When was Netflix, Inc. founded?

Netflix, Inc. was founded in 1997, in Los Gatos, California by Reed Hastings, Marc Randolph.

Who are the founders of Netflix, Inc.?

The founders of Netflix, Inc. are Reed Hastings, Marc Randolph. The company was established in 1997 in Los Gatos, California.

Who is the current CEO of Netflix, Inc.?

The current CEO of Netflix, Inc. is Ted Sarandos, serving since 2000.

Where was Netflix, Inc. founded?

Netflix, Inc. was founded in Los Gatos, California in 1997 by Reed Hastings, Marc Randolph.

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Netflix, Inc.

Streaming entertainmentFounded 1997- Updated June 2026

Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya

Last reviewed: June 2026

Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.

CorpDigest

Search brand historiesSearchK Contact

Netflix, Inc.

Streaming entertainmentFounded 1997- Updated June 2026

Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya

Last reviewed: June 2026

Founders

Who Founded Netflix, Inc.?

Q: Who founded Netflix, Inc.?

Netflix, Inc. was founded by Reed Hastings, Marc Randolph in 1997 in Los Gatos, California.

Reed Hastings, Marc Randolph · Founded 1997 · Los Gatos, California

Last reviewed: June 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya

Quick Answer

Netflix, Inc. was founded by Reed Hastings, Marc Randolph in 1997 in Los Gatos, California. The company is currently led by Ted Sarandos.

Founding Story

The founding myth involves a $40 late fee on Apollo 13. Reed Hastings has told the story so many times that even he admits the details might be embellished. But the frustration was real, and the timing was perfect.

In 1997, the DVD was barely a year old in the United States. Most Americans still rented VHS tapes from Blockbuster or one of thousands of regional chains. The experience was terrible in ways people had simply accepted: drive to the store, hope your movie was in stock, pay per rental, return it on time or face penalties. Hastings saw something others missed — a DVD weighed almost nothing. You could mail one for the price of a first-class stamp.

He'd just sold Pure Software to Rational Software for roughly $700 million, so capital wasn't the problem. What he needed was someone who understood direct-to-consumer retail. Marc Randolph, a serial marketing executive who'd worked at Borland and run catalog businesses, became that person. The two reportedly brainstormed the idea during their shared commute from Santa Cruz to Pure Software's offices in Sunnyvale.

The first version of Netflix was humble. A website. A warehouse in Scotts Valley, California. About 900 DVD titles. No subscription — just individual rentals with free shipping both ways. The site launched on April 14, 1998, and the early months were a grind. They had to convince people that ordering a movie online and waiting two days for the mail was better than driving five minutes to Blockbuster.

The breakthrough came in September 1999: a flat monthly subscription. $15.95 for four DVDs out at a time, no due dates, no late fees. That single decision changed everything. It turned Netflix from a transactional rental business into a relationship. Customers stopped thinking about individual movies and started thinking about their queue — a running list of films they wanted to see, delivered automatically as they returned discs.

Reed Hastings

Co-founder 1997

Background

Reed Hastings came to Netflix as a technologist and repeat founder rather than as a Hollywood executive. After studying mathematics and computer science, he worked as a software engineer and founded Pure Software in 1991 to build tools for developers. Pure Software went public and later merged with Atria before being sold to Rational Software in 1997, giving Hastings direct experience with venture capital, public markets, scaling teams, and the difficulty of preserving culture through growth. That background shaped Netflix in two ways. First, Hastings saw the internet as a system for changing distribution economics, not merely a marketing channel. Second, he brought a software founder's willingness to cannibalize a working product before the market forced the issue. His later emphasis on freedom, responsibility, talent density, and direct feedback came partly from lessons learned while Pure Software became more bureaucratic than he wanted.

Role at Netflix, Inc.

Reed Hastings co-founded Netflix in 1997 and became the leader most associated with its long arc from DVD-by-mail startup to global streaming platform. His specific contribution was strategy: he backed the subscription model, supported the shift away from late fees, funded the 2007 streaming launch while DVDs still mattered, and accepted the risk of becoming a studio through original programming. Hastings also made visible mistakes, especially the 2011 Qwikster split, but his willingness to reverse the decision helped preserve the customer relationship. Under his tenure, Netflix expanded internationally, launched original hits, and became a defining company of the streaming era. He stepped down as co-CEO in 2023 and continued as executive chairman, leaving behind a culture that prizes candor, high performance, and strategic self-disruption. His lasting influence is the idea that Netflix should behave more like a software platform than a traditional studio.

Marc Randolph

Co-founder 1997

Background

Marc Randolph brought the commercial instincts that made the first Netflix experiment practical. Before Netflix, he worked in direct marketing, catalog operations, software marketing, and customer acquisition, including roles connected to Borland, MacUser, and MicroWarehouse. He understood how to test offers, measure response, write customer-facing copy, and build an online experience that could earn trust before e-commerce was ordinary. That mattered because the first Netflix product was not a technology marvel in the modern sense; it was a retail and logistics model that had to persuade people to rent movies through a website and wait for the mail. Randolph's background helped shape Netflix's early brand, website, acquisition funnel, and subscription experiments. While Hastings supplied much of the long-term strategic willingness to disrupt, Randolph helped translate the idea into a usable consumer proposition.

Role at Netflix, Inc.

Marc Randolph co-founded Netflix and served as its first CEO, guiding the company through the earliest stage when the business was still proving that DVDs by mail could work at all. He helped define the original customer experience, brand voice, website flow, and subscription logic that separated Netflix from store-based rental chains. Randolph's contribution was especially important before Netflix had streaming, original content, or global scale; he focused on how real customers would discover titles, place orders, receive discs, and keep returning. After Reed Hastings became CEO, Randolph transitioned to president and later left day-to-day operations, but he remained an important figure in the company's founding story. He went on to advise startups, invest, write, and speak about entrepreneurship. His lasting influence is visible in Netflix's bias toward testing, customer convenience, and simple propositions that remove friction from an existing habit.

Netflix, Inc.: CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Spencer Neumann

Chief Financial Officer

2019 – Present

Spencer Neumann has led Netflix's finance function during the shift from cash-consuming original-content expansion toward stronger free cash flow and margin discipline. His era includes more explicit operating-margin targets, clearer investor communication around paid sharing and advertising, and tighter framing of content investment as a return-driven allocation decision rather than a spending race. Neumann's finance leadership matters because Netflix's market narrative changed after 2022 from subscriber count to revenue, profit, and cash generation. The measurable outcome is visible in the rise from $33.7 billion in FY2023 revenue to approximately $45.2 billion in FY2025 revenue, with net income climbing to about $11.0 billion.

Greg Peters

Co-CEO / Chief Operating Officer

2008 – Present

Greg Peters has been central to Netflix's product, pricing, international, and monetization strategy. He helped scale the service across global markets, supported product localization, and pushed pricing experiments such as mobile-oriented plans in price-sensitive regions. Peters became especially important as Netflix moved from pure subscription growth into paid sharing and advertising. His operational decisions include building the ad tier after the 2022 reversal, improving plan architecture, and treating monetization per household as a strategic priority. The measurable result is a company that recovered from the 2022 subscriber-growth scare and reached approximately $45.2 billion in FY2025 revenue with stronger profitability.

Ted Sarandos

Co-CEO / Chief Content Officer

2000 – Present

Ted Sarandos shaped the content era of Netflix after joining in 2000, first by using DVD viewing data to rethink programming demand and later by pushing Netflix into original production. He backed House of Cards in 2013, helped normalize full-season releases, and expanded investment into global originals across Korea, Spain, India, Latin America, Europe, and other markets. As co-CEO, his decisions center on slate discipline, franchise development, live events, awards credibility, and balancing global hits with local production. The measurable outcome is Netflix's transformation from a distributor of licensed programming into a studio-scale buyer and owner of content that can launch globally on the same platform.

Reed Hastings

CEO

1997 – 2023

Reed Hastings led the founding, subscription conversion, DVD scale-up, streaming pivot, and global expansion era. His most important decision was to treat Netflix as a technology and subscription company rather than a video-rental chain, which led to the 1999 flat-fee model and the 2007 Watch Now streaming launch. He approved original content investment even though it required large upfront spending and changed Netflix into a studio. Hastings also made the Qwikster mistake in 2011, then reversed it after customer backlash. The measurable outcome of his era was extraordinary: Netflix moved from a mail-order DVD startup to a global platform with hundreds of millions of paid memberships and tens of billions in annual revenue.

Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.

Founders

Who Founded Netflix, Inc.?

Reed Hastings, Marc Randolph · Founded 1997 · Los Gatos, California

Last reviewed: June 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya

Quick Answer

Netflix, Inc. was founded by Reed Hastings, Marc Randolph in 1997 in Los Gatos, California. The company is currently led by Ted Sarandos.

Founding Story

Reed Hastings

Co-founder 1997

Background

Role at Netflix, Inc.

Marc Randolph

Co-founder 1997

Background

Role at Netflix, Inc.

Netflix, Inc.: CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Spencer Neumann

Chief Financial Officer

2019 – Present

Greg Peters

Co-CEO / Chief Operating Officer

2008 – Present

Ted Sarandos

Co-CEO / Chief Content Officer

2000 – Present

Reed Hastings

CEO

1997 – 2023