In September 2000, during the dot-com bubble, while Netflix was suffering losses, Hastings and Randolph offered to sell the company to Blockbuster for $50 million. The per-rental model was dropped by early 2000, allowing the company to focus on the business model of flat-fee unlimited rentals without due dates, late fees, shipping and handling fees, or per-title rental fees. Initially, Netflix offered a per-rental model for each DVD but introduced a monthly subscription concept in September 1999. Fearing competition from Amazon, Randolph at first thought the offer was fair, but Hastings, who owned 70% of the company, turned it down on the plane ride home. Randolph and Hastings met with Jeff Bezos, where Amazon offered to acquire Netflix for between $14 and $16 million. Netflix launched as the first DVD rental and sales website with 30 employees and 925 titles available-nearly all DVDs published. Hastings invested $2.5 million into Netflix from the sale of Pure Atria. Hastings is often quoted saying that he decided to start Netflix after being fined $40 at a Blockbuster store for being late to return a copy of Apollo 13, a claim since repudiated by Randolph. When the disc arrived intact, they decided to enter the $16 billion Home-video sales and rental industry. When they heard about DVDs, first introduced in the United States in early 1998, they tested the concept of selling or renting DVDs by mail by mailing a compact disc to Hastings's house in Santa Cruz. Hastings and Randolph considered and rejected selling and renting VHS as too expensive to stock and too delicate to ship. Randolph admired Amazon and wanted to find a large category of portable items to sell over the Internet using a similar model. Patty McCord, later head of Human Resources at Netflix, was also in the carpool group.

Hastings and Randolph came up with the idea for Netflix while carpooling between their homes in Santa Cruz, California, and Pure Atria's headquarters in Sunnyvale. He was previously a co-founder of MicroWarehouse, a computer mail-order company as well as vice president of marketing for Borland. Randolph had worked as a marketing director for Pure Software after Pure Atria acquired a company where Randolph worked. Hastings, a computer scientist and mathematician, was a cofounder of Pure Software, which was acquired by Rational Software that year for $750 million, the then biggest acquisition in Silicon Valley history. Netflix was founded by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings on August 29, 1997, in Scotts Valley, California. By 2022, original productions accounted for half of its library in the United States and the namesake company had ventured into other categories, such as video game publishing via its eponymous service.įourth and current logo, used since 2014 Launch as a mail-based rental business (1997–2006) Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix and the first CEO of the company Reed Hastings, co-founder and the current chairman and CEO began its DVD-by-mail service, Netflix is the most-subscribed video on demand streaming media service, with 238.39 million paid memberships in more than 190 countries. Launched on January 16, 2007, nearly a decade after Netflix, Inc. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple languages. Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. Worldwide (except China, North Korea, Russia and Syria) Ģ38.39 million (as of September 26, 2023 )

Equal standard release date on netflix