“You can do a few things superbly well, or a lot of things averagely well.”
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Reed Hastings
Wilmot Reed Hastings Jr. is an American billionaire businessman. He is the co-founder of Netflix, which provides the eponymous streaming service. Hastings serves on a number of boards and works with various non-profit organizations. A former president of the California State Board of Education, Hastings is also an advocate for charter schools.
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business · American entrepreneur and education philanthropist (born 1960) · entrepreneur · chief executive officer · philanthropist · also Reed Hastings, Wilmot Reed Hastings, Jr., Hastings
Born 8 October 1960 · Q7306657
56 published statements · 0 followers
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2026· 33 entries
“Effort and results do not share a linear relationship.”
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“People will plateau at exactly the same level that their selectivity plateaus.”
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“Making hard trade-offs is where leadership is tested.”
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“Very successful people are absurdly selective.”
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“If you are too busy to think then you are too busy.”
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“There are only two forces in the world that simplify organizations: one is failure, the other is leadership.”
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“So many smart people get snared in the death grip of the nonessential.”
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“...only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”
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“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make.”
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“If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.”
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“...the pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure. Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.”
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“We can either make our choices deliberately or allow other people's agendas to control our lives.”
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“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”
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“There should be no shame in admitting to a mistake; after all, we really are only admitting that we are now wiser than we once were.”
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“Many capable people are kept from getting to the next level of contribution because they can’t let go of the belief that everything is important.”
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“If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.”
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“What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?”
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“We live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable.”
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“Life today is fast and full of opportunity. The complication is we think we have to do everything. The implication of this is we end up being pulled into endless distractions without pausing to really think. My position is we can make a different choice. We can discern what is really essential. We can design a life that really matters.”
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“Here is the #1 myth that kills people's productivity: 'if you fit it all in, you can have it all.'”
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“The bottom line is this: if you want to engage your employees at a whole new level, if you want to become a person of greater influence, and if you want to discover a new kind of power — listen.”
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“To develop meaningful and mature relationships at work or at home we need to develop two filters. The first filter protects you from other people. The second filter protects other people from you.”
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“The point I wish to emphasize is not an economic one, but a human one: if you try to say too many things, you don’t say anything at all.”
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“Often we try to bring about change through sheer effort and we put all of our energy into a new initiative. But you can’t beat stress using the same techniques that created the stress in the first place.”
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“Achieving strategic clarity is hard. It takes asking tough questions about tradeoffs, deep concentration to get to the very essence of the issues and real courage to cut off competing priorities. It is worth the effort because with real clarity, people, teams and organizations can fully mobilize, break through to the next level and achieve something truly great.”
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“Simply put, when you invite people’s best thinking and lead like a multiplier, your team will give you more—more discretionary effort, more mental and physical energy, and more of the fresh ideas critical for long-term success.”
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“Everything changes when we give ourselves permission to be more selective in what we choose to do.”
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“Every time we check email, we're checking somebody else's agenda.”
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“Say no to many good things so you can say yes to a few great things.”
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“When we push back effectively, it shows people that our time is valuable. It distinguishes the professional from the amateur.”
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“Saying no is its own leadership capability. It is not just a peripheral skill.”
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“By abolishing any chance of being bored we have also lost the time we used to have to think and process.”
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2025· 3 entries
Snopes rated the claim “Netflix Co-founder and Chairman Reed Hastings donated $2 million to California Gov. Gavin Newsom's redistricting campaign.” True.
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Reported net worth: $6.3B (as of 2025).
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In the 2025 New York City mayoral elections, Reed Hastings donated $250,000 to stop Zohran Mamdani from being elected, unsuccessfully.
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2024· 3 entries
Hastings supported Kamala Harris for the presidential election and made a multimillion-dollar donation to Republican Accountability PAC, a Super PAC supporting her campaign
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Hastings called on Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 United States presidential election
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Gifted two million of his Netflix shares worth $1
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2021· 1 entry
Hastings gave $3 million to defeat the campaign to recall Gavin Newsom as governor of California
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2020· 3 entries
BOOM Fact Check rated the claim “Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was arrested by FBI agents for possession of child pornography.” False.
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Snopes rated the claim “Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was arrested on suspicion of possessing child pornography.” False.
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Hastings and his wife donated $120 million to Morehouse College and Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia
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2016· 1 entry
Snopes.com rated the claim “Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that Donald Trump 'would destroy much of what is great about America.'” True.
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2009· 1 entry
Hastings ran into trouble on the State Board of Education when Democratic legislators challenged his advocacy of more English instruction and language testing for non-English speaking students
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2007· 2 entries
Hastings told CNN: "From her, I learned the value of focus
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To stream movies and television shows to computers
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2000· 1 entry
Governor Gray Davis appointed Hastings to the State Board of Education, and in 2001, Hastings became its president
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1997· 2 entries
Hastings and former Pure Software employee Marc Randolph co-founded Netflix, Inc
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The combined company, Pure Atria, was acquired by Rational Software, which triggered a 42% drop in both companies' stocks after the deal was announced
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1996· 1 entry
Pure Software announced a merger with Atria Software
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1991· 1 entry
To lay the foundation for his first company, Pure Software, which produced products to troubleshoot software
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1990· 1 entry
“From her, I learned the value of focus. I learned it is better to do one product well than two products in a mediocre way.”
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1988· 1 entry
With a Master of Science in Computer Science
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1983· 1 entry
Graduated from Bowdoin College with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics
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1960· 1 entry
Born 1960-10-08.
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