Reed Hastings Quotes
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Taking smart risks can be very gratifying.
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If you look at cable networks, they almost always start licensing content wherever they can, so they can build a subscriber base. But then they start doing their own content; it's a pretty well-trodden path.
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When you grow up, as I have, in the shadow of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others, success is defined as the total global transformation of a market. To achieve that, you need low prices and an attractive offering. It's about trying to make a positive impact on a big scale.
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Don’t get distracted by the shiny object and if a crisis comes, execute on the fundamentals.
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Be brutally honest about the short term and optimistic and confident about the long term.
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Don't be afraid to change the model.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I'm an HBO subscriber, and I watch a bunch of great shows on HBO.
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Do not tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is too high.
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The best managers figure out how to get great outcomes by setting the appropriate context, rather than by trying to control their people.
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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.
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About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.
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Technological revolutions are very hard to predict. My favourite example is someone in 1850 taking care of horses as a farrier. They would have said, "Look, horses have been part of human existence for 5,000 years. We are horse people. It's permanent." But all of a sudden, the internal combustion engine comes along and, with it, oil fields and automobiles, which basically replace the horse completely. So we often have these long periods of stability and then a sudden inflection point.
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I think there will be 20 years of evolution from linear broadcast to internet television.
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Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age. We define entire epics of humanity by the technology they use.
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At Netflix, we think you have to build a sense of responsibility where people care about the enterprise. Hard work, like long hours at the office, doesn't matter as much to us. We care about great work.
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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.
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But it may be one of our best markets in the long term because when the Japanese society embraces a brand it is a very deep connection, so we're willing to make that investment knowing that it's not the quick route to success that might be in other countries.
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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.
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Our brand at Netflix is really focused on movies and TV shows.
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Interactivity and a better experience aren't always the same thing.
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Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they’ll turn out to be right.