Comment by simonh
2 years ago
Reed Hastings was a founder and principal initial investor. He owned 70% of the company, so it was probably down to him.
There was a recent thread where Bezos was quoted as being against bet the company moves. I get where he’s coming from, ideally you’d avoid getting into that position, but faced with a fundamental technological shift like that, sometimes it’s just the right thing to do.
As an aside I’ve been at two companies that were sunk by mismanaged bet the company moves. In both cases they actually had plenty of time to change course, but management was so heavily invested in their pet project that by the time reality has punched them in the face hard enough to wake them up, it was too late.
Even many founders find it hard to turn around the ship that they built, the forces of institutional inertia work against them as well. I wonder if he simply ignored most of the existing organization and management, and more or less stealth-founded a new startup inside the old one. Even that is not easy.