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Fortune
Fortune
Andrew Nusca

Data Sheet: Behaving like a projectile

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell on September 18, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Good morning. Thirteen years ago this week, Netflix rebranded its movies-by-mail service Qwikster.

Then-CEO Reed Hastings saw the streaming revolution coming and shoved his Netflix-branded chips into the pile. Three weeks later he conceded that splitting the streaming and physical media businesses was too, well, hasty and backtracked.

It all worked out: Netflix earnings today are 10X what they were then.

The company still owns the Qwikster.com domain, by the way. As the maxim goes: Every man has a price. —Andrew Nusca

P.S. Colin Kaepernick is coming to Fortune’s Brainstorm AI conference, Dec. 9-10 in San Francisco. Register your interest here.

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