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.
The execs at Bending Spoon buy these SaaS services on the cheap, cut costs, jack up prices, and milk 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.
That's a short term business model if I have ever seen one.
"customers who stick around." is anthesis to mid- to long-term customer loyalty when you do "jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible"
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.
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
Founders decide they want to do other things with their lives all the time, and in the case of komoot reportedly exited at a €300m valuation for a company that had raised very little VC money, which is going to tempt most people no matter how much they hate popups...
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.
Isn't it just a different form of private capital designed for the later stage of a tech company? I'm not saying its good, but I am not remotely surprised by tech's transition from growth/disruption/hiring to cost-cutting/M&A.
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.
Whenever I see Vimeo in a headline, it reminds me of my lack of foresight. In college, the creator of Vimeo was in my friend group. I went to his on-campus apartment to pick him up for a party once. He showed me this "video sharing website" that he was working on. Its title was an anagram of "movie." This was in 1999. Digitized video was barely a thing. I looked at it, didn't understand how it would be useful, and assumed it was another one of his eccentric creative outlets that would go nowhere. A few years later, he was a multimillionaire and I was not.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The execs at Bending Spoon buy these SaaS services on the cheap, cut costs, jack up prices, and milk 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.
I had a vendor acquired by one of these outfits.
I looked through their assets and it clicked: “this is where software goes to die”
That's a short term business model if I have ever seen one.
"customers who stick around." is anthesis to mid- to long-term customer loyalty when you do "jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible"
Think of it as a perpetual bond with declining coupon payments.
Customer "inertia" or "lock-in" might be better terms to describe what the company is looking for in an acquisition.
Their ideal customer may well be someone who's forgotten they have a subscription on credit card auto-pay.
> a perpetual bond with declining coupon payments
Most things with royalties (oil fields, songs) work like this.
Yes, agree.
Consolidating stagnant or dying SaaS offerings makes sense, but it'd be nice if there were a version of this that's a better steward of the companies.
If that was good business then presumably the brand could have done it at some point during their long slow decline?
Arguably, they're a better choice for customers than a shutdown.
I mean, they're at least keeping the service alive for as long as possible.
[delayed]
Is it not just a private equity fund masquerading as a tech firm?
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.
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.
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
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)
Founders decide they want to do other things with their lives all the time, and in the case of komoot reportedly exited at a €300m valuation for a company that had raised very little VC money, which is going to tempt most people no matter how much they hate popups...
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.
BendingSpoon isn't PE because they are not attempting a restructure to then exit out of the asset within a defined time period.
When BendingSpoon or IAC acquired an asset, it's meant to be held by them in order to augment their existing portfolio.
M&A isn't the hallmark of PE - restructuring an asset in order to exit out of it is.
Isn't a PE firm going public just an admission of failure, and an attempt to make their private investors whole on the public market's back?
Isn't it just a different form of private capital designed for the later stage of a tech company? I'm not saying its good, but I am not remotely surprised by tech's transition from growth/disruption/hiring to cost-cutting/M&A.
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.
That's exactly their business plan. So seems like they are executing on it very well.
I'm a bit salty due to what they've done to the Komoot team. Komoot was (and still is) a great app for planing your outdoor activities.
After acquiring Komoot, they fired everybody. Watching their goodbye video is a bit heartbreaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLJkK4Wn1HI
Whenever I see Vimeo in a headline, it reminds me of my lack of foresight. In college, the creator of Vimeo was in my friend group. I went to his on-campus apartment to pick him up for a party once. He showed me this "video sharing website" that he was working on. Its title was an anagram of "movie." This was in 1999. Digitized video was barely a thing. I looked at it, didn't understand how it would be useful, and assumed it was another one of his eccentric creative outlets that would go nowhere. A few years later, he was a multimillionaire and I was not.
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.
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.
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.
That’s Valve (somewhat) and Blizzard (but to the nth degree) in a nutshell.
That said, tangentially, I do wish game companies would let games live on.
Remarkably on-brand, named after the signature trick of a well-known charlatan.
Related:
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
AOL Time Warner was the peak of the original dot com bubble.