Management

Reed Hastings, Founder and CEO

Reed Hastings founded Netflix in 1997 and launched the subscription service in 1999. Netflix grew to one million subscribers in less than 4 years, and finished 2005 with more than 4 million subscribers. The company expects to achieve 20 million subscribers in 2010-2012.

In 2005 Netflix was twice independently ranked number one in customer satisfaction across all of ecommerce, by ForeSee Results. In the fall of 2005, Netflix was the winner of Fast Company's national Customers First Award, with Reed appearing on the cover of the October issue.

Also in 2005, Time magazine added Reed to its "Time 100" list of the one hundred most influential global citizens. Newsweek wrote that "Netflix revolutionized the way we watch movies."

Earlier in his career, Reed founded Pure Software, which he built it into one of the world's 50 largest public software companies. After a successful public offering and a number of acquisitions, Pure was acquired by Rational Software in 1997.

Reed is an active educational philanthropist and board member of many non-profits. In addition, he was President of the California State Board of Education from 2000 to 2004. He has led successful statewide political campaigns for more charter public schools and easier passage of local school bonds.

Reed received a BA from Bowdoin College in 1983 and an MSCS degree from Stanford University in 1988. He holds several patents. Between Bowdoin and Stanford, Reed served in the U.S. Peace Corps as a high school math teacher in Swaziland.

Bill Henderson, Chief Operations Officer

Bill Henderson joined Netflix as Chief Operations Officer in January 2006.

Bill oversees the technology, automation and operations at 37 Netflix distribution centers nationwide, from which 1.4 million DVDs are shipped every business day with generally next day delivery to more than 90 percent of Netflix's 4.2 million members.

Next-day delivery has been an important competitive differentiator for Netflix and a key reason Netflix members are so passionate about the service. In fact, Netflix has twice been named by ForeSee Results as the #1 Web site for customer satisfaction. Bill's team marries cutting-edge technology driven by home-grown, proprietary software with traditional first class mail and the company's strategic alliance with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to ensure those service levels are maintained and the company continues to scale at a rapid pace.

Bill joined Netflix after a storied career with the USPS, where he was the 71st Postmaster General of the United States and Chief Executive Officer from 1998 until his retirement in 2001. He was the fifth career employee to lead the world's largest postal system, which processes, transports, and delivers more than 650 million pieces of mail to more than 130 million addresses every day. He served as USPS Chief Operating Officer from 1994-98.

In addition to service in Washington, D.C., Bill held postal management positions in Chicago; Greensboro, N.C.; Memphis; and Stockton, Calif., gaining experience in labor relations, human resources and line management.

Bill graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1972 with a B.S. in industrial relations.

Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer

Neil Hunt has served as Netflix Chief Product Officer since 1999.

Neil leads the Web site development team that has designed and continuously improves the Netflix site, which has twice been ranked by ForeSee Results as the #1 rated Web site for customer satisfaction. Neil's focus on customization and personalization ensures all Netflix members a unique experience every time they visit the site. This includes the movies they see on each page, the recommendations they receive on movies, and the critical account management tools they use, such as their dynamic queue to order movies.

Proprietary, algorithmically-driven software provides the service and competitive differentiation that have made Netflix one of the most prominent and admired brands on the Internet and has helped revolutionize the way consumers make home entertainment choices. On an average day the site facilitates about 1.8 million queue adds and processes more than one million movie ratings.

Neil is an accomplished scientist who excels at leading development teams to create powerful software that is reliable and easy to use. He honed that ability through research at Palo Alto laboratories and a decade in the software industry.

Beginning in 1991, Neil was responsible for the architecture and evolution of Purify and other developer tools for Pure Software while Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was its chief executive. Rational Software Corp. acquired the firm in 1997. Neil then served as director of engineering for Rational, managing development of TeamTest, TestStudio, Visual Test and other software testing tools.

Neil earned his doctorate in computer science from the University of Aberdeen, U.K., in 1986. During and afterward, he conducted research in several Palo Alto corporate laboratories. He has a bachelor's degree from the University of Durham, U.K.

Leslie Kilgore, Chief Marketing Officer

Leslie Kilgore has served as chief marketing officer at Netflix since 2000.

She came to the company with more than a decade of consumer products and e-commerce marketing experience at premier brands in packaged goods and online retailing. She believes that success results when superior products and superior value are offered to the consumer and has made this the underpinning of her career.

Rapid, cost-effective subscriber acquisition is Leslie's principal mission at Netflix. During her tenure, she has grown the Netflix subscriber base from fewer than 100,000 to more than four million and has the company's sights set on 20 million subscribers by 2010-12. Since Leslie joined the company, Netflix has evolved from a Bay Area phenomenon to a nationally distributed service ranked in October 2005 by Fast Company magazine as the #1 customer experience in American business.

Knowing when to engage marketing channels based on the careful balance of cost and reach has been critical to growing membership both exponentially and profitably. Beginning first with online advertising and public relations designed to build off of the virulent enthusiasm of Netflix members and now including national TV advertising, her efforts have sought to evangelize a better, more convenient and more cost effective way to rent movies. The success of these efforts are underscored by the fact that more than 90 percent of trial members convert to paying subscribers and more than 90 percent of those tell family and friends about the service.

As a brand manager for The Procter & Gamble Co. from 1992 to 1999, Leslie oversaw the $600 million Pantene and the $150 million Head and Shoulders brands. From 1999 to mid-2000, she served as director of marketing for Amazon.com - responsible for increasing the size, loyalty and profitability of the customer base - during a time in which online retailing enjoyed explosive growth and established itself as a mainstream consumer channel.

Leslie has a Master's degree from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor's degree from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Barry McCarthy, Chief Financial Officer

Barry McCarthy has served as Chief Financial Officer at Netflix since 1999.

Barry is responsible for finance, legal affairs, Netflix advertising sales, and facilities at the world's leading online retailer that has grown from zero subscribers in 1999 to almost $700 million in revenue in 2005.

From 1993 to 1999, Barry was Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Music Choice, a music programming service distributed over direct broadcast satellite and cable systems.

From 1983 to 1990, Barry was an Associate, Vice President and Director with Credit Suisse First Boston, where he worked with venture capital-backed and LBO investments and pioneered development of the Asset Backed Securities product on Wall Street. Subsequent to First Boston's acquisition by Credit Suisse, Barry managed his own consulting firm from 1991 to 1993.

Barry holds an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from Williams College.

Patty McCord, Chief Talent Officer

Patty McCord has served as Netflix Chief Talent Officer since 1998.

Patty manages Netflix's unique corporate culture, whose motto is "smart people, hard problems" and has a seemingly disproportionate ratio of corporate employees (about 220) to total revenue (almost $700 million at the end of 2005).

Under Patty's leadership, Netflix attracts and retains a dynamic, high performance workforce dedicated to superior customer experience, which has propelled the company to be twice being named by ForeSee Results as the #1 Web site for customer satisfaction. Patty believes that deftly managing the talent mix at Netflix is paramount to the success of the company. To ensure that she has the right mix of people at Netflix, Patty often asks, "Is what you love doing and what you're extraordinary at something Netflix needs someone to be great at?"

Acknowledging the value of combining data and values, Patty expects each employee to understand the key business objectives and relate them to their own work. Metrics are at the core of every department, from customer acquisition to number of discs shipped to customer demographics. While Patty's department serves as a conduit for communications between employees and management, she is adamant about keeping a lean organization in which openness, approachability and honesty are valued above all else.

Patty has more than 15 years of experience in human resources with high-tech companies in the Silicon Valley. Prior to joining Netflix, Patty served as a consultant to various start-ups as a principal of Patty McCord Consulting. From 1994 to 1997, she served as director of human resources at Pure Atria, now Rational Software Corporation, where she managed all human resources functions and directed all management development programs. From 1992 to 1994, Patty was human resources manager at Borland International, where she implemented a recruitment strategy to double the engineering staff in one year. Prior to Borland she worked at Sun Microsystems where she started the Diversity Programs Department.

Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer

Ted Sarandos has served as Netflix Chief Content Officer since 2000.

Ted Sarandos has led content acquisition for Netflix since 2000. With more than 20 years' experience in home entertainment, Ted is recognized in the industry as an innovator in film acquisition and distribution.

Ted oversees strategic content acquisition for Netflix and manages the company's relationships with studios, networks, film makers and producers. Since 2000, the Netflix library has increased tremendously, from 2,000 in 1999 to 65,000 this year. As Netflix has grown to 5 million subscribers in 2006, Ted has established Netflix as a successful film distributor within the entertainment industry.

Ted has also spearheaded the company's original content initiative, Red Envelope Entertainment, creating a national platform for films and entertainment programming through unique partnerships with filmmakers, networks and studios, including IFC, HBO, ThinkFilm and Sundance Channel. These unique deals enable Netflix to provide the broadest variety of films for consumers as well as offer an alternate distribution method for smaller and independent films that might not otherwise be seen. Ted ensures that the 65,000 titles in the Netflix DVD library satisfy the more than 4 million Netflix subscribers who rent about 1.4 million DVDs per day.

Ted began his home video career managing a metropolitan retail chain from 1983 to 1988. He then moved to video distributor ETD, where he served as Western regional director of sales and operations. Until March 2000, Ted was vice president of product and merchandising for Video City, where he negotiated the industry's first DVD revenue sharing agreement and reduced the cost of content from all studios.

Ted is a former chapter president and board member for the Video Software Dealers Association. He also serves on the Film Advisory Board for Tribeca Film Festival, the retail advisory board for the Digital Entertainment Group, FIND Advisory Board and MediaRights.org, as well as a serving as a trustee for International Documentary Association. Ted was also most recently included in Variety's Global 50, a list of the 50 most influential people in independent film distribution.

An avid consumer of popular culture, Ted keeps abreast of the entertainment industry by reading the dailies and trades cover-to-cover, attending the latest and greatest events in Hollywood and traveling and skiing in his coveted downtime. He lives in Los Angeles with his two kids. Ted owns an HD TV and uses Netflix to catch up on films he hasn't seen in person.