Technology History | Netflix — The Conference Room at 6020 Scotts Valley Drive

People treat Netflix as a Los Gatos streaming campus that Reed Hastings founded after a Blockbuster fine for Apollo 13.

The first paid rooms were here, in a conference room at the Best Western at 6020 Scotts Valley Drive, rented by the week for about $250. The company was incorporated on 29 August 1997. Marc Randolph was the first chief executive. Hastings put in the seed money from the sale of Pure Atria and took the chair.

The Apollo 13 fine is a story Hastings told later. Randolph has said it was a marketing line. The test that mattered was a used Patsy Cline CD bought at Logos on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz, mailed from the downtown post office, and found intact the next morning. They already knew VHS was too heavy to post. DVD was just arriving.

They left the motel for a suite in the Granite Creek business park, still in Scotts Valley, with the first discs locked in an old bank vault. Launch day in 1998 produced 137 orders that had to clear the Scotts Valley post office by three o'clock. The Los Gatos campus at Winchester Circle is a 2003 address. The first office was a motel meeting room in Scotts Valley, not a streaming headquarters.