Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings has an estimated net worth of $840 million. Born Wilmot Reed Hastings Jr. on October 8, 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts, he was a mathematics major at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine and received his bachelors degree in 1983. In 1981, he won the math department’s Smyth Prize, while in 1983, he won the Hammond Prize. He holds an M.S.C.S. degree that he earned from Stanford University.

From its inception in October 1991, Hastings used to serve as the CEO of Pure Atria Software, a maker of the software development tools. However, in 1997, it was acquired by Rational Software Corporation. Since 1998 when he co-founded Netflix with Marc Randolph, he served as the CEO of the online DVD rental service. He was also part of Microsoft. It was announced on March 26, 2007 that he had been elected to its board of directors. Currently, he also serves on the board of directors for the Facebook Social Network by Mark Zuckerberg.

Before that, Reed Hastings used to serve on the Peace Corps and was a high school math teacher in Swaziland, Africa for several years during the 80's. He is active in education philanthropy and politics. He is a strong advocate of charter schools where public elementary or secondary schools were publicly funded.