The Knowledge Project: A Farnam Street Podcast

How do you build a high-performance culture without turning your company into the Hunger Games? Reed Hastings, co-founder and former CEO of Netflix, shares lessons from a career spent rewriting the rules—from severance as a management tool to “big-hearted champions who pick up the trash.” In this episode, he reveals how Netflix scaled trust, made bold bets before the data was in, and kept its edge by treating employees like adults—not assets. You’ll hear how Hastings evaluates talent beyond the interview, the reason he avoids performance improvement plans, and what most leaders misunderstand about judgment, feedback, and innovation.  You’ll also hear why he placed a $100 million bet on House of Cards with no pilot, how Drive to Survive changed an entire sport, and why Squid Game caught even Netflix by surprise.  Now focused on a new chapter—owning a ski mountain, reshaping education through AI tutors, and supporting charter schools—Hastings is still doing what he does best: building systems that scale cultu