Netflix founder Reed Hastings on the most important leadership quality for building a company

What's the most important thing to do? If you can think back to it from a dozen to, say, 200, and then from 200 to 2,000, is that a good break point?

Sure. You have to be authentic. I mean, you've got no hope. If you try to pretend to be Reed Hastings or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or whoever you want to think your CEOs are that you've met, that is crazy. And you got to really get comfortable with yourself, your strengths and weaknesses. People are inspired by authenticity, and I'm just surprised how many people feel like they're acting or try to act. And you may be a really quiet person, and that's fine, but if you have that fierce will, that desire for the institution, the company to be great, and your own role in that is secondary, and you authentically express that in whatever ways you do, then you'll be greatly accepted. Okay? And so that's all it takes, is to be authentic and not try to be something else and to fundamentally care at your core about what's good for the company. And if everybody knows and you act in the notion of what's good, as best as your judgment can tell what's good for the company, they will see that and people will follow you, and they won't be cynical. It's when you hide things, it's when you pretend that you lose trust very quickly.