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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

#111

Post by CyberDildonics »

cs702 wrote: post #85

Investors in Bending Spoons include musician The Weekend, tennis player Andre Agassi, movie star Bradley Cooper, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and director/actor Taika Waititi, among many other famous people: https://bendingspoons.com/people (scroll to the bottom to see all names). I wonder if any of these illustrious backers are aware of the true business model of Bending Spoons, which can only be described as sca…

Update the apps with the most possibly intrusive adware, to milk user data for cash, earning a nice return.

I think this is every app's business model now.

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

#112

Post by jawns »

dmurray wrote: post #46
samch wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s allowed without permission per: https://www.usa.gov/government-copyright Specifically, “Endorsement, trademarks, and agency logos You cannot use government materials in a way that implies endorsement by a government agency, official, or employee. For example, using a photo in your advertisement of a government official wearing or using your product is not permitted. You also cannot use federal gove…

Is that the law, or is that more the government saying, through its publicists, how it would like its image to be used? Seems crazy that, say, an outdoor clothes retailer couldn't share a photo of a group trek where the park ranger was wearing its gear. Or that SpaceX couldn't publish a photo of NASA astronauts flying in its spacecraft - even with NASA's permission.

A while back, I tried to create a T-shirt using a version of the NASA logo, and it got shot down by NASA because it violated their restrictive licensing terms:

https://shaungallagher.pressbin.com/blog/nasa-vsvn.html

I was baffled, because I assumed that any government-created content was public domain by default. But agency marks are a big exception to that.

This post goes into detail about the law about government agencies' logos and "fair use" arguments.

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

#113

Post by burkaman »

bschne wrote: post #57
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?

I've seen https://lu.ma used thought it's built more around one-offs than recurring meetups of the same group. Also, and I think it's closer to meetup, https://app.getriver.io/ -- though I don't think it has too much traction yet.

I use Luma for a recurring meetup and it works very well.

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

#114

Post by TuringNYC »

magicalhippo wrote: post #11
Sayrus wrote: post #5

They recently acquired Meetup as well [1]. This doesn't bode well for its future. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953242

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?

https://partiful.com/

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

#115

Post by dylan604 »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #56
epolanski wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like 100% written by themselves or a PR agency.

The great thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit. Don't mind if I do...

So that's what they want you to believe, but unless you are part of the accepted editor cabal, any changes you make will be reverted by someone actually part of the cabal

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

#116

Post by Keegs »

andsoitis wrote: post #77
vineyardmike wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not private equity… they’re like a bottom tier tech conglomerate that’s been growing rapidly lately. They most famously bought Evernote. They buy apps/products that mature and don’t need a lot of work, fire all the workers and hire a skeleton crew to manage them in a cheaper labor market. They also harvest data from the apps and resell it.

> They buy apps/products that mature and don’t need a lot of work, fire all the workers and hire a skeleton crew to manage them in a cheaper labor market. What's wrong with rightsizing workforce to be commensurate with work?

Rightsizing [for what] is the question. GP assumes the goal is to do just enough to keep the product alive. This usually means a degraded customer experience.

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

#117

Post by dylan604 »

timenova wrote: post #19

They did the same recently with Filmic [0], of the Filmic Pro iOS Camera app. I guess this is what the exact opposite of acqui-hire looks like. Acquire only for the app's customers, and their currently ongoing subscriptions, and nothing else. Does anyone know if they maintain these apps well over time, or they just rot? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38502586

acqui-fire??

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

#119

Post by swozey »

mistrial9 wrote: post #108
swozey wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

That was actually my first time in SV/SFBay area (just stuck around San Mateo and San Jose) and I hated San Mateo. I'm used to gritty fun towns like Austin and Denver and San Mateo was culture shock. Netflix has the same problem being in Los Gatos, it might be worse there.

I remember one of my Uber drivers was getting their PHD in Machine Learning/AI.

They must have a huge funnel from Stanford. I'm not sure what other good schools are over there.

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

#120

Post by brandall10 »

andruby wrote: post #84
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

The wikipedia page has been thoroughly editted today and reads a lot more factual now.

It is but it's still not up to date with their more recent carnage.

Is this just an aggressive PE firm or what?

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