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美国《财富》杂志最新封面文章：群星中的俊杰(图) 财富
最新的162卷第9期的美国《财富》杂志于2010年11月下旬正式出刊，本期封面文章标题为“群星中的俊杰”。文章认为，从硅谷到好莱坞，再到华尔街的各企业高管们，对Netflix公司CEO Reed Hastings的长期经营悟性和令人称道的企业文化是赞誉有加。Hastings成功的秘诀在于他从不懈怠自己承担的重任。
无人会想到Reed Hastings出现在2010年年度成功工商人士榜单中，至少不会料到他出现在《财富》封面上。有人认为，Blockbuster、沃尔玛、苹果公司或其他竞争对手早就会把Hastings经营的DVD影视邮递租赁企业Netflix赶出业界，让他绞尽脑汁重起炉灶，或让他提前退休，打发他回家消磨时光。
然而，Hastings不仅成为《财富》2010年年度成功工商人士排名榜(Fortune\'s Businessperson of the Year list)的榜首，而且他和公司还实现了让1997年成立的Netflix公司的股票成为年度股票的杰出成就。公司股价自今年1月以来暴涨200%以上，而标普500指数同期只有可怜的7%涨幅。
以往一直在国内扩张的Netflix现已走向海外。Hastings是以雄心勃勃、勇于克服困难和承担风险的作风在经营企业，这是他成为硅谷新一代创业者中的大师级人物。他的影响力已超出硅谷。他颠覆了影视作品分销业务方式，他还在以让互联网播放影视内容更流畅，但以牺牲公司仍处在兴盛期的DVD业务为代价的方式，在改变着媒体经营模式。有线电视业仇视他，同时也让好莱坞竟不知究竟是该拥抱他还是抵制他。今天的影视作品市场交易活动实际上都存在着在线分销活动。影视界甚至认为，市场发展到当今的形态就是因为有了Netflix。
Netflix现处在成功之后的狂喜中，唯一能详尽解释公司起死回生的人就是Hastings。认真反省失败，会让Hastings尝试任何新方法、新事物。他所做的是许多企业CEO非常害怕做的事，即削弱企业正处在兴盛时期的业务。他也承认，世上大多数情形下的变化会让人瞠目结舌。
创投基金Kleiner Perkins的合伙人John Doerr对Hastings称赞道，基金虽未向Netflix公司投资，但他心中仍仰慕Hastings。他不仅在业界领先，而且还彻底地改变了整个行业。
Hastings现在再次打破常规。他要让消费者能实现直接从互联网收视各式电影的愿望。因此在未等任何业内竞争对手，无论是人们最喜欢的时代华纳(Time Warner)麾下的有线电视频道HBO，还是一些最大企业动手之前，Hastings在公司正常走向衰落之前，自己先行削弱原有业务，让公司变为经营流媒体视频业务的企业。他自称公司在参与一场新的竞赛，是在与众多规模巨大，实力雄厚的企业同台角逐。
有投资分析师在2005年时瞧不起Netflix，认为公司是没有什么价值的鸡肋，并称其股价会从当时的每股11美元跌至3美元。他们认为沃尔玛、亚马逊，甚至Blockbuster会以规模经济和稳固的客户群便可轻松击垮Netflix。但令他们未想到的是，Netflix已是亚马逊的在线影视作品分销商。其数量巨大的作品库不仅让影视界和动作片的狂热爱好者喜爱，而且Netflix在客户服务上比主要对手Blockbuster更胜一筹。即使有客户弄丢或损坏光碟，Netflix不要求他们赔偿，或把他们列入黑名单。
更令人钦佩的是Hastings从不把外界对Netflix的负面评价视为个人的恶意攻击。他甚至把负面评价悬挂在公司显眼之处，让它们成为激励经营业绩的动力，促使企业有更广的经营思路。Hastings把经营企业比作为有原告和被告的法律审判。被告必须证明自己的清白(拿出经营成果)，让原告败诉。当初评价Netflix是一块无价值鸡肋的分析师现在不得不承认自己的误判和轻率，赞叹Hastings的高明之处。Hastings认为，他人以苛刻眼光看待公司经营是有益的，它会让人们考虑和分析问题更全面、更透彻。
在了解到以邮寄方式经营出租DVD业务的没落是指日可待时，Hastings为尝试寻找替代方法曾苦苦思索过数年。公司科技团队在2000年尝试以互联网传送影视内容的效果很差，每次下载内容需花10美元宽带费，并耗时16个小时方可完成。
Hastings在2003年再次着手解决用互联网向客户传送影视内容的问题。此次解决方案是推出一个带有硬盘驱动器，售价为300美元的自主品牌的接收设备。但效果也不够理想，下载内容的时间仍过长。然而，YouTube在2005年使用的在线观看，而不是下载内容的做法给Hastings以很大启发。他决定放弃原有思路，让公司科技团队集中精力开发类似于YouTube方式的流媒体播放设备。
当新型播放设备于2007年底完成，并准备推向市场时，Hastings显得缺乏信心。他了解自己的最终目的是远程收视(TV)，而有线和卫星电视公司是不会帮助他分销新设备，因为这将与他们的在线服务形成竞争。Hastings最终也无法确信采用这类新硬件和公司专有播放权的方式是否能为大众所接受。
Hastings想要放弃以硬件方式解决内容传送的问题。他建议公司尝试以驻留在像游戏机控制盒、DVD播放机、电视机和其他任何可连接到宽带互联网的接收设备上的软件方式，让客户接收Netflix的流媒体服务。经过充分论证，公司最终认为用软件，即现在称之为应用程序的办法是能够让大众接受公司的服务方式和内容。
在Hastings看来，美国在线(AOL)的没落是出现在不愿意承担风险企业身上的警示。这个一度统治着拨号上网方式的在线服务业务的巨头，在面对宽带互联网服务扩展时已是穷途末路。其一些有特色的服务项目根本无法保证客户的忠诚度。Hastings同样认识到，若公司找不到一条能把1000多万注册客户从传统DVD租赁消费模式转向流媒体的道路，那麽，Netflix也会有相同命运。
在过渡到新业务后Netflix会面临新的竞争形势。有业界专家已警告称，Netflix有可能被谷歌、苹果或其他资金雄厚的一类大企业所击垮，被收购。但对想要进入DVD视频租赁业务的新入行者而言，他们仍有障碍，例如，Netflix在依托全美56个大型库房经营，并与全美邮政服务网建立了强劲的纽带关系。但流媒体领域内的情形则完全不同，人人都能在与Level3，Limelight和Akamai这类数据传输公司签订合同后就开始大批量下载信息。
DVD出租业务同样有遵从美国版权法的有利条件。该法律本质上规定，若有人拥有光碟，他可以此做他想要做的任何事情。作为Netflix的最后退路，公司甚至可到沃尔玛大量购买DVD光碟，然后在无需制片厂的许可下向客户出租。但在适用于付费电视法律的流媒体领域内，以上情形绝不会出现。Netflix要麽按制片厂要求付费，要麽公司得不到任何影视作品内容，使其在作品正式发布和推出DVD后的数年内，被卡在\"窗口(\'windows\')上，而获得内容的代价可能会持续大增。
然而，Hastings对此从未感到不安。获得内容的代价的确会大幅飙升，但只要他能让注册客户保持增长就能维持利润率。他同样不惧价格战，因这是他以往经营时的拿手好戏。Hastings当然也会对市场发展有所担心，其中包括来自HBO频道、Hulu.com和DVD零租公司RedBox的直接竞争。此外，Hastings从不认为公司能够满足人们所需的全部娱乐消费形式。Netflix的客户仍然会去电影院，他们也会选择收视付费有线电视的影视内容，或通过iTunes下载影视内容。但他认为，公司是在以客户每月9美元付费前提下，为他们提供应得的最大价值。
然而，最令Hastings担忧的可能是被一种尚未走向正规，且让Netflix既无法抗拒，又难以保全自己的服务形式，即此时此刻流行于所有最具影响力势头之上的Facebook。其用户可绕过Netflix的业务，通过Facebook从自己的朋友处得到想要的影视内容。人们可以想象到这种以社交－数据流为中心的强劲势头的威力，它全然不理睬业内企业付出的艰苦努力。但是，Hastings对让客户流失，动摇经营根基的趋势绝不会无动于衷。他表示，若类似情形出现，公司会迅速集中全部力量应对，决不坐以待毙。
公司今后面对的问题正是Hastings创建Netflix后要努力解决的问题。然而，他面对的问题变得更复杂、更棘手，但不论结果怎样，他都愿意尝试。
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Reed Hastings: Leader of the pack
Posted by Michael V. Copeland, Senior Writer
November 18, 2010 12:00 AM
Executives from Silicon Valley to Hollywood to Wall Street admires his savvy persistence - and his company\'s cool culture. The secret to the Netflix CEO\'s success? He never stops looking over his shoulder.
Reed Hastings isn\'t supposed to be here -- not on a list of the year\'s top businesspeople, and certainly not on the cover of Fortune. His DVD-by-mail company, Netflix, was supposed to have flamed out by now, a one-trick pony that was destined to be crushed by Blockbuster or Wal-Mart or Apple or you name it. He and his little red envelopes were supposed to be long gone, with Hastings toiling at some new startup, or perhaps enjoying an early retirement in Santa Cruz, Calif., the laid-back seaside city he calls home.
Whoops. Not only has Hastings earned the No. 1 spot on Fortune\'s Businessperson of the Year list, he and Netflix (NFLX) are also killing it: The company he founded in 1997 is the stock of the year, up more than 200% since January, vs. the S&P 500\'s tepid 7% gain. Its shares have run laps around even Apple\'s. Expanding at home, and now internationally, Hastings has built his company on a hard-driving and risk-taking culture that has made him a guru to a new generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. And his reach extends far beyond the Valley. Hastings already upended the movie distribution business; now he\'s changing the media game again by streaming movies and television shows over the Internet -- at the expense of Netflix\'s still-booming DVD business. Cable companies hate him. Hollywood studios aren\'t sure whether to embrace him or fend him off. Virtually every movie deal today includes an online-distribution component. Declares film producer Harvey Weinstein: \"It\'s because of Netflix.\"
Now that Netflix is on a tear, perhaps the only person who does dwell on the company\'s near-death episodes is Hastings himself. Not because he wants to stick out his tongue at the haters, but because those experiences are what keep Netflix from losing its edge. An obsession with failure inspires Hastings to try new things, like offering $1 million to anyone who can make Netflix\'s movie recommendation algorithms better. It also drives him to do what so many CEOs are afraid to do: cannibalize their own businesses.
\"Does the firm survive?\" Hastings asks. Dressed comfortably in jeans, burnished brown monk-strap shoes, and a white shirt, Hastings, 50, is kicking back in a courtyard at Netflix\'s vaguely Italianate headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif. A fountain bubbles quietly in the background. \"The turnover in the S&P 500 is terrifying,\" he continues. \"Most of the time change in the world overtakes you.\"
That restless, slightly paranoid attitude, combined with a Steve Jobs-like perfectionist streak, is what sets Hastings apart, says Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr. \"He\'s a hero of mine, as a human and as a leader,\" says Doerr, whose firm didn\'t back Netflix. \"Reed was ahead on the technology curve with the DVD and completely changed an industry.\"
And he\'s about to do it again. Hastings anticipated, virtually from the moment he started Netflix, that consumers would eventually prefer to get movies instantly delivered via the Internet. (Hastings\' foresight is amazing, considering that back in 2000, less than 7% of U.S. homes had broadband.) And so rather than let any number of current and potential competitors -- including premium cable channels like HBO (owned by Time Warner, parent of Fortune\'s publisher) and some of the biggest companies in the tech world -- swoop in and deliver a lethal blow, Hastings is now retooling Netflix as a streaming-video company, disrupting his own business before it gets disrupted.
\"We are in a new race, and we are a player with some very large and substantial firms,\" he says. \"Just to be in that league is an amazing place from where we were.\"
Don\'t take it personally
In January 2005, Wedbush Securities stock analyst Michael Pachter called Netflix a \"worthless piece of crap.\" He put a price target of $3 on the stock, at the time trading around $11. The doubters thought Blockbuster, Wal-Mart (WMT), or Amazon (AMZN), with their economies of scale and established customer bases, would simply destroy Netflix. What Pachter and others missed is that Netflix already was the Amazon of online movie distribution. Not only did its enormous library of titles satisfy film snobs and action-movie buffs alike, but Netflix also excelled at customer service -- something few people ever said about Blockbuster. Can\'t get that DVD to play? Send it back, no questions asked. Lose a few discs? No problem. Netflix didn\'t charge you or rake you over the coals.
When competitors did come after his subscribers, Hastings fought back by lowering prices on subscriptions, and thanks to his longtime technology consigliere, Neil Hunt, the CEO sought to make the personalized experience on the Netflix website better and better. Still, Hastings acknowledges that he benefited from chaos at the competition. Blockbuster, which declared bankruptcy earlier this year, had been saddled with $1 billion in debt, and investor Carl Icahn declined to keep pouring more money into the retailer. If he had, Netflix might not have survived.
Hastings says he has never taken the comments of those who underestimate Netflix personally. Instead, he uses them to motivate and spark ideas at Netflix. A black poster emblazoned with Pachter\'s photo and his \"piece of crap\" comment hangs outside a kitchen at Netflix today. (Pachter, with an embarrassed chuckle, now says he regrets making that statement. \"Reed is clearly a visionary,\" he says.) Running a business is akin to a legal trial, Hasting says, with prosecutors and defenders offering different viewpoints. \"I think it is healthy to have smart people make a number of negative arguments about Netflix. It sharpens our thinking.\"
And that\'s what gets Hastings jazzed, solving subtle yet tough problems alongside the smartest people he can find. \"For me the thrill is making a contribution by solving hard problems,\" he says. It all sounds wonderfully introspective and balanced, especially coming from a guy in faded jeans and a graying goatee, but Hastings wasn\'t always so enlightened. In fact, a couple of decades ago he was as hardheaded as they come. So much so that he earned the nickname \"Animal.\"
An \"Animal\" is born
Hastings grew up in Belmont, Mass., a suburb of Boston, and headed to Bowdoin College in Maine, where he ran the Outing Club, organizing climbing and canoeing trips. After a misdirected, six-week officer-training camp with the Marines, Hastings ended up in the Peace Corps, teaching math in Swaziland before returning to the U.S., where he earned a master\'s degree in computer science at Stanford. But some of the Peace Corps has never left Hastings. He is still passionate about public education (another big problem he is working to solve), and he loves the peace of being outdoors. Unlike most Silicon Valley denizens who live in Mountain View or Palo Alto, Hastings opted for the more low-key vibe of La Honda, an unincorporated town west of the Valley that was once home to Ken Kesey and other counterculture types. (Today he lives in Santa Cruz.)
When he was 30, Hastings started a company called Pure Software. Neil Hunt was there in the early days of Pure, as was Patty McCord, who now heads human resources at Netflix. Hastings grew Pure, a public company that built tools for Unix software developers, by making three acquisitions in 18 months. \"It was chaos,\" Hastings recalls. When Pure was acquired by Rational Software in 1997 for $750 million, it made him a wealthy man, but Hastings realized he had helped build a company of which he wanted no part.
Part of the problem, Hastings says, was that Pure had done so many quick acquisitions that it never developed a distinct culture. It was an incredibly hard-driving place, with Hastings leading the charge (thus the nickname \"Animal,\" courtesy of McCord). So while sales were doubling every year through most of the \'90s, turnover in Pure\'s executive ranks was enormous. Meetings were combative. \"We were all young and didn\'t know any better,\" Hastings says.
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The management team at Rational Software (later bought by IBM (IBM) ), by contrast, had been together for almost two decades. \"It was so different how they operated -- the level of trust and the quality of interaction between them was impressive,\" Hastings says. \"That gave me a North Star, something I wanted to grow toward.\" The next company he built, using some of the money from his sale of Pure, would be Netflix. (A $40 late fee on a movie rental helped inspire the venture.)
From that first day in 1997, Hastings focused on the startup\'s culture, making it a place he enjoyed coming to every day, with people who pushed him intellectually, and a company of which he could be proud. He persuaded Hunt and McCord to join him. (\"Yes, I relented to work with him again,\" McCord says.) Today at Netflix the entire executive team has been with the company more than a decade, and the trust they have in one another is one of the keys to the company\'s success.
Believe us when we tell you that Netflix is a workplace like no other. When Hastings made public a 128-page PowerPoint presentation titled \"Freedom and Responsibility Culture\" in the summer of 2009, the slide deck was inhaled by entrepreneurs across the web. At Netflix there is no vacation policy; employees take what they need as long as they get their job done. There are no strict compensation rules; workers choose their stock-to-cash ratios. There are few formal titles. Netflix employees come to the office, work extraordinarily hard, and they go home. There are no beer bashes. It is a place for adults, now numbering about 600 salaried employees. \"If you are looking for perks, this is the wrong place,\" McCord says. \"The fun we have here is all about building products.\"
As for \"Animal,\" he has changed his approach. \"I am much more honest and direct, but not confrontational,\" Hastings says. When he hears ideas that seem too silly, he doesn\'t roll his eyes. Instead he digs deeper. He\'ll respond, \"I don\'t understand why you think that is smart. Help me to understand that.\" Adds Hastings: \"I didn\'t know how to do any of that at Pure Software.\"
Ditching hardware altogether
Even though Hastings knew the DVD\'s days were numbered, he was stymied for years trying to find something that could replace it. As early as 2000, Hastings and his technical team were working on ways to bring movies to the home via the Internet. The best the Netflix team could do initially was deliver a movie over the Internet in about 16 hours for $10 in bandwidth fees. (Remember, broadband was in its infancy, and as a small company Netflix could scarcely afford to buy network capacity in bulk.) Hastings shut the effort down and went back to focusing on DVDs and Netflix\'s public offering in 2002.
Hastings took a run at the problem of delivering movies via the Internet again in late 2003. The result was a $300 Netflix-branded box with a hard drive that connected to your movie queue. It took six hours for Teen Wolf to download, but the theory was that movies from your queue could slowly arrive in the background while you slept or were at work. Then, in 2005, YouTube came along, showing the world you could watch videos instantly rather than wait hours for a movie to download. For Hastings it was a revelation. \"It was immediately apparent that the click-and-watch approach was fantastic,\" Hastings says. He killed the hard-drive device and put his team to work on a streaming machine, a sort of YouTube-in-a-box.
Like the hard drive that Hastings killed off, the streaming player was originally meant to be a branded piece of hardware produced and sold by Netflix. In mid-December 2007, with the box finally ready to go on store shelves and an advertising campaign about to launch, Hastings had a crisis of confidence. What he really wanted was a path to the TV. He knew cable and satellite companies weren\'t going to help him distribute a Netflix device, since it would compete with their on-demand services. And ultimately he wasn\'t convinced that another piece of hardware, and one exclusive to Netflix, was the way to reach the masses.
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Hastings wanted to ditch hardware altogether. Netflix, he suggested, should try to reach consumers through software that could be embedded in all kinds of devices. It could reside in game consoles, DVD players, TVs, anything that could connect to the broadband Internet and deliver the nascent Netflix streaming service. Netflix\'s vaunted culture kicked in: An intelligent, no-question-is-too-crazy debate about Netflix\'s future ensued. The consensus: Software (today known as apps) would allow Netflix to reach as many screens as possible.
This time the Netflix streaming player wasn\'t totally killed; Netflix spun off the technology into an existing company called Roku, which today makes a digital device that plays content via software from Netflix but also from companies such as Hulu and Amazon. (Netflix sold its stake in Roku to other investors about two years ago.) Hasting says backing away from a Netflix-branded box was painful. \"But if you are not genuinely pained by the risk involved in your strategic choices, it\'s not much of a strategy,\" he says.
For Hastings the decline of AOL (AOL) is a reminder of what happens to companies unwilling to take risks. AOL, the dominant dial-up online service, struggled as broadband service proliferated. It had good e- mail and some unique content, but those services didn\'t buy AOL loyalty or make it synonymous with broadband, and ultimately AOL lost customers. Hastings knew a similar fate could befall Netflix if it couldn\'t find a way to shift its 10 million subscribers from DVD to streaming. Hastings and his team needed to offer customers something so incredible that it would woo them to the new technology before someone else beat them to it. Even as they were wrapping up the spinout of Roku, Hastings, Hunt, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos, and the head of marketing, Leslie Kilgore, convened in a conference room dubbed Towering Inferno and came up with a radical plan: They would give streaming away.
Getting customers to streaming
Sarandos, who spent most of his career in the home-video business, had forged close ties with all the Hollywood studios, which see Netflix as a key partner in getting newly released DVDs into the hands of movie buffs. But the studios were seeking big premiums to add streaming to their new-releases distribution agreements with Netflix. They also were concerned that the relatively low quality of streaming video would leave consumers with a poor impression of their films.
So how to lure subscribers to streaming via Netflix? Hastings\' team began experimenting with older films and TV shows that were cheap to acquire for streaming, and they layered on Netflix\'s personalization technology. The algorithms that directed customers to the new releases they\'d love also pointed them to undiscovered, older gems. Hastings figured he could offer unlimited streaming at no extra cost. By buying bandwidth in bulk from outfits like AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) and then hiring companies like Akamai (AKAM) to help deliver the data efficiently, it is able to stream a movie to customers for an average of 5¢ a film, compared with about $1 in roundtrip mailing and labor fees for a DVD.
Hastings bet that all-you-can-eat access to a catalogue of content, even if it was older, combined with the immediacy of streaming would trump the lack of blockbusters. The gamble is paying off: In the third quarter of this year, about 66% of subscribers used the streaming service for at least 15 minutes, compared with 55% at the beginning of 2010 and just 37% in mid-2009. The Netflix service is now available on more than 200 electronic devices, from iPads to smart TVs to smartphones -- and subscribers can easily watch on their desktops and laptops. In August, Sarandos cut a deal with Epix, a three-studio joint venture, to stream relatively new movies from Paramount, Lions Gate (LGF), and MGM. Valued at about $1 billion over five years, it surprised and unsettled competitors in the pay-TV world. Hastings had thrown down a gauntlet. Streaming over the Internet would be a player.
Stream this! How Netflix chooses for you
Philippe Dauman, CEO of Viacom (VIA), hailed the deal as a victory for his company. Viacom owns a majority share of Epix, and Dauman participated in the negotiations with Netflix. The Epix transaction created yet another distribution window for the content companies, one that not only preserved the cable companies\' exclusive window for offering new releases on demand, but also protected the studios\' DVD sales business. The upshot? Dauman gets incremental revenue from his movies and TV shows. \"My only regret is that I didn\'t ask for warrants on Reed\'s stock,\" Dauman says. \"It soared as soon as the deal was announced.\"
So, too, did the jitters among many of Dauman\'s rivals, which are pushing their own streaming services such as TV Everywhere, a strategy -- championed by Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes -- that lets existing pay-TV subscribers access television and movies on devices such as smartphones and computers. The idea is to preserve the exclusivity of content for those who subscribe to it. Time Warner\'s HBO unit thus far has refused to sell streaming rights to Netflix; it offers its own Internet-based streaming service to HBO subscribers. \"I am sure that, in the nicest possible way, in the offices of HBO and Showtime, there is probably a target with Ted [Sarandos] and Reed\'s picture,\" says Harvey Weinstein. \"But so what? That is what makes it all great -- the fact that there is competition brewing and that these guys are that good.\"
Loving every problem
And is there ever competition. Pundits and analysts like Pachter now are warning that Netflix could be crushed in a twinkling (or acquired) by the likes of Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), or some other well-funded company. There are some barriers to getting into the DVD business -- for example, Netflix operates 56 warehouses across the country and has built strong ties with the postal service. In the streaming world? Not so much: Everyone can stream bits via contracts with data-delivery companies like Level 3 (LVLT), Limelight (LLNW), and Akamai.
The DVD rental business also has the advantage of hewing to U.S. copyright law, which essentially states that if you own a disc, you can do whatever you want with it. As a last resort, Netflix could always just go to Wal-Mart and buy thousands of copies of DVDs to rent without studio permission. In streaming, which falls under pay-TV rules, that option doesn\'t exist. So either Netflix pays the studios what they want or it doesn\'t get that content, which can be locked up in \"windows\" for years following theatrical and DVD release. Content acquisition costs could go through the roof.
Hastings for the most part is unperturbed. Yes, content acquisition costs could soar, but as long as he keeps subscriptions growing, he can maintain his margins. Could a price war develop as some deep-pocketed rival moves in? Sure, but he\'s been there before. \"Those are at least two of 10 scenarios that worry us,\" Hastings says. Others include the arrival of direct competition from HBO, Hulu.com, and DVD kiosk service RedBox. To be sure, Hastings doesn\'t think Netflix will ever provide all the entertainment people want. His customers will also go to movie theaters, opt for pay-per-view on cable, or download via iTunes. \"We don\'t have to be exclusive,\" Hastings says. \"We just have to provide enough value that you stay with us for $9 a month.\"
Perhaps what worries Hastings most is being caught off-guard by a service that has yet to be built, probably running on top of the biggest wave of the moment, Facebook. Everyone gets movie suggestions from friends on Facebook, bypassing Netflix altogether. \"You can imagine something being very social-stream-centric that just ignores all the data-driven things we do,\" Hastings says. Not that Hastings plans to stand by and watch social media pick off his customers: \"If something like that happens, we have to co-opt those advantages quickly and not allow it to become a vulnerability.\" Hastings\' face takes on a thoughtful cast, and then he smiles. These are exactly the kinds of cool, knotty issues Hastings built Netflix to tackle. The problems he\'s solving are getting thornier, and he\'s loving it.
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美国《财富》杂志最新封面文章：群星中的俊杰(图) 财富
最新的162卷第9期的美国《财富》杂志于2010年11月下旬正式出刊，本期封面文章标题为“群星中的俊杰”。文章认为，从硅谷到好莱坞，再到华尔街的各企业高管们，对Netflix公司CEO Reed Hastings的长期经营悟性和令人称道的企业文化是赞誉有加。Hastings成功的秘诀在于他从不懈怠自己承担的重任。
无人会想到Reed Hastings出现在2010年年度成功工商人士榜单中，至少不会料到他出现在《财富》封面上。有人认为，Blockbuster、沃尔玛、苹果公司或其他竞争对手早就会把Hastings经营的DVD影视邮递租赁企业Netflix赶出业界，让他绞尽脑汁重起炉灶，或让他提前退休，打发他回家消磨时光。
然而，Hastings不仅成为《财富》2010年年度成功工商人士排名榜(Fortune\'s Businessperson of the Year list)的榜首，而且他和公司还实现了让1997年成立的Netflix公司的股票成为年度股票的杰出成就。公司股价自今年1月以来暴涨200%以上，而标普500指数同期只有可怜的7%涨幅。
以往一直在国内扩张的Netflix现已走向海外。Hastings是以雄心勃勃、勇于克服困难和承担风险的作风在经营企业，这是他成为硅谷新一代创业者中的大师级人物。他的影响力已超出硅谷。他颠覆了影视作品分销业务方式，他还在以让互联网播放影视内容更流畅，但以牺牲公司仍处在兴盛期的DVD业务为代价的方式，在改变着媒体经营模式。有线电视业仇视他，同时也让好莱坞竟不知究竟是该拥抱他还是抵制他。今天的影视作品市场交易活动实际上都存在着在线分销活动。影视界甚至认为，市场发展到当今的形态就是因为有了Netflix。
Netflix现处在成功之后的狂喜中，唯一能详尽解释公司起死回生的人就是Hastings。认真反省失败，会让Hastings尝试任何新方法、新事物。他所做的是许多企业CEO非常害怕做的事，即削弱企业正处在兴盛时期的业务。他也承认，世上大多数情形下的变化会让人瞠目结舌。
创投基金Kleiner Perkins的合伙人John Doerr对Hastings称赞道，基金虽未向Netflix公司投资，但他心中仍仰慕Hastings。他不仅在业界领先，而且还彻底地改变了整个行业。
Hastings现在再次打破常规。他要让消费者能实现直接从互联网收视各式电影的愿望。因此在未等任何业内竞争对手，无论是人们最喜欢的时代华纳(Time Warner)麾下的有线电视频道HBO，还是一些最大企业动手之前，Hastings在公司正常走向衰落之前，自己先行削弱原有业务，让公司变为经营流媒体视频业务的企业。他自称公司在参与一场新的竞赛，是在与众多规模巨大，实力雄厚的企业同台角逐。
有投资分析师在2005年时瞧不起Netflix，认为公司是没有什么价值的鸡肋，并称其股价会从当时的每股11美元跌至3美元。他们认为沃尔玛、亚马逊，甚至Blockbuster会以规模经济和稳固的客户群便可轻松击垮Netflix。但令他们未想到的是，Netflix已是亚马逊的在线影视作品分销商。其数量巨大的作品库不仅让影视界和动作片的狂热爱好者喜爱，而且Netflix在客户服务上比主要对手Blockbuster更胜一筹。即使有客户弄丢或损坏光碟，Netflix不要求他们赔偿，或把他们列入黑名单。
更令人钦佩的是Hastings从不把外界对Netflix的负面评价视为个人的恶意攻击。他甚至把负面评价悬挂在公司显眼之处，让它们成为激励经营业绩的动力，促使企业有更广的经营思路。Hastings把经营企业比作为有原告和被告的法律审判。被告必须证明自己的清白(拿出经营成果)，让原告败诉。当初评价Netflix是一块无价值鸡肋的分析师现在不得不承认自己的误判和轻率，赞叹Hastings的高明之处。Hastings认为，他人以苛刻眼光看待公司经营是有益的，它会让人们考虑和分析问题更全面、更透彻。
在了解到以邮寄方式经营出租DVD业务的没落是指日可待时，Hastings为尝试寻找替代方法曾苦苦思索过数年。公司科技团队在2000年尝试以互联网传送影视内容的效果很差，每次下载内容需花10美元宽带费，并耗时16个小时方可完成。
Hastings在2003年再次着手解决用互联网向客户传送影视内容的问题。此次解决方案是推出一个带有硬盘驱动器，售价为300美元的自主品牌的接收设备。但效果也不够理想，下载内容的时间仍过长。然而，YouTube在2005年使用的在线观看，而不是下载内容的做法给Hastings以很大启发。他决定放弃原有思路，让公司科技团队集中精力开发类似于YouTube方式的流媒体播放设备。
当新型播放设备于2007年底完成，并准备推向市场时，Hastings显得缺乏信心。他了解自己的最终目的是远程收视(TV)，而有线和卫星电视公司是不会帮助他分销新设备，因为这将与他们的在线服务形成竞争。Hastings最终也无法确信采用这类新硬件和公司专有播放权的方式是否能为大众所接受。
Hastings想要放弃以硬件方式解决内容传送的问题。他建议公司尝试以驻留在像游戏机控制盒、DVD播放机、电视机和其他任何可连接到宽带互联网的接收设备上的软件方式，让客户接收Netflix的流媒体服务。经过充分论证，公司最终认为用软件，即现在称之为应用程序的办法是能够让大众接受公司的服务方式和内容。
在Hastings看来，美国在线(AOL)的没落是出现在不愿意承担风险企业身上的警示。这个一度统治着拨号上网方式的在线服务业务的巨头，在面对宽带互联网服务扩展时已是穷途末路。其一些有特色的服务项目根本无法保证客户的忠诚度。Hastings同样认识到，若公司找不到一条能把1000多万注册客户从传统DVD租赁消费模式转向流媒体的道路，那麽，Netflix也会有相同命运。
在过渡到新业务后Netflix会面临新的竞争形势。有业界专家已警告称，Netflix有可能被谷歌、苹果或其他资金雄厚的一类大企业所击垮，被收购。但对想要进入DVD视频租赁业务的新入行者而言，他们仍有障碍，例如，Netflix在依托全美56个大型库房经营，并与全美邮政服务网建立了强劲的纽带关系。但流媒体领域内的情形则完全不同，人人都能在与Level3，Limelight和Akamai这类数据传输公司签订合同后就开始大批量下载信息。
DVD出租业务同样有遵从美国版权法的有利条件。该法律本质上规定，若有人拥有光碟，他可以此做他想要做的任何事情。作为Netflix的最后退路，公司甚至可到沃尔玛大量购买DVD光碟，然后在无需制片厂的许可下向客户出租。但在适用于付费电视法律的流媒体领域内，以上情形绝不会出现。Netflix要麽按制片厂要求付费，要麽公司得不到任何影视作品内容，使其在作品正式发布和推出DVD后的数年内，被卡在\"窗口(\'windows\')上，而获得内容的代价可能会持续大增。
然而，Hastings对此从未感到不安。获得内容的代价的确会大幅飙升，但只要他能让注册客户保持增长就能维持利润率。他同样不惧价格战，因这是他以往经营时的拿手好戏。Hastings当然也会对市场发展有所担心，其中包括来自HBO频道、Hulu.com和DVD零租公司RedBox的直接竞争。此外，Hastings从不认为公司能够满足人们所需的全部娱乐消费形式。Netflix的客户仍然会去电影院，他们也会选择收视付费有线电视的影视内容，或通过iTunes下载影视内容。但他认为，公司是在以客户每月9美元付费前提下，为他们提供应得的最大价值。
然而，最令Hastings担忧的可能是被一种尚未走向正规，且让Netflix既无法抗拒，又难以保全自己的服务形式，即此时此刻流行于所有最具影响力势头之上的Facebook。其用户可绕过Netflix的业务，通过Facebook从自己的朋友处得到想要的影视内容。人们可以想象到这种以社交－数据流为中心的强劲势头的威力，它全然不理睬业内企业付出的艰苦努力。但是，Hastings对让客户流失，动摇经营根基的趋势绝不会无动于衷。他表示，若类似情形出现，公司会迅速集中全部力量应对，决不坐以待毙。
公司今后面对的问题正是Hastings创建Netflix后要努力解决的问题。然而，他面对的问题变得更复杂、更棘手，但不论结果怎样，他都愿意尝试。
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Reed Hastings: Leader of the pack
Posted by Michael V. Copeland, Senior Writer
November 18, 2010 12:00 AM
Executives from Silicon Valley to Hollywood to Wall Street admires his savvy persistence - and his company\'s cool culture. The secret to the Netflix CEO\'s success? He never stops looking over his shoulder.
Reed Hastings isn\'t supposed to be here -- not on a list of the year\'s top businesspeople, and certainly not on the cover of Fortune. His DVD-by-mail company, Netflix, was supposed to have flamed out by now, a one-trick pony that was destined to be crushed by Blockbuster or Wal-Mart or Apple or you name it. He and his little red envelopes were supposed to be long gone, with Hastings toiling at some new startup, or perhaps enjoying an early retirement in Santa Cruz, Calif., the laid-back seaside city he calls home.
Whoops. Not only has Hastings earned the No. 1 spot on Fortune\'s Businessperson of the Year list, he and Netflix (NFLX) are also killing it: The company he founded in 1997 is the stock of the year, up more than 200% since January, vs. the S&P 500\'s tepid 7% gain. Its shares have run laps around even Apple\'s. Expanding at home, and now internationally, Hastings has built his company on a hard-driving and risk-taking culture that has made him a guru to a new generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. And his reach extends far beyond the Valley. Hastings already upended the movie distribution business; now he\'s changing the media game again by streaming movies and television shows over the Internet -- at the expense of Netflix\'s still-booming DVD business. Cable companies hate him. Hollywood studios aren\'t sure whether to embrace him or fend him off. Virtually every movie deal today includes an online-distribution component. Declares film producer Harvey Weinstein: \"It\'s because of Netflix.\"
Now that Netflix is on a tear, perhaps the only person who does dwell on the company\'s near-death episodes is Hastings himself. Not because he wants to stick out his tongue at the haters, but because those experiences are what keep Netflix from losing its edge. An obsession with failure inspires Hastings to try new things, like offering $1 million to anyone who can make Netflix\'s movie recommendation algorithms better. It also drives him to do what so many CEOs are afraid to do: cannibalize their own businesses.
\"Does the firm survive?\" Hastings asks. Dressed comfortably in jeans, burnished brown monk-strap shoes, and a white shirt, Hastings, 50, is kicking back in a courtyard at Netflix\'s vaguely Italianate headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif. A fountain bubbles quietly in the background. \"The turnover in the S&P 500 is terrifying,\" he continues. \"Most of the time change in the world overtakes you.\"
That restless, slightly paranoid attitude, combined with a Steve Jobs-like perfectionist streak, is what sets Hastings apart, says Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr. \"He\'s a hero of mine, as a human and as a leader,\" says Doerr, whose firm didn\'t back Netflix. \"Reed was ahead on the technology curve with the DVD and completely changed an industry.\"
And he\'s about to do it again. Hastings anticipated, virtually from the moment he started Netflix, that consumers would eventually prefer to get movies instantly delivered via the Internet. (Hastings\' foresight is amazing, considering that back in 2000, less than 7% of U.S. homes had broadband.) And so rather than let any number of current and potential competitors -- including premium cable channels like HBO (owned by Time Warner, parent of Fortune\'s publisher) and some of the biggest companies in the tech world -- swoop in and deliver a lethal blow, Hastings is now retooling Netflix as a streaming-video company, disrupting his own business before it gets disrupted.
\"We are in a new race, and we are a player with some very large and substantial firms,\" he says. \"Just to be in that league is an amazing place from where we were.\"
Don\'t take it personally
In January 2005, Wedbush Securities stock analyst Michael Pachter called Netflix a \"worthless piece of crap.\" He put a price target of $3 on the stock, at the time trading around $11. The doubters thought Blockbuster, Wal-Mart (WMT), or Amazon (AMZN), with their economies of scale and established customer bases, would simply destroy Netflix. What Pachter and others missed is that Netflix already was the Amazon of online movie distribution. Not only did its enormous library of titles satisfy film snobs and action-movie buffs alike, but Netflix also excelled at customer service -- something few people ever said about Blockbuster. Can\'t get that DVD to play? Send it back, no questions asked. Lose a few discs? No problem. Netflix didn\'t charge you or rake you over the coals.
When competitors did come after his subscribers, Hastings fought back by lowering prices on subscriptions, and thanks to his longtime technology consigliere, Neil Hunt, the CEO sought to make the personalized experience on the Netflix website better and better. Still, Hastings acknowledges that he benefited from chaos at the competition. Blockbuster, which declared bankruptcy earlier this year, had been saddled with $1 billion in debt, and investor Carl Icahn declined to keep pouring more money into the retailer. If he had, Netflix might not have survived.
Hastings says he has never taken the comments of those who underestimate Netflix personally. Instead, he uses them to motivate and spark ideas at Netflix. A black poster emblazoned with Pachter\'s photo and his \"piece of crap\" comment hangs outside a kitchen at Netflix today. (Pachter, with an embarrassed chuckle, now says he regrets making that statement. \"Reed is clearly a visionary,\" he says.) Running a business is akin to a legal trial, Hasting says, with prosecutors and defenders offering different viewpoints. \"I think it is healthy to have smart people make a number of negative arguments about Netflix. It sharpens our thinking.\"
And that\'s what gets Hastings jazzed, solving subtle yet tough problems alongside the smartest people he can find. \"For me the thrill is making a contribution by solving hard problems,\" he says. It all sounds wonderfully introspective and balanced, especially coming from a guy in faded jeans and a graying goatee, but Hastings wasn\'t always so enlightened. In fact, a couple of decades ago he was as hardheaded as they come. So much so that he earned the nickname \"Animal.\"
An \"Animal\" is born
Hastings grew up in Belmont, Mass., a suburb of Boston, and headed to Bowdoin College in Maine, where he ran the Outing Club, organizing climbing and canoeing trips. After a misdirected, six-week officer-training camp with the Marines, Hastings ended up in the Peace Corps, teaching math in Swaziland before returning to the U.S., where he earned a master\'s degree in computer science at Stanford. But some of the Peace Corps has never left Hastings. He is still passionate about public education (another big problem he is working to solve), and he loves the peace of being outdoors. Unlike most Silicon Valley denizens who live in Mountain View or Palo Alto, Hastings opted for the more low-key vibe of La Honda, an unincorporated town west of the Valley that was once home to Ken Kesey and other counterculture types. (Today he lives in Santa Cruz.)
When he was 30, Hastings started a company called Pure Software. Neil Hunt was there in the early days of Pure, as was Patty McCord, who now heads human resources at Netflix. Hastings grew Pure, a public company that built tools for Unix software developers, by making three acquisitions in 18 months. \"It was chaos,\" Hastings recalls. When Pure was acquired by Rational Software in 1997 for $750 million, it made him a wealthy man, but Hastings realized he had helped build a company of which he wanted no part.
Part of the problem, Hastings says, was that Pure had done so many quick acquisitions that it never developed a distinct culture. It was an incredibly hard-driving place, with Hastings leading the charge (thus the nickname \"Animal,\" courtesy of McCord). So while sales were doubling every year through most of the \'90s, turnover in Pure\'s executive ranks was enormous. Meetings were combative. \"We were all young and didn\'t know any better,\" Hastings says.
Businessperson of the Year: The full list
The management team at Rational Software (later bought by IBM (IBM) ), by contrast, had been together for almost two decades. \"It was so different how they operated -- the level of trust and the quality of interaction between them was impressive,\" Hastings says. \"That gave me a North Star, something I wanted to grow toward.\" The next company he built, using some of the money from his sale of Pure, would be Netflix. (A $40 late fee on a movie rental helped inspire the venture.)
From that first day in 1997, Hastings focused on the startup\'s culture, making it a place he enjoyed coming to every day, with people who pushed him intellectually, and a company of which he could be proud. He persuaded Hunt and McCord to join him. (\"Yes, I relented to work with him again,\" McCord says.) Today at Netflix the entire executive team has been with the company more than a decade, and the trust they have in one another is one of the keys to the company\'s success.
Believe us when we tell you that Netflix is a workplace like no other. When Hastings made public a 128-page PowerPoint presentation titled \"Freedom and Responsibility Culture\" in the summer of 2009, the slide deck was inhaled by entrepreneurs across the web. At Netflix there is no vacation policy; employees take what they need as long as they get their job done. There are no strict compensation rules; workers choose their stock-to-cash ratios. There are few formal titles. Netflix employees come to the office, work extraordinarily hard, and they go home. There are no beer bashes. It is a place for adults, now numbering about 600 salaried employees. \"If you are looking for perks, this is the wrong place,\" McCord says. \"The fun we have here is all about building products.\"
As for \"Animal,\" he has changed his approach. \"I am much more honest and direct, but not confrontational,\" Hastings says. When he hears ideas that seem too silly, he doesn\'t roll his eyes. Instead he digs deeper. He\'ll respond, \"I don\'t understand why you think that is smart. Help me to understand that.\" Adds Hastings: \"I didn\'t know how to do any of that at Pure Software.\"
Ditching hardware altogether
Even though Hastings knew the DVD\'s days were numbered, he was stymied for years trying to find something that could replace it. As early as 2000, Hastings and his technical team were working on ways to bring movies to the home via the Internet. The best the Netflix team could do initially was deliver a movie over the Internet in about 16 hours for $10 in bandwidth fees. (Remember, broadband was in its infancy, and as a small company Netflix could scarcely afford to buy network capacity in bulk.) Hastings shut the effort down and went back to focusing on DVDs and Netflix\'s public offering in 2002.
Hastings took a run at the problem of delivering movies via the Internet again in late 2003. The result was a $300 Netflix-branded box with a hard drive that connected to your movie queue. It took six hours for Teen Wolf to download, but the theory was that movies from your queue could slowly arrive in the background while you slept or were at work. Then, in 2005, YouTube came along, showing the world you could watch videos instantly rather than wait hours for a movie to download. For Hastings it was a revelation. \"It was immediately apparent that the click-and-watch approach was fantastic,\" Hastings says. He killed the hard-drive device and put his team to work on a streaming machine, a sort of YouTube-in-a-box.
Like the hard drive that Hastings killed off, the streaming player was originally meant to be a branded piece of hardware produced and sold by Netflix. In mid-December 2007, with the box finally ready to go on store shelves and an advertising campaign about to launch, Hastings had a crisis of confidence. What he really wanted was a path to the TV. He knew cable and satellite companies weren\'t going to help him distribute a Netflix device, since it would compete with their on-demand services. And ultimately he wasn\'t convinced that another piece of hardware, and one exclusive to Netflix, was the way to reach the masses.
Businessperson of the Year: Readers\' choice
Hastings wanted to ditch hardware altogether. Netflix, he suggested, should try to reach consumers through software that could be embedded in all kinds of devices. It could reside in game consoles, DVD players, TVs, anything that could connect to the broadband Internet and deliver the nascent Netflix streaming service. Netflix\'s vaunted culture kicked in: An intelligent, no-question-is-too-crazy debate about Netflix\'s future ensued. The consensus: Software (today known as apps) would allow Netflix to reach as many screens as possible.
This time the Netflix streaming player wasn\'t totally killed; Netflix spun off the technology into an existing company called Roku, which today makes a digital device that plays content via software from Netflix but also from companies such as Hulu and Amazon. (Netflix sold its stake in Roku to other investors about two years ago.) Hasting says backing away from a Netflix-branded box was painful. \"But if you are not genuinely pained by the risk involved in your strategic choices, it\'s not much of a strategy,\" he says.
For Hastings the decline of AOL (AOL) is a reminder of what happens to companies unwilling to take risks. AOL, the dominant dial-up online service, struggled as broadband service proliferated. It had good e- mail and some unique content, but those services didn\'t buy AOL loyalty or make it synonymous with broadband, and ultimately AOL lost customers. Hastings knew a similar fate could befall Netflix if it couldn\'t find a way to shift its 10 million subscribers from DVD to streaming. Hastings and his team needed to offer customers something so incredible that it would woo them to the new technology before someone else beat them to it. Even as they were wrapping up the spinout of Roku, Hastings, Hunt, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos, and the head of marketing, Leslie Kilgore, convened in a conference room dubbed Towering Inferno and came up with a radical plan: They would give streaming away.
Getting customers to streaming
Sarandos, who spent most of his career in the home-video business, had forged close ties with all the Hollywood studios, which see Netflix as a key partner in getting newly released DVDs into the hands of movie buffs. But the studios were seeking big premiums to add streaming to their new-releases distribution agreements with Netflix. They also were concerned that the relatively low quality of streaming video would leave consumers with a poor impression of their films.
So how to lure subscribers to streaming via Netflix? Hastings\' team began experimenting with older films and TV shows that were cheap to acquire for streaming, and they layered on Netflix\'s personalization technology. The algorithms that directed customers to the new releases they\'d love also pointed them to undiscovered, older gems. Hastings figured he could offer unlimited streaming at no extra cost. By buying bandwidth in bulk from outfits like AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) and then hiring companies like Akamai (AKAM) to help deliver the data efficiently, it is able to stream a movie to customers for an average of 5¢ a film, compared with about $1 in roundtrip mailing and labor fees for a DVD.
Hastings bet that all-you-can-eat access to a catalogue of content, even if it was older, combined with the immediacy of streaming would trump the lack of blockbusters. The gamble is paying off: In the third quarter of this year, about 66% of subscribers used the streaming service for at least 15 minutes, compared with 55% at the beginning of 2010 and just 37% in mid-2009. The Netflix service is now available on more than 200 electronic devices, from iPads to smart TVs to smartphones -- and subscribers can easily watch on their desktops and laptops. In August, Sarandos cut a deal with Epix, a three-studio joint venture, to stream relatively new movies from Paramount, Lions Gate (LGF), and MGM. Valued at about $1 billion over five years, it surprised and unsettled competitors in the pay-TV world. Hastings had thrown down a gauntlet. Streaming over the Internet would be a player.
Stream this! How Netflix chooses for you
Philippe Dauman, CEO of Viacom (VIA), hailed the deal as a victory for his company. Viacom owns a majority share of Epix, and Dauman participated in the negotiations with Netflix. The Epix transaction created yet another distribution window for the content companies, one that not only preserved the cable companies\' exclusive window for offering new releases on demand, but also protected the studios\' DVD sales business. The upshot? Dauman gets incremental revenue from his movies and TV shows. \"My only regret is that I didn\'t ask for warrants on Reed\'s stock,\" Dauman says. \"It soared as soon as the deal was announced.\"
So, too, did the jitters among many of Dauman\'s rivals, which are pushing their own streaming services such as TV Everywhere, a strategy -- championed by Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes -- that lets existing pay-TV subscribers access television and movies on devices such as smartphones and computers. The idea is to preserve the exclusivity of content for those who subscribe to it. Time Warner\'s HBO unit thus far has refused to sell streaming rights to Netflix; it offers its own Internet-based streaming service to HBO subscribers. \"I am sure that, in the nicest possible way, in the offices of HBO and Showtime, there is probably a target with Ted [Sarandos] and Reed\'s picture,\" says Harvey Weinstein. \"But so what? That is what makes it all great -- the fact that there is competition brewing and that these guys are that good.\"
Loving every problem
And is there ever competition. Pundits and analysts like Pachter now are warning that Netflix could be crushed in a twinkling (or acquired) by the likes of Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), or some other well-funded company. There are some barriers to getting into the DVD business -- for example, Netflix operates 56 warehouses across the country and has built strong ties with the postal service. In the streaming world? Not so much: Everyone can stream bits via contracts with data-delivery companies like Level 3 (LVLT), Limelight (LLNW), and Akamai.
The DVD rental business also has the advantage of hewing to U.S. copyright law, which essentially states that if you own a disc, you can do whatever you want with it. As a last resort, Netflix could always just go to Wal-Mart and buy thousands of copies of DVDs to rent without studio permission. In streaming, which falls under pay-TV rules, that option doesn\'t exist. So either Netflix pays the studios what they want or it doesn\'t get that content, which can be locked up in \"windows\" for years following theatrical and DVD release. Content acquisition costs could go through the roof.
Hastings for the most part is unperturbed. Yes, content acquisition costs could soar, but as long as he keeps subscriptions growing, he can maintain his margins. Could a price war develop as some deep-pocketed rival moves in? Sure, but he\'s been there before. \"Those are at least two of 10 scenarios that worry us,\" Hastings says. Others include the arrival of direct competition from HBO, Hulu.com, and DVD kiosk service RedBox. To be sure, Hastings doesn\'t think Netflix will ever provide all the entertainment people want. His customers will also go to movie theaters, opt for pay-per-view on cable, or download via iTunes. \"We don\'t have to be exclusive,\" Hastings says. \"We just have to provide enough value that you stay with us for $9 a month.\"
Perhaps what worries Hastings most is being caught off-guard by a service that has yet to be built, probably running on top of the biggest wave of the moment, Facebook. Everyone gets movie suggestions from friends on Facebook, bypassing Netflix altogether. \"You can imagine something being very social-stream-centric that just ignores all the data-driven things we do,\" Hastings says. Not that Hastings plans to stand by and watch social media pick off his customers: \"If something like that happens, we have to co-opt those advantages quickly and not allow it to become a vulnerability.\" Hastings\' face takes on a thoughtful cast, and then he smiles. These are exactly the kinds of cool, knotty issues Hastings built Netflix to tackle. The problems he\'s solving are getting thornier, and he\'s loving it.
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