[3] He is the majority owner and chief executive officer of Powder Mountain, a Utah ski resort.

His father Wilmot Reed Hastings Sr. was an attorney for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon administration, and his mother Joan Amory Loomis was a debutante from a Boston Brahmin family who was repulsed by the world of high society and taught her children to disdain it.

Hastings attended Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door in a gap year before entering college.

He credits part of his entrepreneurial spirit to his time in the Peace Corps, remarking that, "Once you have hitchhiked across Africa with ten bucks in your pocket, starting a business doesn't seem too intimidating.

"[12] After returning from the Peace Corps, Hastings went on to attend Stanford University after being rejected from his first choice MIT, graduating in 1988 with a Master's Degree in Computer Science.

His engineering background didn't prepare him for the challenges of being a CEO, and he asked his board to replace him, stating he was losing confidence.

[19] In 1997, Hastings and former Pure Software employee Marc Randolph co-founded Netflix, offering flat rate movie rental-by-mail to customers in the US by combining two emerging technologies; DVDs, which were much easier to send as mail than VHS-cassettes, and a website from which to order them, instead of a paper catalogue.

Blockbuster reportedly ordered Hastings to stop telling the story, after not finding the transaction in its records.

[23] As Netflix grew, the company was noticed for its innovative management practices—the results of the culture Hastings was exploring—called "Freedom and Responsibility".

In August 2009, Hastings posted this internal culture guide publicly online, and it eventually became a pre-employment screening tool that dissuaded incompatible people from applying.

[26] In September 2020, Hastings and Erin Meyer co-authored a book on Netflix's culture and management principles with interviews from current and former employees.

[33] Hastings is the majority owner of Powder Mountain ski resort in Utah following his $100 million investment in 2023.

[13] He spent $1 million of his own money together with $6 million from Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr to promote the passage of Proposition 39 in November 2000,[40] a measure that lowered the level of voter approval for local schools to pass construction bond issues from 66 to 55 percent.

[13][23] In 2009, Hastings ran into trouble on the State Board of Education when Democratic legislators challenged his advocacy of more English instruction and language testing for non-English speaking students.

][13] In April 2008, Steven Maviglio reported that Hastings had made a $100,000 contribution to California Governor Schwarzenegger's "Voters First" redistricting campaign.

Hastings opened a donor-advised fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in 2016 with a $100 million contribution.

[49] In April 2004, Hastings authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed advocating the expensing of stock options.

[53] In 2021, Hastings gave $3 million to defeat the campaign to recall Gavin Newsom as governor of California.

[54] On July 3, 2024, Hastings called on Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 United States presidential election.

[64] In March 2022, Hastings donated $1 million to Razom, a Ukrainian nonprofit organization that procures emergency supplies and medical equipment, such as disposable resuscitators to treat the wounded.