Netflix’s Ted Sarandos tells how a job at a video store launched his career

In a wide-ranging discussion on Bloomberg TV’s “The David Rubenstein Show” last week, Sarandos offered some details about his transition from aspiring journalist to video store clerk and eventually to the video streaming giant.

Growing up in Arizona, he said he wanted to be a journalist, even though he loved movies and television, which also featured news dogs as heroes. He was the editor of the campus newspaper in high school and community college.

“But I also had an epiphany around that time that I wasn’t a very good writer, so I probably wasn’t going to be a professional journalist,” Sarandos joked.

Meanwhile, he also had a job at a video store, where he started as a customer devouring all their titles. During his clerical shifts, he also had the opportunity to watch several films. Eventually, he became so knowledgeable about movies that customers waited in line for his recommendations.

After a while, the store owner wanted to spend more time with his family and asked Sarandos to take over the business, which had turned into a chain.

“It was an MBA course and film school all rolled into one for me,” he said.

From there, he went into a home video distribution business selling DVDs and VHS tapes to video stores. That’s when he created what was a unique business at the time, which involved sharing DVD revenue.

A 1999 news article about the business in the trade magazine Variety it caught the attention of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, and a mutual friend introduced them.

Of course, Netflix has since turned into an entertainment juggernaut, as well as a textbook example of a Silicon Valley disruptor that transformed the industry and forced studios to launch their own streaming services to compete.

Its massive development budget is sending waves through Hollywood, and the company is expected to spend $17 billion this year on content, the vast majority on original material.

In 2020, Sarandos was promoted from chief content officer to co-CEO. In 2023, Hastings stepped down as the other co-CEO to serve as executive chairman, with Greg Peters elevated from COO to co-CEO.

Later in the interview, Sarandos was asked what he would like his legacy to be in the entertainment industry. “The guy who put the public first,” he replied.

Noting that the late Tony Bennett was a good friend and hero of his, Sarandos recalled an important lesson from the singing icon:

“The audience is the most important member of the band,” he said. “And I think one approach that we’re taking to Netflix and our programming and our movies and our TV and our games is that we put the audience first and think about how they’re going to love it, first. We will build a business model around it.”