Reed Hastings
How Reed Hastings killed his own DVD business to build streaming — and why the willingness to cannibalise yourself is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Reed Hastings built Netflix on DVDs by mail in 1998, shipping disks from warehouses across America. The business worked beautifully. Subscribers loved the convenience. Hastings had reinvented rental, leaving Hollywood Studios wondering how to compete with a company that didn't own theaters, then streaming arrived. Hastings faced a choice every founder fears, kill the business or die by it. He chose to cannibalize Netflix's own DVD revenue by launching streaming in 2007. The shift cost billions and damaged confidence. Analysts said he was insane. Hastings understood deeper, competitors would offer streaming eventually, and Netflix would become irrelevant.
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