Netflix boss on global expansion: ‘We’re really just beginning’

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in Singapore. Photo credit: Netflix.

Talking to Netflix top brass brings to mind the old business cliche about the sprint and the marathon. Despite the market’s lust for explosive growth sexiness, the California-based company seems happy to keep on chugging, doing its thing, and growing and learning along the way.

Netflix hopes to make global licensing of third-party content the norm.

At least that’s the attitude Netflix CEO Reed Hastings exhibits when talking to media. His latest visit to Singapore was no exception.

The internet TV company announced its quarterly figures recently, revealing that it has 81.5 million subscribers worldwide as of the first quarter of 2016. For Q2 2016, it projects 84 million subscribers, with 36.5 million of those accessing the service from outside the US. The projected 2-million-subscriber gain is lower than what some market analysts were expecting for the second quarter of 2016, making them worried about a slower growth rate for the US$33-billion company.

Keep growing

Reed and Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos feel continued success rests on providing great material through the service and making sure users have a good experience on it.

“In most countries like Vietnam, we’re only in English, with international credit cards. So we’re really just beginning,” Reeds tells journalists. He adds that Netflix right now covers 20 languages, where YouTube has 50. It also needs to start offering more payment methods for many territories.

See: Inside Netflix’s battle to win the world

The company still has some distance to cover before it offers the experience it wants, but its global launch is instrumental to that plan. “The reason we went global is we realized we’re going to increase our rate of learning [that way],” Reed says.

The catalog size is another consistently thorny issue – one that Netflix is very aware of, both men say. While it’s unlikely that any one country’s selection will ever please everyone in that country (even US viewers have plenty of grievances on that front), the company is at least trying to work toward a universal experience.

Previously, Netflix has done its best to highlight its original properties, which are available worldwide. But a lot of people’s reaction is, “What else you got?” The answer is, more global third-party shows and movies – hopefully.

“We’re trying to move to global licensing, where we pay for content all around the world so that it’s fair to the content owner and it gives the people what they want, which is the global selection,” Reed says. Netflix has already done so with shows like How to get away with murder and Gotham, but it hopes to make that the norm.

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos in Singapore. Photo credit: Netflix.

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