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Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

techcrunch.com

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Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

#11

Post by swores »

beibeiq wrote: post #10
swores wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that they explored all acquisition possibilities they could find without the world knowing about their situation, and that the only company or companies who could reach acceptable terms to acquire them didn't have the network links to find out that Bench was acquirable until the news broke that they were shutting down. Obviously not an ideal situation, both parties (if an acquisition is indeed happening…

NDR (Net Dollar Retention) in a business like this is the key metric for determining whether there's a business or customer base worth acquiring here. With Bench's rumored churn in recent years, their existing investors which includes top funds like Bain and reputable ones like Inovia (which is top Canada) would've had the opportunity to invest first. Clearly they didn't. With a rumored 2024 revenue of $54.9m in 2024…

I was commenting on how acquisitions happen, not asking to be spammed by an accounting company masquerading as a relevant comment.

I'd suggest deleting it and not continuing this strategy, as I suspect I'm not the only HN reader who will react to your comment by making a mental note that 'Digits' is a company with annoying marketing.

Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

#12

Post by mikebonnell »

Would you trust Employer when their "About" page looks like this? https://www.employer.com/about

"Our Story There are many variations of passages of available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even..."

Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

#13

Post by codegeek »

What a comedy of errors. So they screw over their paying customers without any notice and now suddenly they are acquired ? I love capitalism but the way Bench handled this is a disaster and left so many customers unsure of what to do. Especially at year end when accounting becomes even more critical. Shameful.

Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

#14

Post by jsheard »

mikebonnell wrote: post #12

Would you trust Employer when their "About" page looks like this? https://www.employer.com/about "Our Story There are many variations of passages of available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even..."

They've secured investments from Logoipsum, Logoipsum, Logoipsum and Logoipsum so they must be legit.

Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

#15

Post by brightball »

codegeek wrote: post #13

What a comedy of errors. So they screw over their paying customers without any notice and now suddenly they are acquired ? I love capitalism but the way Bench handled this is a disaster and left so many customers unsure of what to do. Especially at year end when accounting becomes even more critical. Shameful.

There's not really an economic philosophy that can protect people from bad decisions. In the middle of year end accounting though, this was a train wreck.

Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

#16

Post by admissionsguy »

mikebonnell wrote: post #12

Would you trust Employer when their "About" page looks like this? https://www.employer.com/about "Our Story There are many variations of passages of available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even..."

Sounds like they are not afraid to use AI already, which will give them an unbeatable edge when the LLMs improve.

Source: YC investment thesis

Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

#18

Post by shesprtytechncl »

mikebonnell wrote: post #12

Would you trust Employer when their "About" page looks like this? https://www.employer.com/about "Our Story There are many variations of passages of available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even..."

Yeahhhh I wonder if this is a new shell company spun up to either take on the old one as a way to restructure financially and get rid of some debt (I have no idea how this would work) or to give them enough time to wind down. Or something else? Who knows but definitely weird.

Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

#19

Post by Nelkins »

As someone who was affected by this, I opted to go ahead and try and get my money's worth (although I have another service doing this in parallel). Also they were supposed to file an S Corp election for me, so hopefully I'll be able to find out the latest status of that. This whole thing is such a mess.

Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

#20

Post by [deleted] »

shesprtytechncl wrote: post #18
mikebonnell wrote: post #12

Would you trust Employer when their "About" page looks like this? https://www.employer.com/about "Our Story There are many variations of passages of available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even..."

Yeahhhh I wonder if this is a new shell company spun up to either take on the old one as a way to restructure financially and get rid of some debt (I have no idea how this would work) or to give them enough time to wind down. Or something else? Who knows but definitely weird.

[deleted]
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