Investing.com - Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) shares recently suffered their worst day in two years, but for co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings, it's probably just another bump in the road.
As Hastings once said: "Once you've hitchhiked across Africa with ten bucks in your pocket, starting a business doesn't seem too intimidating."
Hastings made that journey during his Peace Corp days in Swaziland, teaching math.
That followed his graduation from Bowdoin College in Maine, not far from his birthplace of Boston.
Hastings then attended Stanford University, where he received a masters in artificial intelligence in 1988.
He founded his first company, Pure Software, in 1991. After an IPO, a merger with another company and a takeover by yet another one, Hastings moved on.
In 1997, he co-founded Netflix with Marc Rudolph. The idea was to offer DVD rentals and sales via a website and deliver them through the mail. The company's service launched in 1998 and grew quickly with the popularity of DVDs.
The company was headed for a quick IPO, but the dot.com crash of 2000 and the September 11 attacks of 2001 delayed that until 2002.
The turning point came in 2007, when Netflix added video streaming to its DVD rental service. In 2012, the company started creating its own content and has since become a major producer of programming. Netflix now has 130 million subscribers in more than 190 countries.
Netflix stock is up more than 30,000% since its IPO, when stock splits are factored in.
Off the job, Hastings is an active education philanthropist with a special interest in charter schools.
He served on the California State Board of Education, and is currently on the boards of DreamBox, KIPP and Pahara.
Hastings is worth more than $4 billion, according to Forbes. In 2012, however, he signed the Giving Pledge, a campaign that encourages wealthy people to donate half of their money to philanthropy. That's quite a math lesson for a one-time teacher.