Posts tagged Netflix

Reason #1004 why Reed Hastings is my favorite public-company CEO

Henry Blodget (Business Insider): Lastly, I have a couple questions about Netflix’s culture. I was fascinated by the presentation you did about that a couple of years ago. For example, the fact that you have no set vacation policy company-wide—that folks can take as much vacation as they want. When I broached that idea here asking if it was a good idea and if we should do that, people freaked out because they said “No, what’ll happen is everyone will work around the clock and I will feel like I can never take a vacation.” Why do you have the no vacation policy?

Reed Hastings (Netflix CEO): I would say we don’t have a “no vacation” policy, that’s a little ambiguous. Instead, we have no policy on vacation. Perhaps because I take lots of great vacations it sets a good example. If you [Henry] were more visibly on vacation and then when you asked the question about it, everyone would probably relax. To the degree that you hardly ever are seen to take vacation, that might scare people.

BI: So it’s my fault?

RH: I think so. 

BI: And the other thing you said that jumped out was “We’re not a family, we’re a professional sports team. Therefore, we’re going to try to have the best players at every position, and that means that folks who are B-players are going to be working elsewhere.” And when I raised that as a possibility here, people said “It’s ridiculous. There are lots of players who are B’s who want to be A’s. It’s just much too harsh.” What’s your reaction to that?

RH: You’re over-simplifying with A’s and B’s. There’s a lot of graduations in terms of how someone performs. We’ve often had someone who was performing OK at one job so we move them to another job and they do fantastic. So it’s not even that much a reflection on the person. But in general, a sports-oriented model is “If you want to win the championships, you have to have great players who can work together.” You need both of those, and so that’s what we focus on: getting great people who can work together. 


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-ceo-reed-hastings-interview-2011-4?op=1#ixzz1JDisM3jF

And for my final Netflix post for a while…this is an internal slide deck Netflix put together to help employees understand the company culture. It’s incredible and you should read it.  No matter how large or small your company is, this represents a shining example of how to think about corporate culture. My favorite nugget: “adequate performance gets a generous severance package.”

And for my final Netflix post for a while…this is an internal slide deck Netflix put together to help employees understand the company culture. It’s incredible and you should read it.  No matter how large or small your company is, this represents a shining example of how to think about corporate culture.

My favorite nugget: “adequate performance gets a generous severance package.”

A media analyst at Nomura, called [Netflix-Starz deal] “probably one of the dumbest deals ever. Starz gave up valuable content for tens of millions of dollars

From The NY Times’s “Time Warner Views Netflix as a Fading Star”. I can’t help but wonder which junior bd guy Ted Sarandos (the chief content officer for Netflix who negotiates all the deals with Hollywood) negotiated with a Starz? (via siguy)

At least Starz took a chance. When this deal was struck (late 2008), Netflix Instant was nascent (the number of customers interested in device-agnostic streaming actually caught Netflix by surprise), Hulu was brand new, and no one really believed in an online streaming business model.  Three years later it’s clear that the world as moving in that direction, and among the major movie content owners, only Starz has a clear understanding of the demand structure around its online content.  Rather than sitting around saying “no, you can’t have our inventory until you promise to give us everything,” Starz said “no one knows what this will be worth, but people clearly want it, so it’s probably gonna be worth something. let’s see what we can learn and make a little coin in the process.”

There’s nothing dumb about trying something new in an exciting area, but there’s something very dumb about denigrating such efforts in hindsight.  Let’s be clear, the internet has commoditized the distribution of video content.  The legacy model of movie studios depended on controlled distribution of a scarce good throughout a defined lifecycle, which customers supported because that distribution chain provided the best consumption experience available.  But theater —> rental no longer provides the best consumption experience in a world of large screen high definition televisions and high speed internet.  It’s a new world, but only Starz had the wherewithal to go out and map the new terrain.  For that they deserve credit, not scorn.  What looks obvious now (that streaming is the future) wasn’t at all obvious then.