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Starting of Netflix

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Submitted By trogers1984
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The business that I chose was Netflix. The reason is how the company started; Reed Hastings came up with the idea of it after he received a forty dollar late fee from a video rental store for Apollo 13. He remembered the fee because he was embarrassed about it. That was back in the VHS days, and it got him thinking that there's a big market out there. Netflix was founded by Reed Hasting and Mark Randolph in Scott Valley, California in August 1997.
Reed bought several CD’s and mailed them to himself and found that it took 24hrs and they arrived to him scratch free. The company opened for business on April, 14 1998 with 30 employees and 925 titles for rent. Early on, the first concept they launched was rental by mail, but it wasn't subscription based, so it worked more like Blockbuster. Some people liked it, but it wasn't very popular. Their key initial strategy was the fact that few video stores carried DVD’s, making renting them in person a hit or miss affair. Because DVD’s are light weight they could be shipped for a cheap price. Hastings had a new idea to offer a free trial to attract customers, when that free month was over only 20% of those became a paid subscriber.
In 2000 Netflix CEO Reed Hastings decided to move beyond DVD rentals to streaming video by the end of that year they had up 250,000 customers. By 2003 Netflix hit one million subscribers and received their first profitable quarter. In the year 2008 Netflix broaden their horizons when they began offering instant online streaming of TV shows and movies to their subscribers who were on their unlimited plans. Since then they have brought streaming to capabilities to blu-ray players, Ps3, Wii, and xbox 360. You could even get it on a smart phone. Netflix got themselves into a bit of trouble in 2011 when they tried to split their business into separated DVD and streaming movies services and raise their

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