Netflix was one step away from launching its own set-top box

In 2007, Netflix was just putting the finishing touches on its own streaming device, a box that would have been Netflix’s version of the Roku or Apple TV. The company was so close to releasing it that they had begun to shoot promotional videos that were to appear on the website, according to Netflix’s former director of global marketing Barry Enderwick. Lots of time and money had been sunk into the development of the device, but Netflix decided to kill it. Why? Because Netflix’s vision had become bigger. “Our strategy was to have Netflix on every device capable of connecting to the Internet,” Enderwick explains. “To do that, we would have to convince major brands like Samsung, Microsoft, and Sony to include Netflix on their Blu-ray players, game consoles, and streaming devices.” These brands wouldn’t be so eager to work with Netflix if the company was trying to compete with them on hardware. “Hardware was an industry that we had no internal knowledge of until we hired Anthony Wood, CEO of Roku,” Enderwick says. It wasn’t their specialty. That doesn’t mean that Netflix’s streaming box would have been a flop, but Netflix’s leadership decided it just wasn’t worth it to compromise the company’s long-term plan, which would need the support of prominent hardware companies.