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Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

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Re: Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

#41

Post by piraccini »

bwb wrote: post #30
cagataygurturk wrote: post #19

Bending Spoons is where products go to die.

Ive been happy with all the improvements they are making to Komoot do far.

I used it this we and I found it's really worst than one year ago. In detail: - It was blocking my phone, and one time I had to restart it - It's VERY hard now to find my planned trips

But maybe this is because I do a very basic usage. Uninstalled, though.

Re: Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

#42

Post by ramon156 »

Bending Spoons strategy can be summarized in the following plan:

- Make offers so low that - if anyone were to accept the deal, they're desperate/greedy enough to take it - hike price and limit features - people who do not have the capacity to switch will bear the cost - bleed out remaining customers

If it works, it works. They're basically betting against the amount of business depth that exists in the world

Re: Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

#43

Post by senko »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #38
darkwater wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did users leave for other products/solutions?

yes, _every_ event I go uses Luma or something else nowadays.

I've been researching the alternatives as I've been really.annoyed by the Meetup.com enshittification.

Any other platforms besides Luma you hear about? I know some lean on WhatsApp, some tried to use FB or even LinkedIn events but these are really made for different use cases.

Re: Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

#44

Post by muragekibicho »

Super silly of me to ask but how does Bending Spoons make money in all of this? Is it the "fire all American devs and save costs with cheaper Italians" schtick or is there something else?

I don't see how Airtable makes money on its own.

Re: Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

#45

Post by DetroitThrow »

muragekibicho wrote: post #44

Super silly of me to ask but how does Bending Spoons make money in all of this? Is it the "fire all American devs and save costs with cheaper Italians" schtick or is there something else? I don't see how Airtable makes money on its own.

They also hike the price so significantly most people stop using it. See meetup.com for example.

Re: Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

#46

Post by collabs »

v5v3 wrote: post #28

>Bending Spoons said Airtable's current net cash position implies an equity value of about $2.25 billion. Bending Spoons must have amazing negotiaters to strike such a bargain. We should send them to Iran to negotiate the peace deal.

I don't think this is quite accurate. The main question is how much revenue does Sortable bring in each year and after all expenses, how much cash flow does Airtable generate for its owners every year? I am positive it is nowhere near a billion dollars a year. If we roughly say it is annual recurring revenue of USD 0.5B a year, now the question is how much can bending spoon choke airtable neck forcing it to reduce expenses without meaningfully reducing revenue.

Re: Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

#47

Post by v5v3 »

muragekibicho wrote: post #44

Super silly of me to ask but how does Bending Spoons make money in all of this? Is it the "fire all American devs and save costs with cheaper Italians" schtick or is there something else? I don't see how Airtable makes money on its own.

Having read their IPO prospectus, my reading - They buy a company which they feel has a sticky product for its loyal userbase and then integrate as many of its common services into its in-house platform e.g. data

They then fire nearly all of the existing new companies staff and think of all the ways they can maximally monetise the existing userbase. Growing the product via investing in it isn't a priority, revenue stream is.

They get a lot of stick, but in fairness they are up front about their business model; they don't hide the fact that they are going to fire most people, unlike traditional private equity firms who make false promises.

Re: Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

#48

Post by darkwater »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #38
darkwater wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did users leave for other products/solutions?

yes, _every_ event I go uses Luma or something else nowadays.

Cool that there is something else. There was also EventBrite but I guess that got enshittified as well. Anyway my question was more in the realm of: if people stays, their play works. Not justifying the modus operandi, just stating that there is indeed space for Bending Spoons' MO.

Not all the cool hipster SV tech startups end up being a planetary success, some of them end up in this zombie state.

Re: Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

#49

Post by dbbk »

cagataygurturk wrote: post #19

Bending Spoons is where products go to die.

Maybe going against the grain but I think their product philosophy is actually really interesting. They basically just buy the database. Then throw out the crappily built product, with years of tech debt and cruft, and rebuild it leanly, with a small team, low overheads, and ruthlessly optimise for efficiency, and amortise shared in-house resources across the product portfolio.

There's a strong logic to that.

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