How Netflix went from a DVD-by-mail service to Hollywood conqueror

As Netflix has grown, what started as a technology company led by engineers has morphed into an entertainment company led by thousands of people trained in Hollywood studios

About three years ago, Reed Hastings set out to answer a question that had bedeviled Hollywood for the past decade: How did a small DVD-by-mail company build the most popular TV service in the world?

Hastings, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Netflix Inc, was never fond of revisiting his past. “There’s not a nostalgic bone in his body,” says Patty McCord, a former employee and longtime friend. But after outmaneuvering media barons, tech conglomerates and startups to build a global entertainment colossus, Hastings agreed to write a book.

He didn’t want to write a gushy memoir, what Hastings calls “CEO