Netflix’s Hastings Was Always Ahead of the Curve

Reed Hastings, the chairman of Netflix Inc., caught the market off guard last week when he announced that he would step down in June from the board of the company he co-founded nearly 30 years ago.

But it really should have come as no surprise. Hastings has always been ahead of the curve. That allowed him to transform not only the media and entertainment landscape but the rules of corporate culture. It also made it much more likely that he would be the kind of founder who would walk out the door on his own terms rather than receive a push. After all, this is a man who decided to start a company centered on DVDs when only about 1% of US households had DVD players — and then later set out to cannibalize its own DVD business when he decided streaming was the future. We should trust him that he knows the right time to leave.