Netflix is available in over 190 countries and has about 220 million subscribers, but did you know it started as a DVD rental service?
Netflix was founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph. Randolph worked at Hastings' software company, Pure Atria, and the two men often discussed business ideas on their way to work.
Randolph told the Silicon Valley Business Journal that one of those ideas was an online videotape rental service.
Now Netflix's CEO, Hastings has said he got the idea after having to pay a fee for returning a videotape late.
However, videotapes were difficult to ship, said Randolph, and they decided the business wouldn't work.
But in 1996, the year before they were released in the US, Randolph and Hastings read about DVDs. Realizing DVDs would replace videotapes and were easier to ship, Netflix was born.
Netflix.com was launched in 1998 as a DVD rental and sales site, letting people receive and return them by mail.
At first, a rental cost around $4 plus a $2 shipping fee and could be kept for seven days. But in 1999, Netflix launched its subscription service, which allowed users to rent as many DVDs as they liked without return dates and late fees.
By 2007, Netflix had shipped 1 billion DVDs worldwide.
That same year, the company introduced an online streaming option for some of its movies and TV shows. And in 2008, the company started working with brands like Microsoft's Xbox to allow streaming on different devices.
In the years that followed, the company began phasing out its DVD rentals and focused on expanding its streaming service to other countries and releasing its own original shows and movies.
By the end of 2021, Netflix had more than 2,400 original titles.
