1. Reed Hastings is the co-founder and executive chairman of Netflix, Inc.
35 Facts About Reed Hastings
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Reed Hastings found Bowdoin "beautiful and engaging," and still remains engaged with the school.
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Reed Hastings joined Marine Corps officer training through their Platoon Leader Class, and spent college summers in the Marines, including a stint at the Officer Candidate School boot camp at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia in the summer of 1981.
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Reed Hastings did not complete the training and never commissioned into the Marine Corps, choosing instead to pursue service in the Peace Corps "out of a combination of service and adventure".
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Reed Hastings met Audrey MacLean in 1990 when she was CEO at Adaptive Corp.
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Reed Hastings left Adaptive Technology in 1991 to lay the foundation for his first company, Pure Software, which produced products to troubleshoot software.
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Reed Hastings stated that he had trouble managing with a rapid headcount growth.
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The board refused, and Reed Hastings says he learned to be a businessman.
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Reed Hastings was appointed Chief Technical Officer of the combined companies and left soon after the acquisition.
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Reed Hastings had the idea for Netflix after he left Pure Software.
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Reed Hastings said that when he founded Netflix, he had no idea whether customers would use the service.
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Reed Hastings is a proponent of Internet television and sees it as the future.
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Reed Hastings created an internal culture guide for Netflix by meeting with employees to discuss the company's culture.
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Reed Hastings was on the board of Microsoft from 2007 to 2012.
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Reed Hastings was on the board of directors of Facebook, Inc from June 2011 to May 2019.
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Reed Hastings is the majority owner of the Powder Mountain ski resort in Utah following his $100 million investment in 2023.
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Reed Hastings became interested in educational reform in California and enrolled in the Stanford Graduate School of Education.
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Reed Hastings spent $1 million of his own money together with $6 million from Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr to promote the passage of Proposition 39 in November 2000, a measure that lowered the threshold of voter approval for local schools to pass construction bond measures from 66 to 55 percent.
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In 2009, Reed Hastings ran into trouble on the State Board of Education when Democratic legislators challenged his advocacy of more English instruction and language testing for non-English speaking students.
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In July 2006, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that Reed Hastings had donated $1 million to Beacon Education Network to open up new charter schools in Santa Cruz County, where he lives.
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In June 2020, Reed Hastings donated $120 million to be equally split among the United Negro College Fund, Morehouse College and Spelman College.
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In March 2025, Bowdoin College announced that Reed Hastings had given $50 million to create the Reed Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity.
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Reed Hastings opened a donor-advised fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in 2016 with a $100 million contribution.
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Reed Hastings supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election.
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In 2021, Reed Hastings gave $3 million to defeat the campaign to recall Gavin Newsom as governor of California.
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On July 3,2024, Reed Hastings called on Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 United States presidential election.
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On July 23,2024, Reed Hastings supported Kamala Harris for the presidential election and made a multimillion dollar donation to Republican Accountability PAC, a Super PAC supporting her campaign.
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In March 2025, Reed Hastings donated $2 million to support Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
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Reed Hastings is married to Patricia Ann Quillin and has two children.
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Reed Hastings appeared in a front-page article in USA Today in 1995, posing on his Porsche.
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Reed Hastings eventually sold his Porsche for a Toyota Avalon, but drives a Tesla as of 2020.
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In 2018, Reed Hastings appeared in a podcast series by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Masters of Scale, and discussed the strategy adopted by Netflix to scale.
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That same year, Reed Hastings made a $120 million gift to Morehouse College and Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.
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In March 2022, Reed Hastings donated $1 million to Razom, a Ukrainian nonprofit organization that procures emergency supplies and medical equipment, such as disposable resuscitators to treat the wounded.
35.
In June 2022, Reed Hastings delivered the commencement address at Stanford University.