Hacker News Reader

> Netflix then saw that streaming was going to eat the legacy physical-disc market and pivoted.

Netflix was started with streaming in mind from the outset. It's in the name, for one thing. They didn't pivot, (they only stopped their DVD mailing service this year, I believe,) they just started streaming as soon as the hardware, software, and network could be built up to a point where it was feasible financially.

View on HN

Netflix was founded in 1997. DVDs were brand new technology and dialup was the primary means of accessing the internet. They didn't begin streaming until a decade after that. They were called Netflix because you could rent movies on the internet.

Reed Hastings says otherwise.

Netflix was always intending to stream movies via the Internet. it wasn't possible when the company was founded, but streaming was the vision from the outset. they began the dvd-shipping service to build the company and bootstrap their way to the streaming service.

I've read this in multiple places, but I'm not going to do your homework for you.

Unless he produces documents from around the founding period where he says that, I'll treat Reed Hastings' comments as nothing more than puffery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com