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What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

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Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#31

Post by bdamm »

dehrmann wrote: post #24
cs702 wrote: post #12

Bending 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.

If that was good business then presumably the brand could have done it at some point during their long slow decline?

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#32

Post by cs702 »

dehrmann wrote: post #24
cs702 wrote: post #12

Bending 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.

Arguably, they're a better choice for customers than a shutdown.

I mean, they're at least keeping the service alive for as long as possible.

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#33

Post by block_dagger »

Whenever I see Vimeo in a headline, it reminds me of my lack of foresight. In college, the creator of Vimeo was in my friend group. I went to his on-campus apartment to pick him up for a party once. He showed me this "video sharing website" that he was working on. Its title was an anagram of "movie." This was in 1999. Digitized video was barely a thing. I looked at it, didn't understand how it would be useful, and assumed it was another one of his eccentric creative outlets that would go nowhere. A few years later, he was a multimillionaire and I was not.

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#34

Post by com2kid »

Very off topic - Just 2 days of for fun I tried to login to AOL.com with my username and PW from 1995. (Same username as on HN in fact)

It worked! That is one hell of a series of good DB migrations.

Sadly I was immediately forced to change my password. Still, 31 years is a good run for a password.

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#35

Post by Exoristos »

cs702 wrote: post #23
ulfw wrote: post #20

Earlier 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.

Add to this that they make it really, really hard to unsubscribe. I think there's been some legal crackdowns, but for a time, they could make it literally impossible.

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#36

Post by alephnerd »

sbarre wrote: post #16
achandra03 wrote: post #4

Is it not just a private equity fund masquerading as a tech firm?

Isn't a PE firm going public just an admission of failure, and an attempt to make their private investors whole on the public market's back?

BendingSpoons isn't a PE fund. It's just loose terminology that has become rife on HN like the misuse of "VCs".

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#37

Post by bdamm »

jlarocco wrote: post #8
PatronBernard wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. They are also enshittifying Komoot and EventBrite. Also by default they acquire a company and fire all staff within the week. Fuck Bending Spoons.

I wish they'd buy Spotify... Keep one SRE to keep the servers running, one guy to do security updates to the app, and the team that acquires rights to music.

Why do you think that a platform with so many customers as to be industry defining, with dozens of interface options, with a massive feature set, with a global footprint and basically flawless uptime requirements, could be kept running by two guys?

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#38

Post by warkdarrior »

jlarocco wrote: post #8
PatronBernard wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. They are also enshittifying Komoot and EventBrite. Also by default they acquire a company and fire all staff within the week. Fuck Bending Spoons.

I wish they'd buy Spotify... Keep one SRE to keep the servers running, one guy to do security updates to the app, and the team that acquires rights to music.

You need at least 3 devs to keep adding popups to the app with offers, upgrades, and other "related content".

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#40

Post by yeeetz »

PatronBernard wrote: post #6
achandra03 wrote: post #4

Is it not just a private equity fund masquerading as a tech firm?

It is. They are also enshittifying Komoot and EventBrite. Also by default they acquire a company and fire all staff within the week. Fuck Bending Spoons.

is firing staff after acquisition inherently bad if it's the same staff/management that led to the app being devalued and losing users in the first place though
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