Netflix, Inc.

 is an American over-the-top content platform and production

company headquartered in Los Gatos, California. Netflix was founded in 1997 by Reed
Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California. The company's primary
business is a subscription-based streaming service offering online streaming from a
library of films and television series, including those produced in-house.[14] As of
October 2020, Netflix had over 195 million paid subscriptions worldwide, including
73 million in the United States.[15] It is available worldwide except in the following:
mainland China (due to local restrictions), Syria, North Korea, and Crimea (due to US
sanctions). It was reported in 2020 that Netflix's operating income is $1.2 billion.
[16] The company has offices in England, France, Brazil, the Netherlands, India, Japan,
and South Korea.[17] Netflix is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA),
producing and distributing content from countries all over the globe.

Netflix's initial business model included DVD sales and rental by mail, but Hastings
abandoned the sales about a year after the company's founding to focus on the initial
DVD rental business.[14][18] Netflix expanded its business in 2007 with the
introduction of streaming media while retaining the DVD and Blu-ray rental business.
The company expanded internationally in 2010 with streaming available in Canada,
[19] followed by Latin America and the Caribbean. Netflix entered the content-
production industry in 2013, debuting its first series House of Cards.

Since 2012, Netflix has taken more of an active role as producer and distributor for both
film and television series, and to that end, offers a variety of "Netflix Original" content
through its online library.[20] By January 2016, Netflix services operated in more than
190 countries.[21] Netflix released an estimated 126 original series and films in 2016,
more than any other network or cable channel.[22] Their efforts to produce new
content, secure the rights for additional content, and diversify through 190 countries
have resulted in the company racking up billions in debt: $21.9 billion as of September
2017, up from $16.8 billion from the previous year.[23] $6.5 billion of this is long-term
debt, with the remainder in long-term obligations.[24] In October 2018, Netflix
announced it would raise another $2 billion in debt to help fund new content.[25] On
July 10, 2020, Netflix became the largest entertainment/media company by market
capitalization.[26]

Marc Randolph[29][30] and Reed Hastings founded Netflix on August 29, 1997

in Scotts Valley, California. Randolph worked as a marketing director for Hastings's
company, Pure Atria.[31] Randolph had co-founded MicroWarehouse, a computer mail-
order company; Borland International later employed him as vice president of
marketing. Hastings, a computer scientist and mathematician, sold Pure Atria
to Rational Software Corporation in 1997 for $700 million in what was then the biggest
acquisition in Silicon Valley history. The two came up with the idea for Netflix when
commuting between their homes in Santa Cruz and Pure Atria's headquarters in
Sunnyvale while waiting for government regulators to approve the merger,[32] although
Hastings has given several different explanations for how the idea came about.[33]

Hastings invested $2.5 million in startup cash for Netflix.[34][18] Randolph admired

the fledgling e-commerce company Amazon and wanted to find a large category of
portable items to sell over the Internet using a similar model. Hastings and Randolph
considered and rejected VHS tapes as too expensive to stock and too delicate to ship.
When they heard about DVDs, first introduced in the United States on March 24, 1997,
[35] they tested the concept of selling or renting DVDs by mail by mailing a compact
disc to Hastings's house in Santa Cruz. When the disc arrived intact, they decided to
take on the $16 billion home-video sales and rental industry.[32] Hastings is often
quoted saying that he decided to start Netflix after being fined $40 at a Blockbuster
store for being late to return a copy of Apollo 13, but he and Randolph designed this
apocryphal story to explain the company's business model and motivation.[32]

Netflix launched as the world's first online DVD-rental store, with only 30 employees
and 925 titles available—almost the entire catalogue of DVDs at the time[36]—using the
pay-per-rent model, with rates and due dates similar to those of its brick-and-
mortar competitor, Blockbuster.[37][32]