At $2M ARR, Vercel sat at 0% gross margins—then, they soared past $8M (and later $200M) ARR with 70+% margins, without compromising on product quality. Charging ahead as an industry leader and using new technology is expensive, which can make the gross margins equation appear out of whack early on. But as underlying infrastructure costs decrease, the scales balance.
Marten Abrahamsen, Vercel’s Chief Financial Officer: "Our early approach to gross margins was very deliberate, our hypothesis was: solve the hardest infrastructure problems and the margins will follow. So we focused relentlessly on developer experience and product velocity, and the unit economics naturally improved as we achieved scale from $2M to $200M ARR."