Reed Hastings Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Taking smart risks can be very gratifying.

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.

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

Human entertainment will have moved on to something new. Then the ultimate challenge for us is, can we figure out what that new form of entertainment is?

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

Don't be afraid to change the model.

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

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.

Be big, fast and flexible.

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.

Broadcast TV is like the landline of 20 years ago.

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

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

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

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

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

In the long term, you have to believe that movies and TV shows will be like the opera and the novel, pretty nichey businesses.

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.

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

Interactivity and a better experience aren't always the same thing.

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

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

Not every show has to work equally well. It just has to work better than any competitor because then we can outbid for the content.

I watch mostly independent films.

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

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.

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

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

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

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