Netflix was founded on August 29, 1997, in Scotts Valley, California when their founders Marc

Randolph and Reed Hastings came up with the idea of starting the service of offering online movie

rentals. The company began its operations of rental stores with only 30 employees and 925 titles

available, which was almost the entire catalogue of DVDs in print at the time, through the pay-per-

rent model with rates and due dates. Rentals were around $4 plus a $2 postage charge. After

significant growth, Netflix decided to switch to a subscriber-based model.

In 2000, Netflix introduced a personalized movie recommendation system. In this system, a user-

based rating helps to accurately predict choices for Netflix members. By 2005, the number of

Netflix subscribers rose to 4.2 million. On October 1, 2006, Netflix offered a $1,000,000 prize to

the first developer of a video-recommendation algorithm that could beat its existing algorithm Cine

match, at predicting customer ratings by more than 10%.

By 2007 the company decided to move away from its original core business model of DVDs by

introducing video on demand via the internet. As a part of the internet streaming strategy, they

decided to stream their content on Xbox 360, Blu-Ray disc players and TV set-top boxes. The

ventures also partnered with these companies to online streaming their content. With the

introduction of the services in Canada in 2010, Netflix also made their services available on the

range of Apple products, Nintendo Wii and other internet-connected devices.

In 2013, Netflix won three Primetime Emmy Awards for its series "House of Cards. By 2014,

Netflix made itself available into 6 countries in Europe and won 7 creative Emmy Awards for

"House of Cards" and "Orange Is the New Black". With blooming streaming services, Netflix

gathered over 50 million members globally. By 2016, Netflix was accessible worldwide, and the

company has continued to create more original content while pressing to grow its membership.

From this point, Netflix was unstoppable and today it has a worldwide presence in the video-on-

demand industry.