https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix
Netflix was founded on August 29, 1997, in Scotts Valley, California, by Marc Randolph[20][21] and Reed Hastings. Randolph worked as a marketing director for Hastings' company, Pure Atria.[22] Randolph was a co-founder of MicroWarehouse, a computer mail order company, and was later employed by Borland International 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 richest acquisition in Silicon Valley history. They came up with the idea for Netflix while commuting between their homes in Santa Cruz and Pure Atria's headquarters in Sunnyvale while waiting for government regulators to approve the merger,[23] although Hasting has given several different explanations for how the idea was created.[24]
Hastings invested $2.5 million in startup cash for Netflix.[25][10] 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. They considered and rejected VHS tapes as too expensive to stock and too delicate to ship. When they heard about DVDs, which was first introduced in the United States on March 31, 1997,[26] they tested the concept of selling or renting DVDs by mail, by mailing a compact disc to Hastings' house in Santa Cruz. When the disc arrived intact, they decided to take on the $16 billion home video sales and rental industry.[23] 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 this is an apocryphal story that he and Randolph designed to explain the company's business model and motivation.[23]
Netflix was launched on April 14, 1998, as the world's first online DVD rental store,[23][27] with only 30 employees and 925 titles available, which was almost the entire catalogue of DVDs in print at the time,[28] through the pay-per-rent model with rates and due dates that were similar to its bricks-and-mortar rival, Blockbuster.[29][23]
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