After graduating from Bowdoin College in Maine in the early 1980s, Hastings joined the Peace Corps and spent three years teaching high school mathematics in Swaziland, before returning to California to develop software. Many years later, he took his first company, Pure Software, public and then eventually sold it to Rational. It was around then that he met John Doerr, Silicon Valley's most notable venture capital investor as well as its most vocal advocate for changing public schools.
Just as Doerr's firm, Kleiner Perkins, was becoming an early investor in Netflix, he and Hastings began joining forces to push for a variety of educational initiatives, including more charter schools and improved math and science education. For a year, Hastings led TechNet, the Silicon Valley political lobbying group founded by Doerr.
In November 2000, along with Doerr, Hastings helped draft Proposition 39, a hotly contested state initiative to lower the California voter threshold for passing school bonds from two-thirds to a simple majority. Hastings, who sends his own two children to a private school with twice the per-student financing as California's public classrooms, donated US$1 million to the campaign and devoted many hours promoting it, just as he had a similar school bond proposition that voters rejected earlier in the year. In November, Proposition 39 passed by a comfortable margin.
These days, Hastings says he spends about a fifth of his time on state education matters, racking up miles commuting from Netflix's headquarters in Los Gatos, a wealthy wooded enclave nestled in the southwest corner of Silicon Valley, to the state capital of Sacramento two hours away.
But while working to improve public schools consumes many of Hastings days, running Netflix continues to be his true passion. "For me, Netflix is pure joy, while education is just satisfying," Hastings said in a telephone interview during a break in school board meetings in Sacramento last week.
His immediate goal now is to reach profitability, something that may not be far off. In 2001, Netflix recorded a net loss of US$38.6 million on revenue of US$75.9 million, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents. For the three months ended March 31, things were showing improvement: Netflix lost US$4.5 million on revenue of US$30.5 million.
But Hastings biggest challenge yet may be just ahead. This summer, Blockbuster is expected to begin trials of a subscription mail-order movie business. But Hastings seems undaunted, even eager for another battle.
"It's going to be a lot harder for them to stop us now," Hastings said. "There's a pure adrenaline excitement in Netflix, in whether we can take on Blockbuster and win."
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