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Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

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Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#41

Post by bombcar »

danelski wrote: post #23
didacusc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did the same thing with Komoot and other apps. I don't understand where the money comes from and how they are planning to keep this portfolio growing.

(For Komoot) Did they, though? I am aware of the layoffs, but after that they slightly redesigned the app, collected the poll for next year's requested features, the lifetime maps option is still there to buy etc. If not for HN, I wouldn't have noticed any change in the direction that it's going in.

I suspect that the VAST majority of users want their saas tools to do today what they did yesterday, and so stopping active development of new features is actually a positive - no sudden Liquid Ass is going to appear in a program in maintenance mode.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#42

Post by ortusdux »

munk-a wrote: post #21
ortusdux wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also the backend for Dropout, which has just shy of 1m paid subscribers. So I understand your selfish sadness feelings. https://vimeo.com/customers/dropout

Well, some good news is that if you've ever wanted to build a new video streaming platform there are a bunch of companies that'd love to sign up. I'm sure dropout et all will be able to continue with their same level of functionality in the short term but I can imagine the bills they'll be receiving will be escalating quickly.

Dropout's CEO has been pretty open about the company, and he described their early efforts as 'Brutal'

> No! We tried, but people don’t realize this. The first rendition of Dropout was built on Vimeo OTT’s API, but it was our own product. We employed something like eight sophisticated engineers at IAC to build our own product around it, and it was brutal. Which is to say, it’s just very hard to do very well. And these were great engineers.

https://www.theverge.com/podcast/781331/hank-green-sam-reich...

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#43

Post by randomsc »

Probably they will also fire remaining 15 people and move everything to Italy.

Their strategy is to

- fire everyone,

- give product to very small but ambitious team of people

- cut free version of the product to minimum even if does not make a sense to have a free version such as 5 video upload per month etc (they are doing this just to avoid backlash from users and community)

- use every possible dark pattern exist to get every penny from the users

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#44

Post by Recursing »

nness wrote: post #4
ayhanfuat wrote: post #3

From "Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons in $1.38B all-cash deal" ( https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/vimeo-to-be-acquired-by-be... ): > Bending Spoons has a pattern of acquiring companies, then laying off staff and cutting features. For example, Bending Spoons acquired note-taking and task management app Evernote in 2022, after which the company laid off most of its U.S. and Chile staff and moved operations to E…

I don't understand this model. Such significant layoffs would indicate that there is no real appetite for expansion or growth. Their goal might be be to acquire, dramatically cut costs, and then run the product for as long as they can at a profit before breaking it down and selling it off (or hope for a buyout by a bigger player.) But that wouldn't make sense — customers of a depreciating SaaS product surely churn af…

My best guess is that a part of it is replacing US (or in this case Israeli) devs with much cheaper Italian/European ones, earning ~a quarter of their US counterparts and working longer hours, as Bending Spoons has an extremely competitive hiring process, and is probably the highest paying tech company in Italy

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#45

Post by fundad »

mrtksn wrote: post #29
ayhanfuat wrote: post #3

From "Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons in $1.38B all-cash deal" ( https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/vimeo-to-be-acquired-by-be... ): > Bending Spoons has a pattern of acquiring companies, then laying off staff and cutting features. For example, Bending Spoons acquired note-taking and task management app Evernote in 2022, after which the company laid off most of its U.S. and Chile staff and moved operations to E…

Elon Musk acquired Twitter and fired %80 of the employees and it was just fine. I bet there's so many more people that can be let go from all tech industry. It's mature and product discovery is mostly locked behind advertisement so what's left is exploitation. If you think about it, as long as you don't mingle much with the product that works it keeps working indefinitely. It's no different than running Excel or What…

It's fine because revenue is not important. Elon Musk has made that clear openly and repeatedly.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-misquotes-princess...

https://people.com/elon-musk-tells-disney-other-advertisers-...

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#46

Post by apparent »

TheChaplain wrote: post #18

I have no hope for Vimeo. BS took over Evernote and I cancelled the subscription after a year. Their idea of value for the customer vs the price is not realistic.

Just realized the acronym for Bending Spoons is BS. Seemingly appropriate.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#47

Post by Fnoord »

nness wrote: post #4
ayhanfuat wrote: post #3

From "Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons in $1.38B all-cash deal" ( https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/vimeo-to-be-acquired-by-be... ): > Bending Spoons has a pattern of acquiring companies, then laying off staff and cutting features. For example, Bending Spoons acquired note-taking and task management app Evernote in 2022, after which the company laid off most of its U.S. and Chile staff and moved operations to E…

I don't understand this model. Such significant layoffs would indicate that there is no real appetite for expansion or growth. Their goal might be be to acquire, dramatically cut costs, and then run the product for as long as they can at a profit before breaking it down and selling it off (or hope for a buyout by a bigger player.) But that wouldn't make sense — customers of a depreciating SaaS product surely churn af…

It is called bait and switch.

And the company name referring to bending spoons (Uri Geller) gives away the way they see themselves.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#48

Post by t1234s »

gtowey wrote: post #10
nness wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this model. Such significant layoffs would indicate that there is no real appetite for expansion or growth. Their goal might be be to acquire, dramatically cut costs, and then run the product for as long as they can at a profit before breaking it down and selling it off (or hope for a buyout by a bigger player.) But that wouldn't make sense — customers of a depreciating SaaS product surely churn af…

> Their goal might be be to acquire, dramatically cut costs, and then run the product for as long as they can at a profit before breaking it down and selling it off In the 80's people who did this were known as "corperate raiders". Nowadays it's just called business.

"corporate raiders" are a definitely real thing.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#49

Post by toomuchtodo »

jjice wrote: post #36
nness wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this model. Such significant layoffs would indicate that there is no real appetite for expansion or growth. Their goal might be be to acquire, dramatically cut costs, and then run the product for as long as they can at a profit before breaking it down and selling it off (or hope for a buyout by a bigger player.) But that wouldn't make sense — customers of a depreciating SaaS product surely churn af…

Yeah this is what I think Bending Spoons does, mostly based on the Evernote situation. Product has paying users and it's in a "complete" state. Cut costs to optimize profit for a bit and hope not everyone leaves. In the case of Evernote, it's probably really hard to get 10 year users off of it at this point, so they can double subscriptions and they're locked in. My assumption is that there's a serious amount of peop…

This is correct. You're buying a cashflow. Bending Spoons has optimized their model for very specific types of cashflow enterprises to aggregate into their portfolio.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#50

Post by nradov »

nness wrote: post #4
ayhanfuat wrote: post #3

From "Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons in $1.38B all-cash deal" ( https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/vimeo-to-be-acquired-by-be... ): > Bending Spoons has a pattern of acquiring companies, then laying off staff and cutting features. For example, Bending Spoons acquired note-taking and task management app Evernote in 2022, after which the company laid off most of its U.S. and Chile staff and moved operations to E…

I don't understand this model. Such significant layoffs would indicate that there is no real appetite for expansion or growth. Their goal might be be to acquire, dramatically cut costs, and then run the product for as long as they can at a profit before breaking it down and selling it off (or hope for a buyout by a bigger player.) But that wouldn't make sense — customers of a depreciating SaaS product surely churn af…

Vimeo isn't really SaaS though.
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