Before co-founding Netflix Inc., Reed Hastings spent time selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, an experience he says gave him an early lesson in sales, rejection and dealing with people.
Hastings’ Door-to-Door Sales Job Taught Him About Rejection
In 2020, Moonshots Podcast: Habits of Success shared a recording of Hastings narrating this story.
In the recording, Hastings says that after high school, he took a job selling Rainbow vacuum cleaners in Boston’s suburbs, going door-to-door to pitch potential customers.
The job came with plenty of rejection — including being thrown out of some homes.
Still, Hastings viewed the experience positively, calling it a “fantastic introduction to selling.”
The job also helped him become more comfortable approaching strangers and making a pitch, skills that would later prove useful as he entered the business world.
Stanford Changed How Hastings Viewed Entrepreneurs
Hastings later attended Stanford graduate school for computer science. Before then, he said he had never met entrepreneurs and had put them “on a pedestal.”
Being around entrepreneurs changed that perception.
He realized they were ordinary people who had developed good ideas, leading him to a simple conclusion: “If they can do it, I can do it.”
Startup CEO Taught Hastings What Leadership Really Means
Hastings also recalled working at a startup where he discovered the CEO cleaning his dirty coffee mugs.
When Hastings asked why, the CEO explained that it was “the one thing I could do for you” because Hastings was doing so much for the company.
The gesture made such an impression that Hastings said, “I would follow that guy off the ends of the earth.”
But Hastings also learned that leadership requires more than being personally likable.
Leaders need both strong character and sound strategy — including knowing how to avoid steering a company into a dead end.
Hastings’ Biggest Lesson: Keep Learning
When Hastings eventually launched his first company at 30, he said the most important quality was self-awareness.
“The fundamental is to be self-aware enough that you want to learn,” Hastings said, adding that people learn through the “criticisms and suggestions of others.”
That mindset would become an important part of Hastings’ approach as he built Netflix from a DVD-by-mail service into a global streaming company.
Reed Hastings’ $4.6 Billion Netflix Fortune
Hastings currently has an estimated net worth of $4.6 billion, according to Forbes.
He co-founded Netflix in 1997 after selling his first company, Pure Software, that same year.
The streaming giant initially operated as a DVD-by-mail subscription service before launching its streaming platform in 2007.
Hastings took Netflix public in 2002 and stepped down as co-CEO in 2023, while continuing to reduce his stake in the company.
Disclaimer: This content was produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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