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Italy's Bending Spoons, Owner of AOL and Vimeo, Files for Nasdaq IPO

74 points by mmarian

by Zigurd

2 subcomments

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.

by k310

7 subcomments

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.

by elffjs

1 subcomments

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

by mmarian

3 subcomments

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.

by raphman

2 subcomments

> "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...

by foresterre

1 subcomments

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/

by righthand

1 subcomments

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.

0 subcomment

by ChrisArchitect

0 subcomment

by moralestapia

1 subcomments

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.

by lhoff

1 subcomments

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.

by kome

2 subcomments

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.

by xnx

1 subcomments

by martin_drapeau

1 subcomments

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.