In 1997, the founders of Netflix mailed a single CD to a home address in Santa Cruz to test whether a disc could survive the postal system undamaged; it arrived intact, and that experiment is now retold as the moment the company began

In 1997, the founders of Netflix mailed a single CD to a home address in Santa Cruz to test whether a disc could survive the postal system undamaged; it arrived intact, and that experiment is now retold as the moment the company began

In 1997, one of Netflix’s two founders bought a second-hand CD of Patsy Cline’s greatest hits from a shop in Santa Cruz, slipped it into an envelope, and dropped it at the local post office. It reached his co-founder’s house across town without a scratch. That small experiment has become Netflix’s founding moment in the retelling. One detail usually falls out along the way: the disc that made the trip was an ordinary music CD, standing in for a …