I'm old enough to have been acquired by Computer Associates at a company that acquired my company. CA's business model was to buy companies and then fold their products into an omnibus license, all of their customers, including the ones they just acquired, becoming involuntary licensees whatever the cat dragged in this quarter.
It turns out a lot of corporate IT has no idea how to switch vendors in case a product they use gets acquired by a company with this business model.
k310 56 minutes ago [-]
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.
The app quality almost immediately went down the drain after the acquisition by Bending Spoons.
w4der 28 minutes ago [-]
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.
orsorna 26 minutes ago [-]
Wow sounds very family friendly!
konfusinomicon 24 minutes ago [-]
I guess somebody out there has gotta make the croutons
alephnerd 31 minutes ago [-]
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.
mmarian 43 minutes ago [-]
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.
burkaman 36 minutes ago [-]
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.
mmarian 31 minutes ago [-]
Luma doesn't do discoverability well unfortunately. Also very tech centric.
burkaman 24 minutes ago [-]
I think it depends where you are. SF is all tech stuff but https://luma.com/chicago for example is mostly non-tech.
mmarian 10 minutes ago [-]
Oh, didn't know that. My perspective is from the UK.
alephnerd 32 minutes ago [-]
At least in the Bay, Luma and Partiful are much bigger than Meetup now.
mmarian 31 minutes ago [-]
Interesting. Luma is getting traction in London. Not so much outside.
alephnerd 27 minutes ago [-]
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.
mmarian 13 minutes ago [-]
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.
bsimpson 9 minutes ago [-]
Partiful feels like it has replaced Facebook Events, Meetup, and the other formerly-popular hubs for in-person event planning.
baron816 38 minutes ago [-]
Isn’t this just Luma?
26 minutes ago [-]
mmarian 30 minutes ago [-]
See reply I just made in other thread.
elffjs 1 hours ago [-]
Per Wikipedia, Bending Spoons owns: AOL, Brightcove, Eventbrite, Evernote, Harvest, Issuu, Komoot, Meetup, MileIQ, Remini, StreamYard, Tractive, Vimeo, and WeTransfer.
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.
fckgw 18 minutes ago [-]
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.
raphman 1 hours ago [-]
> "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.
csomar 9 minutes ago [-]
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.
foresterre 58 minutes ago [-]
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.
righthand 1 hours ago [-]
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.
michelb 1 hours ago [-]
While I'm not a huge fan of the Bending Spoons model, Vimeo sure got improved quickly.
muglug 46 minutes ago [-]
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.
ChrisArchitect 39 minutes ago [-]
Some history from only the past year in discussions:
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.
adw 56 minutes ago [-]
Leverage. They’re essentially an 80s style junk bond LBO house.
lhoff 1 hours ago [-]
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.
w4der 28 minutes ago [-]
It has already started, many features which you could previously access without an account are now locked behind a login screen.
kome 28 minutes ago [-]
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.
xnx 1 hours ago [-]
But how will they make it about AI...?
raphman 1 hours ago [-]
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?
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.
baobabKoodaa 22 minutes ago [-]
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?
kryptiskt 14 minutes ago [-]
They fire everybody and then they bring in way cheaper European developers.
Rendered at 16:51:31 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
It turns out a lot of corporate IT has no idea how to switch vendors in case a product they use gets acquired by a company with this business model.
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.
The app quality almost immediately went down the drain after the acquisition by Bending Spoons.
That's where businesses like Bending Spoons, Red Ventures, and IAC come in for digital media.
This helps ensure a better noise to signal ratio that Meetup simply couldn't provide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons
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.
Gergely Orosz did an interview with them in 2024:
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/twisting-the-rule...
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/
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
>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.
As of now my use cases still work and it certainly helped that I bought the lifetime all-world map package.
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.