Уилмот Рид Хэстингс: Путь от Pure Software к Netflix и далее

American entrepreneur and education philanthropist (born 1960)

Wilmot Reed Hastings Jr. (born October 8, 1960)

Hastings was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His maternal great grandfather was Alfred Lee Loomis. Hastings attended Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and sold vacuum cleaners door to door in a gap year before entering college. In 1983, he graduated from Bowdoin College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics, which he found "beautiful and engaging". After returning from the Peace Corps, Hastings went on to attend Stanford University after being rejected from his first choice MIT, graduating in 1988 with a Master's Degree in Computer Science. He met Audrey MacLean in 1990 when she was CEO at Adaptive Corp. The board refused, and Hastings says he learned to be a businessman. The Wall Street Journal reported that there were problems integrating the sales forces of Pure Software and Atria after the head salesmen for both Pure and Atria left following the merger. In 1997, the combined company, Pure Atria, was acquired by Rational Software, which triggered a 42% drop in both companies' stocks after the deal was announced.

In 1997, Hastings and former Pure Software employee Marc Randolph co founded Netflix, offering flat rate movie rental by mail to customers in the US by combining two emerging technologies; DVDs, which were much easier to send as mail than VHS cassettes, and a website from which to order them, instead of a paper catalogue. Headquartered in Los Gatos, California, Netflix has amassed a collection of 100,000 titles and more than 100 million subscribers. Hastings had the idea for Netflix after he left Pure Software. Netflix launched a service in 2007 to stream movies and television shows to computers. Hastings created an internal culture guide for Netflix by meeting with employees to discuss the company's culture and employees' hypotheses about it. In August 2009, Hastings posted this internal culture guide publicly online, and it eventually became a pre employment screening tool that dissuaded incompatible people from applying. In September 2020, Hastings and Erin Meyer co authored a book on Netflix's culture and management principles with interviews from current and former employees. No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention was a New York Times bestseller, featured on year end lists for publications such as NPR and The Economist. It was shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.

Hastings was on the board of Microsoft from 2007 to 2012. He was also on the board of directors of Facebook, Inc. from June 2011 to May 2019. As of September 2016, he was reported to own over US$10 million worth of Facebook shares. Hastings is the majority owner of Powder Mountain ski resort in Utah following his $100 million investment in 2023.

After selling Pure Software, Hastings found himself without a goal. a measure that lowered the level of voter approval for local schools to pass construction bond issues from 66 to 55 percent. In 2009, Hastings ran into trouble on the State Board of Education when Democratic legislators challenged his advocacy of more English instruction and language testing for non English speaking students. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had reappointed Hastings to the board after Hastings' first term, issued a statement saying he was “disappointed” in the committee's action.

Hastings is active in educational philanthropy and politics. Hastings, as a Giving Pledge member since 2012, founded Hastings Fund and pledged $100 million to children's education. In his post on Facebook, he said that the Hastings Fund "will donate these funds in the best way possible for kids' education." Hastings Fund gave its first two gifts, totaling $1.5 million, to the United Negro College Fund and the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley for college scholarships for black and Latino youth. In March 2014, he argued for the elimination of elected school boards.

In June 2020, Hastings donated $120 million to be equally split among the United Negro College Fund, Morehouse College and Spelman College. It was the largest individual donation ever to support scholarships at HBCUs.

Hastings opened a donor advised fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in 2016 with a $100million contribution. In 2024, he gifted two million of his Netflix shares worth $1.1billion to the foundation.

In April 2004, Hastings authored a Wall Street Journal op ed advocating the expensing of stock options.

In August 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported that Hastings had donated $1 million to a committee formed to support California State Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Connell's candidacy for Governor of California in 2010. In April 2009, Hastings donated $251,491.03 to Budget Reform Now, a coalition supporting California Propositions 1A to 1F. Hastings supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. In 2021, Hastings gave $3 million to defeat the campaign to recall Gavin Newsom as governor of California.

Hastings lives in Santa Cruz, California. He is married to Patricia Ann Quillin and has two children. In 2020, Hastings and his wife donated $30 million to GAVI to support COVAX COVID 19 vaccines initiative. In March 2022, Hastings donated $1 million to Razom, a Ukrainian nonprofit organization that procures emergency supplies and medical equipment such as disposable resuscitators to treat the wounded. In June 2022, Hastings delivered the commencement address at Stanford University.