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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

#121

Post by andsoitis »

Keegs wrote: post #116
andsoitis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> GP assumes the goal is to do just enough to keep the product alive.

They wrote "mature and don’t need a lot of work". Why would anyone put lots of people on a product that is mature and doesn't need a lot of work?

> This usually means a degraded customer experience.

Why? If the product is mature, works well, then surely you need fewer people to keep it in good shape and support customers?

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

#122

Post by btown »

ghaff wrote: post #72
magicalhippo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here it was charging for RSVPs that killed it. Everyone dropped it like a hot potato when they announced it.

It can be tough to get people to pay an ongoing fee for something that's often used for people to do casual recreational activities rather than one of the many free alternatives--even if they're not quite as suited for the purpose.

Meetup had a way to do this: make it opt-in by organizers, then increasing organizer price later on, perhaps even drastically, to incentivize the new structure. Over a year, say, even on organizers who didn't opt in, they could likely double their revenue per subscription with minimal churn.

Instead, their messaging strongly implied that, while it was still being tested, this would be mandatory, destroying community trust. An absolutely flubbed rollout.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/15/20893343/meetup-users-fu...

https://wptavern.com/meetup-com-introduces-rsvp-fees-for-mem...

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

#123

Post by FourierEnvy »

grok29 wrote: post #97
jkubicek wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but considering the popularity and age of The Matrix, I'm guessing most people assume the hot tech company is referencing techno futurist movie from the 90s and not a charlatan from the 70s.

What do you think the matrix was referencing?

[flagged]

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

#124

Post by TuringNYC »

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.

Here is an example of the complexity. I just purchased a single share of Google. Your Google Maps application has thus changed ownership. Boom, I just sold that single share, now the ownership changed again.

I realize this sounds tongue in cheek but a PE firm trying to get around ownership disclosure requirements can do something just as easily, both with public and private companies.

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

#125

Post by Yujf »

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.

It is tricky, as was explained in the comment you replied to. Maybe you could explain how it is not tricky instead of just making random statements without contributing anything

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

#126

Post by ipaddr »

lormayna wrote: post #105
joe_fishfish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Aside from supporters of popular political movement?

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

#127

Post by fckgw »

bdcravens wrote: post #118

20 employees per app? I'll never minimize the amount of work it takes to create software, but even so, that seems like a lot. Moreso when you consider how many employees' skills could be applied to multiple apps.

Is 20 people per company a lot? It's not just a person and some software.

Robokiller for example is a paid service with a business division. You're talking developers, sales teams, support, and everything else that goes with it.

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

#128

Post by AlwaysRock »

Sakos wrote: post #69
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

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

Evernote finally pushed me over the edge when they limited free plans to 50 notes last month. They had made so many changes to the ui and price increases that it was becoming a worse and worse product.

Apples free notes app replaced it and other than being SLIGHTLY annoying that I have to log into the web app on windows machines... I dont miss evernote at all.

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

#129

Post by helsinkiandrew »

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!

It always better for possible new hires to be interviewed by as many people in the team/company as possible - if they give feedback, have a veto, is that a committee?

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

#130

Post by w0m »

Hoefner wrote: post #10
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

And Evernote almost 2 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33623402

evernote falling apart is a sad day :( I loved it before the monetization changees killed it.
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