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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

#81

Post by spenuke »

jasode wrote: post #36
colesantiago wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes for almost all software. 'entshittification' in software is pretty much almost a standard. Software and businesses that goes through these stages: Venture Capital, Private Equity, Acquisitions, Ads / Sponsors, Raising Prices due to competition, etc. Always get enshittified.

>This goes for almost all software. 'entshittification' in software It's really every category of commercial activity. Restaurants food quality, cable tv channels, movie sequels, home appliances, airline travel, theme parks, etc. For years, I had a particular local HVAC company do my twice-a-year maintenance on my air conditioner and furnace. I liked the owner and he had a crew of older experienced guys that knew wha…

> It's really every category of commercial activity.

I'm not going to defend capital's ability to ruin things, but this is framing is not helpful. Enshittification as it was described by Cory Doctorow, who invented the term, requires two additional things:

1. A platform that tries to attract both producers and consumers. Amazon is the canonical example. The platform does what it can to attract enough consumers that producers have to use the platform to reach them. Then it squeezes out the value to the producers (e.g., hiking acquisition fees, etc.; competing with them and underselling them with cheaper alternatives). The final step is to destroy the value to the consumer, by degrading quality and increasing price. By this time, neither producers nor consumers have many levers to fight back.

2. Non-physical pricing levers. Enshittification requires the ability to observe consumer behavior and jigger pricing at great speed. We see this in Amazon again; ridesharing apps introduced surge pricing; ads are priced according to what platforms know about you. In a physical store, the logistical cost of changing the price of goods is nontrivial, so we don't see the same sort of gaming there.

Enshittification is a novel and illuminating concept, so we need to be careful not to let it turn into some vague "things got worse" meaning.

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

#82

Post by acjohnson55 »

JoeBOFH wrote: post #57

I was sad when Airtable bought Airplane.dev because that was a dirty move they pulled. Now let’s see if that’s how they get treated.

Airplane was an awesome product, but I think that was basically just an aquihire. I don't think Airplane had built a sustainable business.

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

#83

Post by jasode »

spenuke wrote: post #81
jasode wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This goes for almost all software. 'entshittification' in software It's really every category of commercial activity. Restaurants food quality, cable tv channels, movie sequels, home appliances, airline travel, theme parks, etc. For years, I had a particular local HVAC company do my twice-a-year maintenance on my air conditioner and furnace. I liked the owner and he had a crew of older experienced guys that knew wha…

> It's really every category of commercial activity. I'm not going to defend capital's ability to ruin things, but this is framing is not helpful. Enshittification as it was described by Cory Doctorow, who invented the term, requires two additional things: 1. A platform that tries to attract both producers and consumers. Amazon is the canonical example. The platform does what it can to attract enough consumers that p…

>Enshittification as it was described by Cory Doctorow, who invented the term,

Cory Docotor didn't invent the term. He just made it more popular. Others used it at least 9 years before he did to describe "web design", and 3 years prior to describe the U.K. : https://www.oed.com/dictionary/enshittification_n?tab=meanin...

>Enshittification is a novel and illuminating concept, so we need to be careful not to let it turn into

The gp I replied to already used "enshittification" in a more general way to describe "almost all software". Most software out there is not the platforms that have the 2 factors you listed. I was just going going along with the conversation.

As far as policing the usage of "enshittification", you've got an uphill battle because people like the way it sounds and tend to use it as a spicy word to talk about anything getting worse. They're not going to research what Cory Doctorow was talking about and doublecheck to see if matches exactly what he was trying to describe. E.g. See it used to complain about "public libraries", "policing", "tech jobs", etc: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=enshittification

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

#85

Post by financetechbro »

senko wrote: post #43
DetroitThrow wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is also Partiful

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

#86

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

Good4boothee wrote: post #6
marcyb5st wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that, isn't Bending Spoons famous for enshittify anything they buy to squeeze every single cent they can? Meaning that their fame would push even more companies/people to do a vibecoded replacement with just the features they need.

Their MO is switching to maintenance mode and running services with skeleton crew. I am not sure if it will work in area exposed to AI, where everyone is by now used to monthly updates and quarterly product releases.

Bending Spoons are all in on AI development. Look at Komoot’s release cadence but also the skyrocketing number of bug reports in the Komoot subreddit.

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

#87

Post by meetingthrower »

leejoramo wrote: post #53
alaminopu wrote: post #25

What is the best open source alternatives of Airtable?

Look at Grist. You maybe justly concerned for it being an open source project that is backed by one small company that sells hosted plans. The difference is that Grist is a core part of the French Government’s open source web applications La Suite https://www.getgrist.com/ https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/produits/grist

Second Grist it is very cool we use a lot of it. You can run python as a column/ cell and it doesn't have a lot of the limitations of Airtable. Usage tiers are ridiculously large. Free api. I am almost hoping they charge more so they stay in business.

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

#88

Post by fragmede »

financetechbro wrote: post #85
senko wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is also Partiful

Which has ties to Palantir

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

#89

Post by everfrustrated »

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 look for companies which got fat on free money with impossible valuations which are dead ducks. The free money period ended so they can't raise more money and if they do it will be a substantial down valuation so investors won't approve it as it would cristalise a loss on their portfolio.

These companies all pay insanely high silicon valley wages and deliver very little actual product development velocity for the wage costs involved.

The founders don't have the b**s to do the necessary haircuts themselves so they sell. Bending spoons takes the reputation hit that the founder should have taken and makes severe cuts.

BS then rationalises the roadmap, and either keeps it alive or invests into it depending on expected return.

Nothing particularly revolutionary other than they are an execution machine.

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

#90

Post by quickthrowman »

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.

Find product that users like and can be difficult to switch away from, cut operating costs to the bone, and jack up prices. Ideally the money you extract from the remaining customers pays for the acquisition plus generates a profit. Someone in a previous thread compared it to a perpetual bond with fluctuating payouts or a royalty stream, the discounted future earnings eventually converge to 0.

The same thing Broadcom is doing with VMware.

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