Q&A: Reed Hastings

March 27, 2009 After spending a summer in boot camp with the Marines, Reed Hastings decided to join the Peace Corp. for two years in Swaziland. After selling it six years later, Hastings founded Netflix in 1998 and has defied the odds (not to mention stiff competition from Blockbuster and Walmart) to grow the company to more than 10 million subscribers and 2,000 employees at its Los Gatos, Calif., headquarters and 100 distribution centers nationwide. Despite the DVD infrastructure, Hastings sees the company's future in Web streaming and personalization -- using the more than 2 billion movie ratings submitted by subscribers to help them find movies they are more likely to enjoy.

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