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IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

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Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#101

Post by swozey »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #94
mariusmg wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, even that /people page screams "douchebags".....

Yes, also I'm not sure I see hiring decisions made by committee as a plus!

That's the Google way. I was referred by 2 people on the team I'd be on but nobody on that team had anything to do with my committee interview.

So, instead of the people who know my work (from FOSS projects) it was a random gaggle of Stanford, etc people. I don't have a degree at all so to say I was intimidated and miserable and feeling very judged is an understatement.

Even my recruiter there had gone to Stanford and mentioned that her sister went to some other school and looks down at her lowly Stanford. wild place.

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#102

Post by heresie-dabord »

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #58
elondaits wrote: post #48

Calling your company "Bending Spoons" is like calling it "Stealing Chickens" (Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_bending )

Guess in the specific case “Fucking People” would have worked too

Although not vulgar, the following alternatives are just too generally applicable:

"Robbing the Inattentive"

"Abusing the Gullible"

"Parasitic Operations"

"Scruples Be Damned"

"Helping the World Burn"

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#103

Post by mrweasel »

DeathArrow wrote: post #18

How are they going to earn money if they fired the entire team?

It does seem like a really short term business plan: Buy up a bunch of apps, milk them of all their worth, gambling that it will be more than they paid, before the users all leave. Then take the profit and slaughter a new set of apps.

In this case I do wonder how much those apps are actually worth, IAC is apparently happy to take $100M for them, which would indicate that in their current form they aren't going to make $6M each in the short term.

Both companies seem rather strange, they don't appear to have any actual coherent business plan.

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#104

Post by cdchn »

fakedang wrote: post #64
kasperni wrote: post #15

If you read their Wikipedia page [1] they sound like an Italian Saint. A lot about the various awards they have gotten and other "charitable" activities. But reading the comments here, I get another impression of the company. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons

Really? I didn't check if anything in the page changed, but it seems to me like Bending Spoons was a failing wannabe Rocket Internet: "Evernote was acquired and everyone was laid off." "Immuni was awarded but less than 1% used it." "Acquired some company and fired its entire team." Literally sounds like some tech scavenger.

The Gordon Gekkos of 2024.

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#105

Post by lormayna »

joe_fishfish wrote: post #14
magicalhippo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of, is there a good replacement for Meetup if you just want to organize some informal activities, like a user group or going biking?

Sadly most people (at least in my country) use Facebook for this.

In Italy Meetup was monopolized by a populistic political movement in the '10s and nobody use it since then.

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#106

Post by lnxg33k1 »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #102
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess in the specific case “Fucking People” would have worked too

Although not vulgar, the following alternatives are just too generally applicable: "Robbing the Inattentive" "Abusing the Gullible" "Parasitic Operations" "Scruples Be Damned" "Helping the World Burn"

I don't agree with some of them

Those I have the feeling that redirect the guilt of being fired to the people affected, while their only guilt was working for a company, it can happen to anyone, you work for someone, this gets bought secretly and then you're out of job, how are you gullible or inattentive then?

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#107

Post by sib »

bayindirh wrote: post #70
Sakos wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, they even acquired Evernote and fired the entire staff. I hadn't heard about that.

Yeah, they did that. The app is not going "downhill" yet, however if they start to ruin it for good, I'll be moving out. I was not planning to do that, and I don't wish that they force me to do that.

Somehow I missed the acquisition.

I think the downhill slide has begun - they recently changed the terms / capabilities on their free version to make it even more limited and, presumably, to get more people to upgrade.

It's good to know this because it gives me the push I needed to finally move off my very limited use of the app.

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#108

Post by mistrial9 »

swozey wrote: post #101
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, also I'm not sure I see hiring decisions made by committee as a plus!

That's the Google way. I was referred by 2 people on the team I'd be on but nobody on that team had anything to do with my committee interview. So, instead of the people who know my work (from FOSS projects) it was a random gaggle of Stanford, etc people. I don't have a degree at all so to say I was intimidated and miserable and feeling very judged is an understatement. Even my recruiter there had gone to Stanford an…

in older days my artsy friends would call those Stanford etc people "yuppies" or "frat guys/gals" among other things. The culture gap is real since those ordinary graduates did in fact compete and acheive in a certain way to get where they are.. so it is easy and human nature to judge others on the criteria they were judged on.. meanwhile, real skills, talent and sweat are common among the fringy outsiders, along with bad skin, odd clothing choices, low personal skills or other warts... hang in there!

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#109

Post by hnfong »

m-p-3 wrote: post #47

Bending Spoons seems to be the "Broadcom" of mobile apps, where softwares goes to die a death by a thousand cuts.

If they fire everyone from the acquired company in one go, it sounds more like a giant hemorrhage than a thousand small cuts...

Re: IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired

#110

Post by jclardy »

bmitc wrote: post #99
CodesInChaos wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an app changes ownership Unfortunately defining what that means becomes rather tricky once you consider that the company owning the app can change ownership. That ownership can be shared and go through arbitrarily many indirections, and if it's a publicly traded company, some of its shares change ownership all the time.

It's not tricky. Someone owns it.

Okay, lets take a simple example.

Indie app A, owned by a developer, Joe. Company B buys A outright, including employing Joe. They keep the brand around for name recognition.

How does the app store know this? None of this has to be public info if A & B aren't public. The company registration hasn't changed. At best, maybe the bank account number changed.

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