Great marketing is a result of putting your customer’s happiness first, ahead of your own ideas, ahead of your desire to beat the competition, ahead of your desire to keep company secrets, as Reed Hastings demonstrates. This company founder runs a company that’s transparent, showing its heart.

Inc: Interview with Reed Hastings of Netflix (via Extra Texture)

The average subscriber cost is $3 to $4, so we’re significantly ahead on the cost curve. Netflix has to be the leader in technological advancements to maintain our annual retention rate of 97%.

Look at the all-time Netflix Top 100 list of rentals and you’ll see it’s not just the studio blockbuster movies. Mystic River was No. 1 for a long stretch. Oscar winners do very well for us. We approached the producers of Born Into Brothels at the Sundance Film Festival and they signed an exclusive deal with Netflix. The movie went on to win an Academy Award. Born Into Brothels is a rough digital-video documentary, but it’s a great story. It’s been a big winner.

When Wal-Mart started a DVD subscription service in November 2002, Netflix stock dropped to $2.50. I was surprised they entered the market, but I knew that they wouldn’t be as focused as we are. We competed in 2003 and 2004, but last spring, Wal-Mart realized it had such a huge opportunity to sell DVDs that a rental service didn’t make much sense. I had dinner with the CEO of Walmart.com, and eventually we came to an arrangement where basically the companies promoted one another.