Reed Hastings on 60 Minutes

The most recent episode of 60 Minutes had an interview with Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix—and before that, Pure Software, where I worked for three years after college. I missed the episode, but the CBS website has the transcript and a 2-minute video excerpt. I thought I might be able to find the whole thing on YouTube, but no such luck. Anyway, it's a kick to see my old boss interviewed by Leslie Stahl, and to see some of my former coworkers' names in a picture of a company-sponsored triathlon banner from 1996 (after I left). I'm glad that he's had success with Netflix, but I kind of get the impression that it is, like Pure was, a good company but not a great company (like Google or Amazon). Pure got rich from Purify, a memory-checking developer tool that has helped extend the life of C/C++ programming probably 10-20 years past when it really should have died, but when Pure expanded into other tools they never quite got it right and didn't really survive the coming of Java's memory safety and garbage collection. Similarly, Netflix had a great idea for its time, renting DVDs by mail with no late fees, but they seem to have some issues in executing the idea—there was an embarassment in the interview when Reed couldn't find the customer service phone number on their website, and there are a lot of disgruntled user comments on the 60 Minutes story web page—and they might be headed for obsolescence if they can't keep up with the online video trend. Or worse, if they try to appease the MPAA's fight against it with draconian copy-protection schemes. In the meantime, they'll have to deal with the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD debacle.