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Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

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Re: Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

#51

Post by BonoboIO »

postalcoder wrote: post #15
elffjs wrote: post #3

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

You missed filmic. Wow. So these people are the reason why Filmic went overnight from one of my favorite iOS apps to something for the trash heap. my knee jerk reaction is to throw shade at the ppl operating the company but, upon second thought, there's an obvious pattern of them relieving the company from people who knew less how to run (and sustain) it. I haven't used evernote in almost a decade but it actually see…

At least Evernote was saved by Bending Spoons. At one point, even Evernote was getting roughly a third of its monthly revenue from merchandise, which is pretty wild for a paperless note-taking app and a decent sign that the core business was already in bad shape. For the rest, though, they seem very good at squeezing hard whatever is left.

Re: Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

#52

Post by Maxious »

Zigurd wrote: post #45

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 the…

The number of corporate IT departments got caught when VMWare licencing shifted from Dell EMC to Broadcom https://www.techradar.com/pro/broadcom-has-allegedly-hiked-v...

Re: Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

#53

Post by cucumber3732842 »

orsorna wrote: post #33
w4der wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have a very intense workplace culture, I had a manager who was part of Evernote while their site was being laid off by Bending Spoons, and he heard some wild stories, they pay above average for a European tech company (but with geo-fenced brackets), crunch a ton and then crash out at a big new year's party were they fly all their teams to some resort, among other things.

Wow sounds very family friendly!

So?

Doesn't sound any worse than the average restaurant.

Re: Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

#54

Post by epolanski »

k310 wrote: post #14

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.

Warren Buffett used to do the same for decades, in fact this is how he came to control Berkshire Hathaway which he calls his worst investment, as it wasn't rational and merely driven by ego.

He wanted to take a controlling share of the company and then sell it for pieces so he started to buy increasing stakes in it.

When Berkshire management understood Buffett's plan they decided to stop him to not let him cannibalize and kill the company, and they offered to buy back his shares for 11$ a share which he accepted as it would've been a 2x return on his investment in a very short time span.

But then they made the critical mistake of low balling him by 1$ per share when it came to sign the documents, and he got so much emotional that he went and bought the entire company to prove a point and fire the management.

It was not a good idea and he would not make money on that acquisition, so after selling off the assets he decided to make it the holding for its other investments.

Re: Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

#55

Post by Zigurd »

Maxious wrote: post #52
Zigurd wrote: post #45

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 the…

The number of corporate IT departments got caught when VMWare licencing shifted from Dell EMC to Broadcom https://www.techradar.com/pro/broadcom-has-allegedly-hiked-v...

For context, Broadcom bought CA.

Re: Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

#56

Post by baggachipz »

burkaman wrote: post #21
mmarian wrote: post #18

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.

I see a lot of people using https://luma.com/ . I'm sure it's not as big as Meetup but it does have a decent community of users, and you can set up pretty much anything with their free plan.

I had a good giggle when I opened their homepage and it looks exactly like the Performative-UI library[1] currently in the #1 spot.

Re: Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

#57

Post by riffraff »

kome wrote: post #28

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.

why is it courageous?

It seems the perfect time to do it while the market is still bubbly.

Re: Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

#58

Post by ElProlactin »

w4der wrote: post #29
k310 wrote: post #14

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.

They also have a very intense workplace culture, I had a manager who was part of Evernote while their site was being laid off by Bending Spoons, and he heard some wild stories, they pay above average for a European tech company (but with geo-fenced brackets), crunch a ton and then crash out at a big new year's party were they fly all their teams to some resort, among other things.

New Year's party with your coworkers at a resort sounds like hell. Or a script for a Jonah Hill movie.

Re: Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

#59

Post by csomar »

postalcoder wrote: post #49
csomar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So roughly $100m/year profit(edit). They are looking for a 20Bn valuation but interest rates are at 5%? How does any of this make any sense? That or we are in a real bubble.

You're mixing up the numbers. Their annual run rate is $2.4 billion. Revenue grew 140% YoY. That's an 8x sales multiple on good growth. The valuation is not egregious.

Sorry I meant profit. On a 5% interest, you get 1bn (pure profit with no risks) per year for a 20bn of capital. Their revenue grew 140% YoY but does that account for new acquisitions? Also, their profit needs to grow x10 in order to match bonds. It may have made sense in a 0% interest rate world but not at 5.

Re: Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

#60

Post by fhdkweig »

greggoB wrote: post #46
kome wrote: post #28

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.

> despite the naysayers, they improve things a bit on most of their acquisitions There seem to be quite a few commenters stating the exact opposite, with concrete examples in hand (especially for Komoot). Do you have experience with any of the services they've bought, and can say how they've been improved?

Not the OP, but from a stock market perspective, improvement can mean "lay off workers, and raise subscription prices". Not good for the users, but good for the kinds of people who like reading news about IPOs.
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