Rags to riches is an interesting concept which grabs everyone's attention. We see very few people and companies who succeed in the world like that. Today we will read about one company among them is NETFLIX, which has so many shows, movies, and series of different genres. It has more subscribers than any OTT platform in the world.
Netflix was started by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings in 1997 in the USA. Earlier Reed Hastings started a software company called Pure Software, later it was acquired by Rational Software in 1997. After that he and Marc together started Netflix.
Reed Hastings received a BA from Bowdoin College in 1983 and an MSCS in artificial intelligence from Stanford University in 1988. Between Bowdoin and Stanford, he served in the Peace Corps as a high school math teacher in Swaziland. Marc Randolph a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, advisor, and investor.
Earlier Netflix was only known for DVD rental service, it started its journey as rental service. Its competitor was the mighty giant Blockbuster company, which already had a big market share. Netflix started with low prices $4 for dvd and $2 for postal charges. From there they started a subscriber-based model, paying for one month and renting unlimited dvd’s. They only send when subscribers return old dvds. Netflix is slowly increasing their subscribers. Netflix got famous because of its recommendation suggestions to the customers based on their rented dvd’s. They started dominating the Blockbuster. In 2000 Netflix approached Blockbuster about partnership, but Blockbuster rejected and laughed at them. Blockbuster had a chance to buy Netflix, but they missed the chance. Later Blockbuster totally vanished from the market.
Netflix started its service in 1998, subscriber-based method in 1999, it went public in 2000’s.
Netflix subscribers are doubling year by year. In 2005 they had almost 5 Million subscribers.
Netflix also released around 100 million anonymous movie ratings, using a system that rates films from one to five stars. This is the largest set of such data released to date.
In 2007 they started an online streaming service. initially, the service launched with just 1,000 titles and only worked on PCs and Internet Explorer. It also offered a limit on the number of hours of free streaming (with a maximum of 18 free hours a month), based on the users' subscription plans. Netflix started collaborating with different electronic companies. It connected with Apple devices in 2007 and expanded in Canada in 2010. By the end of that year, they had 20million subscribers.
By that time Netflix had both streaming and DVD rental service in one website. They decided to separate both services, this idea backfired totally. Netflix lost almost 60k subscribers. Netflix apologies to its customers and combined both websites again. Netflix entered Europe and conquered every country there. It expanded to Australia in 2015. Netflix produced so many award-winning movies and many best series and shows.
Netflix had no competitor until Amazon entered into the game. Now Amazon prime video and many production houses have started streaming services to the audience. Netflix is now struggling very hard to keep up in the market, due to the global reach the subscribers are expecting good local content for them. It lost almost 1 million subscribers this year, which is a huge blow to them. The main reason for this cost, the subscription cost of one account is huge in Netflix compared to other OTT services. The other and local OTT platforms provide more regional content to the audience which Netflix is lagging behind. We have to see what Netflix will do in future to keep up in the market.
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