Netflix: Journey from DVD rental to video streaming
While you might have spent hours binging on Netflix this weekend, it's worth considering how many of us know about its humble beginning as a DVD rental service over post.
Quick rundown 📀
1997: Netflix started renting DVDs via post
2023: Streams in 190+ countries. How did they do it? ⬇️
Early days ☀️
If you are a 90s kid, you must remember renting out DVDs from stores. Netflix was born to solve the problem of "late fees" on late returns of DVDs.
Competition ⚔️
Back then Blockbuster had a web of 9,000+ offline DVD rental stores, occupying a huge market share to easily outcompete Netflix, the upstart.
Offer 💸
Netflix got an offer from Blockbuster, the market leader in DVDs, to get sold for $20M. Netflix founders gave a last offer to buy them at $50M.
Blockbuster not only denied the offer but also trolled it!
Pivot 🚃
In January 2007, the company introduced internet-based video on demand with only 1,000 films, while 70,000 were available on DVD.
Thanks to the slow internet, video streaming was a pain back then.
Turnaround 🌪️
Because of the heavy debt-led offline business, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and the market opened up for disruption.
Disruption 💥
With high internet adoption, video streaming became mainstream and Netflix became the market leader.
The Utopia 🧫
After 23+ years of hustle to understand the market dynamics, user behaviour, and industry trends, they are a $160B company and present in 190 countries.
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