Remarkably on-brand, named after the signature trick of a well-known charlatan.
What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
21–30 of 126 posts
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pre-bending spoons Komoot was a beautiful app and community. You could operate it one handed with your brightness turned all the way down and easily get the info you needed. Now when I pull it up mid ride to route home I have to click through multiple upgrade to premium pop ups with tiny exit crosses. All good things etc etc
And here's the thing, what should have the original company done if they were not having profits/growing (but shrinking)? You don't sell a company if you don't believe its future can be better with you in command ( most of the time)
Founders decide they want to do other things with their lives all the time, and in the case of komoot reportedly exited at a €300m valuation for a company that had raised very little VC money, which is going to tempt most people no matter how much they hate popups...
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#23Bending Spoons is a company that acquires SaaS companies/products that are not growing or losing users but have a well-known brand and customers who stick around. The execs at Bending Spoon buy these SaaS services on the cheap, cut costs, jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible. Rinse and repeat. The goal is to generate the highest possible rate of return on inves…
That's a short term business model if I have ever seen one. "customers who stick around." is anthesis to mid- to long-term customer loyalty when you do "jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible"
Think of it as a perpetual bond with declining coupon payments.
Customer "inertia" or "lock-in" might be better terms to describe what the company is looking for in an acquisition.
Their ideal customer may well be someone who's forgotten they have a subscription on credit card auto-pay.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#24Bending Spoons is a company that acquires SaaS companies/products that are not growing or losing users but have a well-known brand and customers who stick around. The execs at Bending Spoon buy these SaaS services on the cheap, cut costs, jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible. Rinse and repeat. The goal is to generate the highest possible rate of return on inves…
Consolidating stagnant or dying SaaS offerings makes sense, but it'd be nice if there were a version of this that's a better steward of the companies.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the acquisitions I've followed, what they do is firing 80% of the staff the next week after the acquisition, raise prices, and put the app in maintenance mode. I don't know if they've done something more sensible elsewhere, but they mostly do wealth extraction.
While I agree that their specific approach sucks, I do wish more companies would declare products as "done" and stop messing with the UI and changing features every quarter, and just go into a long-term stability mode.
That’s Valve (somewhat) and Blizzard (but to the nth degree) in a nutshell.
That said, tangentially, I do wish game companies would let games live on.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a short term business model if I have ever seen one. "customers who stick around." is anthesis to mid- to long-term customer loyalty when you do "jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible"
Think of it as a perpetual bond with declining coupon payments. Customer "inertia" or "lock-in" might be better terms to describe what the company is looking for in an acquisition. Their ideal customer may well be someone who's forgotten they have a subscription on credit card auto-pay.
> a perpetual bond with declining coupon payments
Most things with royalties (oil fields, songs) work like this.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#27I'm a bit salty due to what they've done to the Komoot team. Komoot was (and still is) a great app for planing your outdoor activities.
After acquiring Komoot, they fired everybody. Watching their goodbye video is a bit heartbreaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLJkK4Wn1HI
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#28AOL Time Warner was the peak of the original dot com bubble.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think of it as a perpetual bond with declining coupon payments. Customer "inertia" or "lock-in" might be better terms to describe what the company is looking for in an acquisition. Their ideal customer may well be someone who's forgotten they have a subscription on credit card auto-pay.
> a perpetual bond with declining coupon payments Most things with royalties (oil fields, songs) work like this.
Yes, agree.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#30Is it not just a private equity fund masquerading as a tech firm?
Bingo. My wife brought them to my attention recently because she heard about them from Scott Galloway, who was speaking highly of Bending Spoons on one of his podcasts. As she was explaining this to me, I said "It's just PE." They must be doing some good PR/marketing, because, for some reason, "PE" isn't the first thing entering a lot of minds about Bending Spoons right now.
BendingSpoon isn't PE because they are not attempting a restructure to then exit out of the asset within a defined time period.
When BendingSpoon or IAC acquired an asset, it's meant to be held by them in order to augment their existing portfolio.
M&A isn't the hallmark of PE - restructuring an asset in order to exit out of it at a profit is.
The classic PE monetization strategy is to acquire an underperforming asset, restructure said asset, and then exit the asset at around 20% IRR.
BendingSpoons on the other hand is a holding company that is acquiring and consolidating stagnant but large SaaS platforms into a single mega-platform.
The economics are different as are the operational and organizational structures.