Reed Hastings: How Netflix changed entertainment -- and where it's headed
As co-founder and CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings is revolutionizing the world of entertainment. Full bioChris Anderson - TED Curator
After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading. Full bio
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so fascinated and amazed
I think about six years ago.
was doing really well,
that you were right
away from just sending people DVDs,
and healthy growth rates,
really, a bet-the-company decision.
and what motivated it?
cable networks from all time
their own originals.
for quite a while.
original content back in 2005,
and buying films at Sundance --
we published on DVD --
because we were subscale.
who runs content,
it was 100 million dollars,
that he picked right upfront.
of the revenue of the company
that that was actually worth doing?
devastating for the company.
I mean, that's the whole tension of it.
I can't say that.
producing new content.
if I understand right,
these episodes and build excitement" --
hadn't really been tested.
we had grown up shipping DVDs.
box sets, on DVD.
watching some of the great HBO content
next episode, next episode.
to make us think,
especially serialized,
all the episodes at once.
that linear TV can't do.
made it really positive.
pretty much straight away,
"House of Cards," say,
someone else's licensed content?
we don't have to track it at that level.
making the brand stronger,
would talk about it
great show, AMC show --
all these other remarkable series,
"Orange is the New Black," "The Crown,"
to make in new content
around the world.
on other networks.
content commissioner at this point?
they're even bigger.
and others in the media business,
really revolutionized the business.
was as big as Disney.
have happened, and yet it did.
it moves fast, you know?
unusual about Netflix's culture
bold -- I won't say "reckless" --
which is we were born on DVD,
was going to be temporary.
mailing discs for 100 years.
about what's coming next,
about what's coming next.
and responsibility.
as possible in a quarter.
and better at that.
I can go a whole quarter
surprising things about your people.
compared to your peers',
for equivalent jobs.
the Netflix culture deck,
admonitions to your employees.
we were very process obsessed.
didn't happen again --
to dummy-proof the system.
only dummies wanted to work there.
in that case, it was C++ to Java.
by our largest competitor.
on how to run with no process
all these mechanisms,
at how much information --
you know how they compartmentalize?
everybody gets all the information.
a sense of responsibility in people
that are made all the time,
which is great.
and read them on the internet.
their own vacation time, and ...
symbolic one, vacation,
do that, anyway.
of that freedom.
as a fundamental value.
to speak the truth.
silently is disloyal."
go through without saying your piece,
on trying to get to good decisions
like yelling at each other --
drawing people out.
secret weapon at Netflix, it seems,
a certain amount about this week.
really surprising stances
algorithms at Netflix.
your algorithm to the world
than this recommendation we've got?
better than yours.
Would you do that again?
at the time; this was about 2007.
a lucky break of good timing,
on the algorithms,
to the right people
and easy to explore.
like a really interesting shift,
"Here are 10 movies. What do you think?
are your best movies?"
with recommendations for what was coming.
"Schindler's List" five stars,
"The Do-Over" three stars.
at what they watched,
and we're metacognitive about quality,
to please people
that they make,
by how much they enjoy simple pleasures.
for a couple of minutes about this,
not just for Netflix,
attention to what people said,
and then found the stuff that,
a show about making horrible recipes,
have even thought of that.
approach is taken too far?
from making people happy,
and watch a show like "Nailed It!"
to watch very intensive film.
20 million hours of viewing on "Mudbound,"
than it would have been in the theaters
but we have lots of broccoli.
you get to a healthy diet.
tend to point you away from the broccoli
on YouTube, somehow algorithms
more radical or specific content.
that Netflix algorithms,
would gradually --
violent pornography or something.
I don't even think about these things.
that you can't just rely on algorithms.
like Facebook and YouTube,
films and series that we acquire?
the algorithm is a tool.
about measuring what matters.
the more time they spend watching Netflix,
of "Nailed It!" or whatever?
they just think,
that was extraordinary,
that with my family."
of the business model
but more awesome content,
that uplifting content.
when people talk about Netflix,
and positive impact,
that you talked about
every night, as much as you like it;
violent pornography kind of examples.
across a whole range --
we're filming season five now.
when it was only in the BBC.
humans can get addicted
not to think about it in addiction terms,
with your time and when you want to relax?
video games, you can do YouTube,
and we have a variety of moods,
in the organization
at the actual impacts
that you've created.
is the direction we want to go?"
"Look, there's no perfect tool."
the way we commission the content,
that we have to look at it.
"Let's just increase viewing"
and be the great company you want to be.
multiple measures of success.
that have raised questions:
you've done some mentoring for him.
that people don't know?
or have seen him.
whether that's YouTube or Facebook,
about printed DNA,
or could be horrific.
in the 1960s in the US,
the minds of everybody.
or, I think of it as --
we're just figuring that out.
is it for the board of Facebook
unfairly criticized?
on fixing Facebook.
at another passion of yours.
with Netflix, you're a billionaire,
and indeed, money, on education.
and what are you doing about it?
I was a high school math teacher.
and became a philanthropist,
with other great educators
unique environments for kids.
variety in the system
educator-centric organizations.
right now in the US,
by a local school board.
in the community,
is a lot more variety.
of public school
that are run by nonprofits.
run by nonprofits,
they support the educators well.
getting very stimulating education.
a school should look like.
kids, there's all different needs
and what you think they need.
and curious and stimulating
of 30 kids in fifth grade,
at the same time,
an industrial throwback.
the current government structure,
schools are doing is pushing the bounds,
the governance reform,
that charter schools,
from the public school system.
of public schools.
get in trouble,
to a private school
don't have those choices.
low-income kids, free and reduced lunch.
for KIPP is fantastic.
the Giving Pledge a few years ago,
more than half of your fortune
you've invested in education
I don't know exactly how many hundreds,
I tried to do politics full-time,
I just didn't thrive on politics.
increase Netflix's value,
more checks to schools.
you've changed all of our lives
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Reed Hastings - Entrepreneur, philanthropistAs co-founder and CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings is revolutionizing the world of entertainment.
Why you should listen
Reed Hastings co-founded Netflix in 1997. Today the company develops, licenses and delivers entertainment across a wide variety of genres and languages to hundreds of millions of people in 190 countries. In 1991, he founded Pure Software, which made tools for software developers. After a 1995 IPO and several acquisitions, Pure was acquired by Rational Software in 1997.
Hastings is an active educational philanthropist and served on the California State Board of Education from 2000 to 2004. He is on the board of several educational organizations including DreamBox Learning, KIPP and Pahara. He's also a board member of Facebook and was on the board of Microsoft from 2007 to 2012. He received a BA from Bowdoin College in 1983 and an MSCS in artificial intelligence from Stanford University in 1988. Between Bowdoin and Stanford, he served in the Peace Corps as a high school math teacher in Swaziland.
Reed Hastings | Speaker | TED.com
Chris Anderson - TED Curator
After a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading.
Why you should listen
Chris Anderson is the Curator of TED, a nonprofit devoted to sharing valuable ideas, primarily through the medium of 'TED Talks' -- short talks that are offered free online to a global audience.
Chris was born in a remote village in Pakistan in 1957. He spent his early years in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his parents worked as medical missionaries, and he attended an American school in the Himalayas for his early education. After boarding school in Bath, England, he went on to Oxford University, graduating in 1978 with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics.
Chris then trained as a journalist, working in newspapers and radio, including two years producing a world news service in the Seychelles Islands.
Back in the UK in 1984, Chris was captivated by the personal computer revolution and became an editor at one of the UK's early computer magazines. A year later he founded Future Publishing with a $25,000 bank loan. The new company initially focused on specialist computer publications but eventually expanded into other areas such as cycling, music, video games, technology and design, doubling in size every year for seven years. In 1994, Chris moved to the United States where he built Imagine Media, publisher of Business 2.0 magazine and creator of the popular video game users website IGN. Chris eventually merged Imagine and Future, taking the combined entity public in London in 1999, under the Future name. At its peak, it published 150 magazines and websites and employed 2,000 people.
This success allowed Chris to create a private nonprofit organization, the Sapling Foundation, with the hope of finding new ways to tackle tough global issues through media, technology, entrepreneurship and, most of all, ideas. In 2001, the foundation acquired the TED Conference, then an annual meeting of luminaries in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design held in Monterey, California, and Chris left Future to work full time on TED.
He expanded the conference's remit to cover all topics, including science, business and key global issues, while adding a Fellows program, which now has some 300 alumni, and the TED Prize, which grants its recipients "one wish to change the world." The TED stage has become a place for thinkers and doers from all fields to share their ideas and their work, capturing imaginations, sparking conversation and encouraging discovery along the way.
In 2006, TED experimented with posting some of its talks on the Internet. Their viral success encouraged Chris to begin positioning the organization as a global media initiative devoted to 'ideas worth spreading,' part of a new era of information dissemination using the power of online video. In June 2015, the organization posted its 2,000th talk online. The talks are free to view, and they have been translated into more than 100 languages with the help of volunteers from around the world. Viewership has grown to approximately one billion views per year.
Continuing a strategy of 'radical openness,' in 2009 Chris introduced the TEDx initiative, allowing free licenses to local organizers who wished to organize their own TED-like events. More than 8,000 such events have been held, generating an archive of 60,000 TEDx talks. And three years later, the TED-Ed program was launched, offering free educational videos and tools to students and teachers.
Chris Anderson | Speaker | TED.com