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118 points jenny91 | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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teitoklien ◴[] No.40683093[source]
I guess they’re facing severe financial strain
replies(4): >>40683227 #>>40683268 #>>40684046 #>>40684113 #
moralestapia ◴[] No.40683268[source]
Wait, so Vercel is not profitable?

How tf? They're the most overpriced product I pay for (and I like it, no complains).

replies(2): >>40683388 #>>40684279 #
solatic ◴[] No.40683388[source]
Revenue is no match for throwing massive bags of money at the marketing bonfire. Subsidizing open-source projects is ultimately a marketing spend - sounds like the marketing budget is getting cut.
replies(2): >>40683480 #>>40683961 #
1. sdesol ◴[] No.40683961[source]
> Subsidizing open-source projects is ultimately a marketing spend

They say 2M in Vercel credits. How much is that in actual money?

replies(2): >>40684035 #>>40687963 #
2. creshal ◴[] No.40684035[source]
Hopefully, much less, or Vercel is indeed bleeding money and not long for this world.
3. solatic ◴[] No.40687963[source]
Credits isn't the same thing as either revenue or costs. Look at kids pirating Photoshop and Maya to learn the tools and make cool shit - that's not really lost revenue, because kids just don't have that kind of money to spend on professional tools to begin with. Most open source projects taking Vercel credits don't have the money to pay Vercel in the absence of credits, so this doesn't result in lost revenue. And it's not the same as costs, because if it did, then Vercel wouldn't be making a profit.

The only reasonable way to track this is to understand how much each customer costs (in servers, hardware, etc) and internally attribute those costs to marketing instead of revenue.