It's the circle of life - all businesses reach a point where they don't have significant growth potential or became a "keep the lights on operation" and their investors and founders wish to exit and cash out in order to invest in greener pastures.
That's where businesses like Bending Spoons, Red Ventures, and IAC come in for digital media.
They also have a very intense workplace culture, I had a manager who was part of Evernote while their site was being laid off by Bending Spoons, and he heard some wild stories, they pay above average for a European tech company (but with geo-fenced brackets), crunch a ton and then crash out at a big new year's party were they fly all their teams to some resort, among other things.
I'm often thinking about building a better Meetup, it's so expensive for organizers these days. But then I acknowledge the network effects and I give up. And they own Eventbrite too! Savvy people.
I see a lot of people using https://luma.com/. I'm sure it's not as big as Meetup but it does have a decent community of users, and you can set up pretty much anything with their free plan.
It's about the user bases - Luma and Partiful are almost entirely professionals in careers like Tech, Finance, or Entertainment (especially LA), and the events almost always vet before accepting people.
This helps ensure a better noise to signal ratio that Meetup simply couldn't provide.
Interesting point, but I personally didn't find Meetup had a noise issue. You could filter for the right stuff, pretty easily. Also I don't see how Luma/Partiful will avoid this problem eventually.
You missed filmic. Wow. So these people are the reason why Filmic went overnight from one of my favorite iOS apps to something for the trash heap.
my knee jerk reaction is to throw shade at the ppl operating the company but, upon second thought, there's an obvious pattern of them relieving the company from people who knew less how to run (and sustain) it. I haven't used evernote in almost a decade but it actually seems.. fine? I stopped using it when the company started selling merch as a latch ditch effort to make money.
They're basically the retirement home for once-good apps and services who still serve a dwindling core audience but are not longer growing or even a real contender in their field.
> "Founded in 2013, Bending Spoons reported a net income of $27.5 million on revenue of $601 million for the three months ended March 31, compared to a net loss of $112.2 million on revenue of $259 million a year earlier. A large chunk of its revenue comes from recurring subscriptions, providing a more predictable stream of income."
Clever, shitty numbers and they decide to IPO at the peak of the "actually SaaS is worthless" hype. I wish them the worst, considering their business model.
So roughly $100m/year revenue. They are looking for a 20Bn valuation but interest rates are at 5%? How does any of this make any sense? That or we are in a real bubble.
Their strategy always was "buy company" and "instantly lay off about everyone" to save costs and rapidly increase subscription pricing (1).
So far they've been relatively soft (for their doing) on Komoot, which I too am most anxious off.
Bikepacking.com has a good read about Komoot; it was probably unsustainable in the long run before bending spoons took over anyways (2), yet I much rather had they stayed a sort of indie company driven by their passion. I will cancel my long standing Komoot subscription the day enshittification news breaks.
You can imagine all of these moderately successful SAAS companies that see peak subscribers starting to fall off on top of legacy tech stacks and no will to make drastic steps to get back to growth and understand why they sell. I've never seen BS as specifically ruining companies (although they've certainly been known to jack up prices for the remaining subscribers) but it's not a good sign when they do buy something you use.
Interesting, Vimeo sat under IAC for almost 20 years claiming it would go public, when it finally did it was eventually sold off to Bending Spoons not even 5 years in.
What exactly? From what I’ve heard, most of what was released in the months after the acquisition were features that were already in development/behind feature flags.
IPOing just before an evident .com tech bubble is about to explode is courageous. Good luck to everyone.
That said, their business model seems fairly solid, and despite the naysayers, they improve things a bit on most of their acquisitions. So there might be some real value in what they do. Yet, the expected market valuation is way off. But worry not: market will fix that.
I came in thinking they would be like PE and just put products on life support sucking all the recurring they can. But it seems they care and improve the products. I think that has merrit.
IMO, they buy companies, lay off en masse and sell the now sunsetted products.
Reminiscent of "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, but he gutted and then flipped whole companies.
I think of them as the bakery outlet store that sells only stale goods.
It's the circle of life - all businesses reach a point where they don't have significant growth potential or became a "keep the lights on operation" and their investors and founders wish to exit and cash out in order to invest in greener pastures.
That's where businesses like Bending Spoons, Red Ventures, and IAC come in for digital media.
They also have a very intense workplace culture, I had a manager who was part of Evernote while their site was being laid off by Bending Spoons, and he heard some wild stories, they pay above average for a European tech company (but with geo-fenced brackets), crunch a ton and then crash out at a big new year's party were they fly all their teams to some resort, among other things.
Wow sounds very family friendly!
I guess somebody out there has gotta make the croutons
This guy dubbed it “get Komooted”, as they pulled the same trick for used-to-be-great Cycling app Komoot: https://bikepacking.com/plog/when-we-get-komooted/
The app quality almost immediately went down the drain after the acquisition by Bending Spoons.
I'm often thinking about building a better Meetup, it's so expensive for organizers these days. But then I acknowledge the network effects and I give up. And they own Eventbrite too! Savvy people.
Isn’t this just Luma?
See reply I just made in other thread.
I see a lot of people using https://luma.com/. I'm sure it's not as big as Meetup but it does have a decent community of users, and you can set up pretty much anything with their free plan.
At least in the Bay, Luma and Partiful are much bigger than Meetup now.
Interesting. Luma is getting traction in London. Not so much outside.
It's about the user bases - Luma and Partiful are almost entirely professionals in careers like Tech, Finance, or Entertainment (especially LA), and the events almost always vet before accepting people.
This helps ensure a better noise to signal ratio that Meetup simply couldn't provide.
Interesting point, but I personally didn't find Meetup had a noise issue. You could filter for the right stuff, pretty easily. Also I don't see how Luma/Partiful will avoid this problem eventually.
Luma doesn't do discoverability well unfortunately. Also very tech centric.
I think it depends where you are. SF is all tech stuff but https://luma.com/chicago for example is mostly non-tech.
Oh, didn't know that. My perspective is from the UK.
Partiful feels like it has replaced Facebook Events, Meetup, and the other formerly-popular hubs for in-person event planning.
Per Wikipedia, Bending Spoons owns: AOL, Brightcove, Eventbrite, Evernote, Harvest, Issuu, Komoot, Meetup, MileIQ, Remini, StreamYard, Tractive, Vimeo, and WeTransfer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons
You missed filmic. Wow. So these people are the reason why Filmic went overnight from one of my favorite iOS apps to something for the trash heap.
my knee jerk reaction is to throw shade at the ppl operating the company but, upon second thought, there's an obvious pattern of them relieving the company from people who knew less how to run (and sustain) it. I haven't used evernote in almost a decade but it actually seems.. fine? I stopped using it when the company started selling merch as a latch ditch effort to make money.
They're basically the retirement home for once-good apps and services who still serve a dwindling core audience but are not longer growing or even a real contender in their field.
> "Founded in 2013, Bending Spoons reported a net income of $27.5 million on revenue of $601 million for the three months ended March 31, compared to a net loss of $112.2 million on revenue of $259 million a year earlier. A large chunk of its revenue comes from recurring subscriptions, providing a more predictable stream of income."
Gergely Orosz did an interview with them in 2024:
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/twisting-the-rule...
Clever, shitty numbers and they decide to IPO at the peak of the "actually SaaS is worthless" hype. I wish them the worst, considering their business model.
So roughly $100m/year revenue. They are looking for a 20Bn valuation but interest rates are at 5%? How does any of this make any sense? That or we are in a real bubble.
Their strategy always was "buy company" and "instantly lay off about everyone" to save costs and rapidly increase subscription pricing (1).
So far they've been relatively soft (for their doing) on Komoot, which I too am most anxious off.
Bikepacking.com has a good read about Komoot; it was probably unsustainable in the long run before bending spoons took over anyways (2), yet I much rather had they stayed a sort of indie company driven by their passion. I will cancel my long standing Komoot subscription the day enshittification news breaks.
(1) https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/03/komoot-acquired-history-... (2) https://bikepacking.com/plog/when-we-get-komooted/
You can imagine all of these moderately successful SAAS companies that see peak subscribers starting to fall off on top of legacy tech stacks and no will to make drastic steps to get back to growth and understand why they sell. I've never seen BS as specifically ruining companies (although they've certainly been known to jack up prices for the remaining subscribers) but it's not a good sign when they do buy something you use.
Interesting, Vimeo sat under IAC for almost 20 years claiming it would go public, when it finally did it was eventually sold off to Bending Spoons not even 5 years in.
While I'm not a huge fan of the Bending Spoons model, Vimeo sure got improved quickly.
What exactly? From what I’ve heard, most of what was released in the months after the acquisition were features that were already in development/behind feature flags.
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
It's still a big mystery to me how they were able to pull billion-dollar acquisitions while being one or two orders of magnitude lower in revenue.
>inb4 leverage
Yeah, I know leverage exists but still, you cannot go to a bank and ask them to help you acquire something 100x worth your cap.
Leverage. They’re essentially an 80s style junk bond LBO house.
They also own Komoot and I am anxiously awaiting the enshittification.
As of now my use cases still work and it certainly helped that I bought the lifetime all-world map package.
It has already started, many features which you could previously access without an account are now locked behind a login screen.
IPOing just before an evident .com tech bubble is about to explode is courageous. Good luck to everyone.
That said, their business model seems fairly solid, and despite the naysayers, they improve things a bit on most of their acquisitions. So there might be some real value in what they do. Yet, the expected market valuation is way off. But worry not: market will fix that.
But how will they make it about AI...?
Hmm, assuming that the AI bubble might pop a little bit after the upcoming IPOs, maybe it's better not to call yourself an AI company then?
That seems like a very odd assumption to make.
20VC had an interview with them: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/luca-ferrari
I came in thinking they would be like PE and just put products on life support sucking all the recurring they can. But it seems they care and improve the products. I think that has merrit.
So first they fire all the staff and then they "care and improve the products"? Who? Who does that? They fired the staff, so who improves the product?
They fire everybody and then they bring in way cheaper European developers.