Bending Spoons is a company that acquires SaaS companies/products that are not growing or losing users but have a well-known brand and customers who stick around.
Bending Spoons buys these SaaS services on the cheap, cuts costs, jacks up prices, and milks remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible.
Rinse and repeat. The goal is to generate the highest possible rate of return on invested capital in a law-abiding manner.
ethagnawl 27 minutes ago [-]
Whatever they are, they let Evernote devolve into a buggy pile of crap -- especially on Android. I migrated to Joplin, stopped paying for my obscenely expensive plan ($$$ per year) and haven't looked back.
achandra03 36 minutes ago [-]
Is it not just a private equity fund masquerading as a tech firm?
jodacola 22 minutes ago [-]
Bingo.
My wife brought them to my attention recently because she heard about them from Scott Galloway, who was speaking highly of Bending Spoons on one of his podcasts. As she was explaining this to me, I said "It's just PE."
They must be doing some good PR/marketing, because, for some reason, "PE" isn't the first thing entering a lot of minds about Bending Spoons right now.
PatronBernard 30 minutes ago [-]
It is. They are also enshittifying Komoot and EventBrite. Also by default they acquire a company and fire all staff within the week. Fuck Bending Spoons.
chrisvenum 23 minutes ago [-]
Pre-bending spoons Komoot was a beautiful app and community.
You could operate it one handed with your brightness turned all the way down and easily get the info you needed.
Now when I pull it up mid ride to route home I have to click through multiple upgrade to premium pop ups with tiny exit crosses.
All good things etc etc
raverbashing 9 minutes ago [-]
And here's the thing, what should have the original company done if they were not having profits/growing (but shrinking)?
You don't sell a company if you don't believe its future can be better with you in command (most of the time)
24 minutes ago [-]
jlarocco 27 minutes ago [-]
I wish they'd buy Spotify...
Keep one SRE to keep the servers running, one guy to do security updates to the app, and the team that acquires rights to music.
jack1689 4 days ago [-]
I was reading a bit about their story, it feels like they managed to succeed by turning overly funded (and by then devalued) software products and restructuring them for long term profitability as they are not bounded to the classic 10 year time horizon of private funds. Wondering if we will see more plays like this as alternatives to traditional private equity and as fallback option for VC backed companies that bursted.
tecleandor 32 minutes ago [-]
From the acquisitions I've followed, what they do is firing 80% of the staff the next week after the acquisition, raise prices, and put the app in maintenance mode. I don't know if they've done something more sensible elsewhere, but they mostly do wealth extraction.
sbarre 1 minutes ago [-]
While I agree that their specific approach sucks, I do wish more companies would declare products as "done" and stop messing with the UI and changing features every quarter, and just go into a long-term stability mode.
ChrisArchitect 4 days ago [-]
Related:
Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO
Bending Spoons buys these SaaS services on the cheap, cuts costs, jacks up prices, and milks remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible.
Rinse and repeat. The goal is to generate the highest possible rate of return on invested capital in a law-abiding manner.
My wife brought them to my attention recently because she heard about them from Scott Galloway, who was speaking highly of Bending Spoons on one of his podcasts. As she was explaining this to me, I said "It's just PE."
They must be doing some good PR/marketing, because, for some reason, "PE" isn't the first thing entering a lot of minds about Bending Spoons right now.
You don't sell a company if you don't believe its future can be better with you in command (most of the time)
Keep one SRE to keep the servers running, one guy to do security updates to the app, and the team that acquires rights to music.
Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48446310
Weird Italian loveletter about the IPO:
Bending Spoons just went public: Italy won the World Cup
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48773549
Some history from only the past year in discussions:
Bending Spoons acquires Vimeo for $1.38B
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45197302
AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45749161
Bending Spoons Acquires Eventbrite
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124673
Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707699