9781422277362

A Leader with Vision

When Reed Hastings began his business career, vacuum cleaners, not video, were his focus. For a time, he sold the cleaners going door-to- door, showing potential customers how well his product worked. After studying mathematics in college, Hastings took a job at a company that tried to improve computer soft- ware. He started his first company, Pure Software, in 1991, and it did the same kind of work. Pure Soft-

ware grew quickly and in 1996 merged with another software company. The next year, the new company was sold, and Hastings decided to do something new. With money he made from the sale of his company, he and Marc Randolph started Netflix. (Randolph left the company five years lat- er.) According to one story, the partners did a test mailing of an audio CD to make sure the disc would arrive undamaged. When that worked, they began their DVD business. The success of Netflix has made Hastings a bil- lionaire. When he’s not running the company, he spends some of his time trying to help poor students go to college and study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

1: Entertainment over the Internet

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