Reed Hastings
Co-founder, Netflix
Biography
Wilmot Reed Hastings Jr. is an American billionaire businessman. He is the co-founder of Netflix, which provides the eponymous streaming service. Hastings serves on a number of boards and works with various non-profit organizations. A former president of the California State Board of Education, Hastings is also an advocate for charter schools.
Career Timeline
(born October 8, 1960) is an American billionaire businessman.
In 1983, he graduated from Bowdoin College with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics.
He met Audrey MacLean in 1990 when she was CEO at Adaptive Corp.
Hastings left Adaptive Technology in 1991 to lay the foundation for his first company, Pure Software, which produced products to troubleshoot software.
In 1996, Pure Software announced a merger with Atria Software.
In 1997, the combined company, Pure Atria, was acquired by Rational Software, which triggered a 42% drop in both companies' stocks after the deal was announced.
In 2000, Governor Gray Davis appointed Hastings to the State Board of Education, and in 2001, Hastings became its president.
In April 2004, Hastings authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed advocating the expensing of stock options.