Reed Hastings

Reed Hastings
Hastings at Web 2.0 Conference, 2005
Born	Wilmot Reed Hastings, Jr. October 8, 1960 (1960-10-08) (age 56) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Residence	San Francisco, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Bowdoin College Stanford University
Occupation	Co-founder and CEO of Netflix
Net worth	US$1.79 billion (March 2017)
Board member of	Facebook, KIPP, DreamBox (company)
Spouse(s)	Patricia Ann Quillin
Children	2

Wilmot Reed Hastings, Jr. (born October 8, 1960) is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and CEO of Netflix and serves on the boards of Facebook and a number of non-profit organizations. A former member of the California State Board of Education, Hastings is an advocate for education reform through charter schools.

Hastings was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Joan Amory (Loomis) and Wilmot Reed Hastings. His maternal great-grandfather was attorney, financier, scientist, inventor and philanthropist Alfred Lee Loomis. He entered Marine Corps officer training through their Platoon Leader Class and spent the summer of 1981 in Officer Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia.

After graduating from Bowdoin College, Hastings joined the Peace Corps "out of a combination of service and adventure" and went to teach high school math in Swaziland from 1983 to 1985. Hastings credits part of his entrepreneurial spirit to his time in the Peace Corps. "Once you have hitchhiked across Africa with ten bucks in your pocket, starting a business doesn't seem too intimidating."

After returning from the Peace Corps, Hastings went on to attend Stanford University. He graduated in 1988 with a master's degree in computer science.

Hastings' first job was at Adaptive Technology, where he invented a tool for debugging software. "I worked for Audrey MacLean in 1990 when she was CEO at Adaptive Corp. From her, I learned the value of focus. I learned it is better to do one product well than two products in a mediocre way," says Hastings.