12/24/2025
In 2000, Reed Hastings flew to Dallas with one desperate mission: to save his struggling startup, Netflix.
By then Netflix was a tiny DVD-by-mail service losing money, and Blockbuster, the video rental giant, dominated the industry.
Reed offered Blockbuster a jaw-dropping proposal: buy Netflix for $50 million and merge the businesses.
In the meeting, Blockbuster’s CEO listened…then literally laughed in their faces.
Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph recalled leaving humiliated: “You fly to Blockbuster, try and sell the business, and they laugh at you.”
The Blockbuster executives figured Netflix was a joke... why buy a failing dot-com?
Rejection stung, but Reed and his team decided if they couldn’t join Blockbuster, they’d beat them.
They ground through layoffs, refocused on mailing DVDs fast, and soon moved into something new: online streaming.
Customers flocked to Netflix’s new model.
Blockbuster, slow to adapt, began to collapse.
A few years later, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy and their 9,000 stores shuttered one by one (only a single franchise store is left today).
Netflix, meanwhile, skyrocketed into a streaming empire serving over 200 million subscribers.
The company once mocked in the boardroom is now worth over $150 billion, while Blockbuster is a pop-culture punchline.
Don’t let ridicule stop you.
Sometimes the ones laughing at you will wind up irrelevant, and the scrappy underdog with a bold vision will have the last laugh.
