Reed Hastings on Leaving Netflix, His ‘Rebound Business,’ Serving on Anthropic’s Board, and How to Think About Your Legacy

Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, finished building this house in 2021. He moved here for the weekend after he stepped down as Netflix CEO on January 19, 2023. He handed leadership of the company to its new co-CEOs, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters.

At the time, his plan was simple: spend the next two months skiing. And that is exactly what he did. He wanted to, he finally had the freedom to do it, and he knew that leaving his job would create an empty space in his life. “Suddenly, your schedule is confusing,” he says. “It goes from being completely full, with everybody wanting to see you, to nobody caring. Boom!”

He doesn't say this with sadness. It was a change he wanted. At Netflix, he became known not only for the company's huge financial success (it is now worth $285 billion and brings in $45 billion in yearly revenue), but also for changing popular culture, repeatedly changing what the company focused on, and spreading his unusual ideas about how businesses should be managed.

Now he wanted to use his skills in a different way. After spending a few weeks relaxing on the ski slopes, he planned to focus on giving money to good causes. He had supported and paid for new ideas in education for many years. Now he wanted to make that work more focused. He describes his goal as becoming “sort of a baby Bill Gates of technocratic goodness for the world.”

Things did not turn out quite that way. Giving money to good causes would remain an important part of his life after Netflix, but Hastings soon found a new project to keep him busy. He jokingly calls it his “rebound business.” It is a familiar story: a leader who cannot stop leading. But Hastings now says that this was not something that had to happen. “I don't think I was likely to, say, start an AI startup,” he explains. “I wasn't looking to work that hard again.” Instead, the opportunity and challenge that caught his attention was right in front of him: the mountain where he lived.

Powder Mountain is a ski resort about an hour's drive north of Salt Lake City. According to Hastings, it had been having problems for years. In spring 2023, while he was still Netflix's chairman, someone approached him about getting involved. “What attracted me about Powder was just how different it is,” he says. “I didn't know anything about real estate, property development, or real estate law. But I knew I loved the place and I had the money. I was just going to pay for it, not really do much. And then I got so excited.”

Before long, Hastings was figuring out how to improve the resort. He divided the land into private and public ski areas. He often points out that there are only three private ski areas in the United States, compared with 4,000 private golf courses. In the public area, he started developing an art park inspired by places such as Storm King in New York and Naoshima Island in Japan. He says he has three connected goals. First, he wants to create a community “that Patty and I want to spend a third of our time at.” Second, he wants to make it a beautiful place where “each view is framed, each has intention,” and which will become a destination for art lovers. Third, he wants to make money. “I've always been a capitalist.” However, he says that at this point in his life, making money is less about needing it and more about enjoying “winning at the game of business.” His ownership stake in Netflix is less than 1 percent but is worth about $5 billion.

“It's like the joy of doing a crossword or solving a puzzle. It's hard,” he explains. “There are lots of pieces. Capitalism has a particular set of rules. Then you figure out how to meet a need that customers have, whether that's Netflix or Powder Mountain, and work hard to meet that need better than anyone else. That makes me happy.”

Going his own way

Much has been written about Hastings's life before he started Netflix in 1997 with a subscription service that sent DVDs to customers by mail. He grew up in a wealthy Boston family. His father was a lawyer in the Nixon administration. Hastings studied mathematics at Bowdoin College, spent almost three years in Eswatini (then called Swaziland) with the Peace Corps, earned a computer science degree at Stanford, and then made his first fortune with Pure Software, a company that made tools for finding and fixing software problems.

There is one part of his story that people often leave out, so I ask him about it. It suggests that his life could have taken a very different path. At first, Hastings planned to join the Marines. He says he liked the idea of “service, discipline, challenge: the combination of adventure plus patriotism.” The summer before his third year of college, he attended a Marine officer training camp at Quantico, Virginia. There, he learned something about where his skills might be useful and where they might not be. At Bowdoin, he had led the outdoor club and done plenty of backpacking. So, during his Marine training, he felt confident enough to suggest an improvement. “I suggested a different way to pack our backpacks,” he remembers. It was another problem he thought he could solve. “I was just like: We can pack the pack better.”

Looking back, he admits that making this suggestion was “very naive.” The Marines are not known for welcoming suggestions from people lower down in the organization. “It cost my whole squad hundreds of pushups,” he says with a smile.

After realizing that he might be better suited to another kind of work, Hastings joined the Peace Corps instead. He has often talked about the valuable experiences and new ways of seeing the world that he gained during his nearly three years in Africa. But he tells me that even there, he wanted something more. “It wasn't intellectually demanding,” he says. “It was emotionally demanding, connecting with the kids and doing these things, but the puzzle in some way wasn't hard enough.” So he began taking mathematics classes through distance learning. He then took the exams for Stanford and was accepted into its artificial intelligence program. This was in 1986. At Stanford, he had an important realization. “You walk around, there are all these entrepreneurs that have done things, and they're pretty normal people,” he remembers. “I was like, ‘If Joe can do it, I can do it.’”

His early business career did not go smoothly every time. Hastings's first big idea was a computer mouse that people operated with their feet. It failed partly because users' legs became cramped. “I'd say I'm blessed with lots of energy, but not as much judgment,” he says. “I was just as sure this would become a huge business as I was about Netflix or Powder.”

His next company, Pure Software, which made tools for software developers, was a success and eventually became a publicly traded company. Hastings bought a house by the ocean in Santa Cruz, California, and a green Porsche. He says the car was a status symbol that he soon stopped caring about. “You wear your insecurities as a young man,” he says.

Alex Zhang, Powder Mountain's chief creative officer, tells me that Hastings is confident in his abilities but does not show off or make everything about himself. “When I met him,” Zhang says, “he owned a Toyota Highlander. He wears the same shoes every day, and the same shirt—and not in an annoying Sam Altman way of saying, ‘Oh, I want to reduce my decision-making fatigue.’ Reed is just kind of doing his own thing. And it's the way he's always been doing it.”

Reinventing the culture of business

Under Hastings, Netflix became almost as famous for how it worked as for what it achieved. He believed it was important to write down the rules and practices that helped a company like Netflix succeed and keep succeeding. At first, the company used this list internally. But he began to think it was unfair to expect new employees to learn the company's special way of doing things only after they had accepted a job. So, in 2009, he published 127 slides online. This became known as the Netflix Culture Deck, and many people paid attention to it.

“One part shocked people because of the way it was worded,” he remembers. “It was quite shocking to say, ‘Adequate performance gets a generous severance package.’”

But Hastings believed this made perfect sense if companies worked like sports teams. “If you're a sports team, ‘adequate performance gets you a generous severance package’ is obvious,” he says. “But for a corporation, that had not been the model.”

And, I point out, companies were certainly not saying this openly. “That's right. We were the first to say it out loud. And so that's why it caught on,” he replies.

Hastings's full management philosophy is complicated and detailed enough to fill a book. He eventually co-wrote one: the 2020 book No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention. It explains the main ideas behind his approach and includes some very direct statements. I tell him that the line that made me laugh most was the one saying that empty praise that offers no useful information, such as “I think you're a great colleague” or “I love working with you,” should be discouraged and stopped.

Hastings laughs too. “There's a certain cold, frank brevity,” he admits.

And does he still agree with that idea? I ask.

“In a business context,” he says. “When you're there to be highly efficient, to work together. I don't think that's true in friendships. I don't think that's true in humanity.”

Another important idea in the book is its particular view of what a CEO should do. At one point, Hastings's co-author, Erin Meyer, explains one part of his leadership philosophy this way: “Only a CEO who's not busy is really doing his job.”

The book briefly describes a visit years ago from Sheryl Sandberg, who was then at Facebook. In 2013, she told GQ that the Culture Deck “may well be the most important document ever to come out of the Valley.” Sandberg spent a day following Hastings around to see how he worked. Her visit showed some basic differences between the two companies.

“Her takeaway was, ‘You're not trying to make a lot of decisions,’” Hastings says. “Because she and Mark [Zuckerberg] used to sit in this glass conference room. Every 15 minutes, a different group came through, and then they made a decision: ‘Go this way,’ ‘Go that way.’ In their eyes, they were helping people by making decisions for them. So that's one strategy. My strategy was to try to make no decisions, other than hiring executives for my top team. I would learn what was happening by listening in on all these meetings. Then I might say, ‘We really need to value efficiency more,’ or ‘We need to value our international EQ more,’ or whatever I thought we needed. I didn't try to fix each individual problem. My job was to keep adjusting the overall environment and the things we were trying to achieve. ‘What is success?’”

Another story from Netflix's early years shows how strongly Hastings believed in these ideas. At the time, the company was still mainly a DVD rental business in the United States. In 2006, Hastings decided he could no longer put off a plan he and his wife had to live in another country for a year. They moved to Italy with their two sons. “The kids were in the third and sixth grades,” he says. “And we're like, ‘OK, if not this year, we're never gonna do it.’” He spoke to the board and suggested that he either leave his job or work from another country, flying back every two weeks. “I was willing to lose my job over it,” he says. The board agreed. Hastings was often tired from traveling across time zones, and 18-hour workdays were common, but the arrangement mostly worked. It is hard to imagine many other CEOs of a company at that stage, with such big plans, suggesting the same thing. But Hastings was confident enough to try.

I ask him how much influence he thinks Netflix's ideas about company culture have had. “On startups, quite a lot,” he says. “Existing companies, not much. But a lot of startups read it. And they don't adopt it literally, but they build on it and do their own version of it.”

“This is how they're going to remember you”

Many leaders who are otherwise very good at their jobs have struggled with choosing someone to replace them. “I think almost all CEOs understand how difficult this can be,” Hastings says. “And you can be very good and still not get it right.”

He gives an example that people often study. “Hewlett-Packard is the one that's often studied,” he says. “There was a 40-year period of success under the founders, and then things basically went downhill steadily. The people who took over were very capable and comfortable, good managers. So the test for Netflix is the next 10 years. Will the company become three times more important? About 10 percent of television viewing time is Netflix. So there's plenty of room to grow.”

I ask him what number he would like Netflix to reach.

“It'd be really hard to get above 50,” he replies. “But what I like is the continuing growth.”

Hastings says Netflix began planning for his replacement back in 2015. That year, Greg Peters was sent to Japan “for two years to do content marketing and be the GM of our new Japan operation.” Later, Peters returned to lead all of Netflix's product work. At the same time, the board helped Ted Sarandos gain more experience by “giving him marketing and then communications.” Hastings says the goal was to help both men grow and prepare two strong candidates who could take over.

Even so, I remind Hastings that in 2020 he said he expected to stay at Netflix for another 10 years. During the company's second-quarter earnings call that year, he said, “To be totally clear, I'm in for a decade.” I ask whether he really believed that at the time or whether he said it because he needed to stay in the job.

“No, I loved it,” he says. But Sarandos had already been working alongside him as co-CEO since 2020. Hastings says the important change was that Peters had become so capable that he no longer felt he needed to stay. He says that regular conversations about succession became more serious and specific in summer 2022.

“I was comfortable saying to the board, ‘I think this is a good time, you know, in the company's cycle and growth, and we should think about doing this early next year, early '23.’”

So, I check that I understand. “To put it bluntly, you were telling them this rather than waiting for them to tell you?”

“That's right,” he says. “So I get to say that I think it's time. They get to say who it is. Yeah, they have decision rights on, you know, do we do the dual CEOs? Do we pick one of them? Do we look outside? Do we run a search? That's their purview.”

On the decision to appoint Sarandos and Peters as co-CEOs, Hastings says, “They work really well together.” Part of the reason, he explains, is that both men care more about the company than about themselves. That allows them to work well as a team. He sees having two CEOs as a way to achieve very strong performance. He does not recommend it for most companies or most situations. But if a company has two people who love the business and are willing to put aside their own power and egos, it can work very well. “You've got two people who can run around the world and be very effective.”

When Hastings and I talk about the time just before he left Netflix, he remembers a particular moment. In December 2022, he gave a speech to employees in France. He remembers it as one of his best speeches. It was not because he said anything unusual. “Just my normal sort of stump speech, if you will,” he explains. What made it special was knowing that he would never give that speech again.

“I was like, ‘This is my final time,’” he says. “And it was just like laying it all out there. Pure heart. Pure energy.” He remembers thinking, “However you are today, this is how they're going to remember you.”

He adds, “It was beautiful to savor. And then I got on the plane and came home.”

The thrill of the hunt

After everything he has done—changing Hollywood, creating a workplace culture focused on performance, earning praise from Wall Street, and managing Netflix's success year after year until a replacement plan was ready—I ask Hastings what makes him excited to get up each morning now.

“Feeling healthy,” he begins. “Making a cappuccino—sort of the ceremony of it. A sense of possibility and wonder. High variety between the days.”

He tells me that even during the week he has just spent at Powder Mountain, he has worked only about two hours a day. The rest of the time, he has been “enjoying myself, sitting, cooking, socializing.”

He also spends a lot of time hiking. The previous afternoon, I had heard him say that he had already walked 23,000 steps. When I mention it, he checks his Google watch to find the exact total for the day: 27,079 steps.

Zhang had told me a story about something that happened earlier that week. Hastings was hiking on the mountain when he met some workers building a new trail. They told him they had just seen a bear. But, according to Zhang, Hastings “just took off up the mountain.” When the workers asked where he was going, he simply said, “I want to look for an elk.”

When I bring up the story, Hastings confirms that he had been looking for an elk. He shows me the scabs on his legs from “spelunking around in the trees.”

And he tells me that he did find what he was looking for. “I did see a couple of elk—juveniles, but incredibly beautiful, just bounding.”

It might sound like a sweet story about an energetic, boyish billionaire enjoying the beauty of nature. But there is more to it. The elk he saw were young and were outside the hunting season. Perhaps this is also a reminder not to mistake Hastings's friendly manner for a lack of toughness, or to overlook his clear-eyed and sometimes hard view of the world.

“I hunted my first elk ever last fall,” Hastings says. “I've got the rack downstairs and the meat in the freezer.”

Perhaps he notices that I look a little uncomfortable at this unexpected change in the conversation. He explains, “If you eat meat, you should feel good about it. It's a beautiful animal that got to live in the wild, and I was very fortunate to get a clean shot.”

He goes on to explain how the more experienced hunters with him showed him how to prepare the animal after the hunt. They then carried a few hundred pounds of meat in packs weighing 50 pounds each, along with the elk's head, as they walked to the nearest road. “Can't wait to go out this fall,” Hastings adds.

Whether he is hiking or hunting elk, Hastings describes his current life as a chance to catch up on experiences, hobbies, and relationships. “I found work intoxicating. Netflix. And fulfilling. And I did it really hard for 25 years.”

In June, he gave up one final major connection to Netflix when he left its board of directors. He says the decision was influenced by a weeklong silent retreat at a Buddhist monastery north of San Francisco.

Netflix still faces many challenges. Its stock price has been slow, binge-watching has become less common, and the company has made job cuts and removed some executives. These problems seem to reflect the uncertain future of entertainment and the difficulty of finding the best ways to make money from it. But these are no longer Hastings's direct responsibility. “I'm still a huge shareholder,” he points out. “But it's not my responsibility. So I don't have anxiety. I don't sweat the details.”

Hastings still serves on the boards of two other companies started by their founders: Bloomberg and Anthropic. I suggest that his position at Anthropic must give him a close view of some of the biggest and most difficult issues people are facing today.

“AI is the topic and Anthropic is the company,” he agrees. He says that the company is truly focused on doing what is good for humanity. “They're genuinely obsessed with doing good by humanity—they're much less obsessed about capitalistic success than, say, I was at Netflix, and much more about positive societal impact.”

Before he leaves, I ask Hastings what he thinks he has achieved.

“Lots of things, but nothing that will matter in a thousand years,” he says, as carefully and logically as ever. “Of all the Roman emperors, we can name five. Of all the popes, we can name five. Of all the U.S. presidents, I can name 10. Right? So it's OK.”

When I point out that he is using a very high standard to judge his own achievements, he disagrees. “I guess I'm not very achievement- or legacy-oriented,” he says, “because in the sense of history, it's all just a sediment layer.”