Reed Hastings scripted his Netflix exit. Founder departures aren’t alway this smooth.
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.On Thursday afternoon, Netflix announced that co-founder and chairman of the board Reed Hastings would be stepping down when his term expires later this year “in order to focus on his philanthropy and other pursuits,” according to a letter to shareholders.Hastings founded Netflix in 1997 with Marc Randolph, and took the reins in 1999 when the company was still a DVD-by-mail service. In 2020 he elevated creative executive Ted Sarandos to the co-CEO position, reflecting how important original content had become for Netflix, by then the leading subscription streaming service.
In 2023, he stepped away from the co-CEO role, with chief operating officer Greg Peters replacing him.After a new board is elected in June, he will just be a Netflix shareholder, with a half a percent of the company’s shares, according to FactSet. His holdings have dwindled considerably in recent years from charitable donations.Hastings is relatively young at 65 and his exit at that age is a bit unusual for tech founders.
He doesn’t seem to have been forced out, and during the company’s Thursday first-quarter earnings call, Sarandos and Peters said that there had been no behind-the-scenes disagreements over the failed Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
From our vantage point today, this looks like a six-year slow goodbye after a two-decade run.New Street Research’s Dan Salmon didn’t find the move surprising.“Despite Hastings’ outsized impact setting the culture and early success of NFLX, co-CEOs Greg and Ted have now had their hands firmly on the wheel for some time,” he said in a Friday note. “Not only has this been a very successful succession (in contrast to, say, DIS) but NFLX currently features one of the most
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