Outside, the departure of Reed Hastings, founder and current CEO of Netflix formalized this Thursday, shortly before the presentation of quarterly results, sounds like a surprise. It is not so internally as his succession is preparing ” since many years “.
Netflix’s epic is played by Reed Hastings
The manager created the company in 1997 with Marc Randolph. It is only a DVD rental subscription service. We therefore measure the work accomplished by this man and his teams to arrive at what Netflix has become in 2023.
To accompany his departure, Reed Hastings wanted to be reassuring in a blog post published for the occasion. Since 2020, he has already exercised his leadership in tandem with Ted Sarandos, the director of content. This two-headed management model is maintained, and Ted Sarandos takes the reins of the platform in duet with the current chief operating officer, Greg Peters.
Reed Hastings is not completely disappearing from Netflix. A bit like what Bill Gates is already doing at Microsoft, and Jeff Bezos at Amazon, he will indeed remain executive chairman of the company’s board of directors.
“In the wake of covid, they have both managed incredibly well, ensuring Netflix continues to improve and developing a clear path to re-accelerate our revenue and profit growth. The board and I therefore feel that this is the right time to complete my succession.”reports Reed Hastings.
What future for Netflix?
He goes on to explain: “Ted had the foresight and skills to get into original programming, changing the trajectory of our business. It then moved quickly to expand into international original programming, film, animation and unscripted programming – gambles that helped broaden our range of content and took courage in the face of skepticism. »
On Greg Peters, he adds: “Greg was instrumental in setting up our partnerships, creating and launching advertising, further personalization, rebuilding our talent organization and strengthening our brand. He also spent several years in Japan, where he spearheaded our early Japanese original content efforts as the country’s general manager, and is currently developing our video game initiative. »
The future will confirm this, but Greg Peters therefore seems a little more focused on diversifying the income of the streaming service, exhausted by a very difficult year 2022, while Ted Sarandos will be the guardian of the temple of the original creations which made the success of the entertainment giant.
