9781422287200

CHAPTER ONE

A Great Idea

N etflix had a big year in 2013. The online video rental company reached 40 million members and was still going strong. Getting to that point took a lot of planning, experience, and innovation . A man named Reed Hastings had seen a need in the world—and he in- vented a website to fill the hole created by that need. Netflix began as a simple online DVD rental service that only stocked a few thousand titles. It was one of the first websites of its kind in a time when DVDs were not as common as other forms of media. The com- pany did not make a profit for many years, even as its user base grew and grew. Yet Reed did not give up. He fought to expand the company because he believed Netflix would be a very important service in a