair share of risks. In conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings discusses the company's bold internal culture, the powerful algorithm that fuels their recommendations, the $8 billion worth of original content they're planning to produce this coming year and his philanthropic pursuits supporting innovative education, among much more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This interview features entrepreneur and philanthropist Reed Hastings in conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson, recorded live at TED-2018.
0:12.0	I have been long, so fascinated and amazed by so many aspects of Netflix. You're full of surprises, if I may say so.
0:20.0	One of those surprises happened,
0:22.5	I think about six years ago. So the company back then was doing really well, but you were
0:29.2	basically a streaming service for other people's films and TV content. You'd persuaded Wall Street
0:36.0	that you were right to make the kind of radical shift
0:38.6	away from just sending people DVDs. We're doing it by streaming, and you were growing like a
0:43.7	weed. You had more than 6 million subscribers and healthy growth rates, and yet you chose that
0:49.5	moment to kind of make a giant, really a bet-the-company decision.
0:55.3	What was that decision and what motivated it?
0:58.8	Well, cable networks from all time
1:01.5	have started on other people's content
1:03.4	and then grown into doing their own originals.
1:06.6	So we knew of the general idea for quite a while.
1:10.2	And we had actually tried to get into original content back in 2005
1:14.7	when we were on DVD-only and buying films at Sundance,
1:18.7	Maggie Gyllenhaal, Sherry Baby, and we published on DVD.
1:21.3	We were a mini-studio, and it didn't work out because we were subscale.
1:25.8	And then, as you said, in 2011, Ted Sarando's, my
1:30.1	partner at Netflix, who runs content, got very excited about House of Cards. And at the time,
1:36.5	it was $100 million. It was a fantastic investment. And it was in competition with HBO.
1:46.4	And that was really the breakthrough that he picked right up front.
	...

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