alt Hacker NewsHow do they actual make money? I've been using Resolve for years without paying for it (and without thinking about its business model too much). It seems that they sell quite expensive professional hardware so I assume the software users are just compensated by hardware users?
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Hardware. It's like the Apple model (before they got into services). They sell a full suite of hardware that works great with their software, and they see the software as a way to keep good will, and also showcase their tech well.
They also sell a paid version, if you want a few extra features.
That and I imagine the overwhelming majority of professional users pay for the Studio license. It has a few quality of life things that are a total no-brainer when you use it to make money and/or are paying the person using it.
If you scroll down to the bottom of the linked page, there is a lot of pricing shown for various things. It looks like it gets expensive fast.
so you only export to 1080p? I pay for it, albiet the $300~ price point is still low for forever free updates
Premium features in the paid software as well
I used to work at Blackmagic, wrote some of the peripheral code around BRAW and did some work with the Resolve guys up in Singapore.
Used to have lunch regularly with one of the owners too. Need to check in with him again!
At least back in 2019, BMD made a lot of money selling professional licences for DaVinci Resolve. I don't know exact figures but that part of the business was healthily profitable of its own accord. Very, very healthily profitable!
Most parts of the business were profitable standalone, AFAIK. Their model didn't revolve around loss leaders, burning VC money or anything like that; just selling good products at fair prices and making bank.
I think a big part of it was a fairly lean culture (whole company was bootstrapped and grown sustainably), and specifically in the case of DaVinci they bought out an existing business that had already done a lot of the development and marketing work for absolute peanuts.
Very smart team doing good work.