How An Aussie From The Housing Projects Became A Billionaire Making Gear For Next-Gen Spielbergs
All of 2020 and half of 2021, I was working until 2 a.m. every day because I was writing the code that runs the company,” says Grant Petty, CEO and founder of Blackmagic Design.
The 53-year-old billionaire isn’t kidding. He despises outsourcing, so he literally writes all the SQL programs that run internal processes at his 1,500-employee, $576 million (revenue) Melbourne, Australia-based company. He’s also known for starring in hour-long instructional videos for Blackmagic products like the Ursa Mini Pro 12K digital cinema camera. When the pandemic struck, Blackmagic (which manufactures all 209 of its products itself, unheard-of in the hardware business unless your name is Samsung or Sony) needed to share parts among its three factories in Australia, Singapore and Indonesia. Rather than hire someone, or even delegate the task internally, Petty rewrote the workflow software connecting inventory databases.
“People see it as a weakness that I write the code myself,” he says, arguing that, to the contrary, Blackmagic averted the logjam many companies encountered trying to reconfigure their supply chains during Covid because they were dependent on outside consultants and software vendors. “I think we’ve got a huge problem with outsourcing in the Western world.”
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