Today, Netflix and streaming are two birds of a feather. One cannot be said in the same breath without the other. But there was a time when Netflix wasn't a streaming platform... Yep, younger folk who perhaps have only ever known Netflix as a streaming site might be horrified to know that it used to operate by renting physical media through the post, with the idea essentially being a physical media library, somewhat similar to Blockbuster but without the need for physical stores. Crazy, right? Netflix could still be operating as such if it wasn't for chairman and co-founder Reed Hastings, who in one of his first meetings with co-CEO Ted Sarandos, suggested that streaming was the future.
This shift shocked Sarandos, as he revealed in a recent podcast episode via Aspire with Emma Grede (thanks, Variety), where he explained that Hastings' idea "sounded nuts to me".
Sarandos added: "Reed said all entertainment is gonna come into the home on the internet. Now, at this time, no entertainment came into the home on the internet. It was too slow and too expensive." Hastings explained, "if you think you're still gonna be getting your entertainment on cable, you should not only don't take this job — don't buy my stock when I go public."
This led Sarandos to explain how he "wasn't even sure I believed him, to be honest with you. But I thought that this guy, this is the kind of person who changes the world in some dimension."
Clearly, Hastings was on the right path as Netflix has now grown to become one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world and a pioneer in streaming endeavours.