Management

Reed Hastings founded Netflix in 1997 and launched the subscription service in 1999. Netflix grew to one million subscribers in less than four years, and surpassed 6.3 million subscribers in December 2006.

In five consecutive surveys over three years Netflix has been 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."

In March 2007 Reed was appointed to Microsoft Corp.'s board of directors.

Earlier in his career, Reed founded Pure Software, which he built 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.

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

Leslie 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 6.8 million. Since Leslie joined the company, Netflix has evolved from a Bay Area phenomenon to a nationally distributed service ranked five consecutive times since 2005 as the #1 online retailer for customer satisfaction by independent researchers ForeSee Results and FGI Research. In January 2007 Netflix was named Innovator of the Year for 2006 by the National Retail Federation and in October 2005 Fast Company magazine named Netflix 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.

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 400) to total revenue (almost $1 billion at the end of 2006).

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 being named by ForeSee Results as the #1 Web site for customer satisfaction in five consecutive surveys over three years. 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 16 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.