We’d even started changing Netflix’s identity to appeal to risk-averse banks and their customers. The big trend, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, was for internet companies to be portals—entry points on the internet for a specific niche. The popular wisdom at the time was that if you wanted to be a successful website, you had to be all things to all people—if you wanted to chase money, you had to chase traffic first. That meant that Netflix couldn’t just be a rental service aimed at helping people find the DVDs they’d love—it had to be a place for movie lovers of all stripes.
