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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

#101

Post by Grombobulous »

rpdillon wrote: post #67
Grombobulous wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t feel like the article was sortballing the company. They brought up things like the WeTransfer founder criticizing Bending Spoons’ decisions. As for my opinion on the company, I don’t really see anything particularly negative about it. I think the fact that they’ve never sold an acquired business is a rather admirable trait. In a way, they’re doing something that may not have been possible without this style o…

People are framing this like they're creating sustainable businesses, but if you look into the details, what they're consistently doing is stagnating on any kind of feature development, making the apps and sites more difficult to use and have more nags, and they're increasing prices, sometimes by 10x or 100x. When I look for a company that I think I would admire, I'm looking for customers that are satisfied and recom…

I will add to my original reply, if I drink their company kool aid on their company website they pretty specifically list out a number of improvements they’ve made to their product portfolio.

They have claims like making Evernote sync faster, fixing stuck transfers on WeTransfer, offering a free organizer EventBrite account for the first time since 2005. These seem like pretty tangible claims.

Perhaps they are trying to combat this exact negative image that they’re just there to suck out value.

Maybe they’re lying about their accomplishments, I really don’t know. I don’t use any of their products.

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

#102

Post by lovich »

danabrams wrote: post #63
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…

There are four stages to any successful companies lifecycle and Bending Spoons's model is to maximize what they can get in the final stage of decline. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you're a user of one of these services you might take it as a hint to find an alternative.

Can a business not just reach a steady state after maximizing its market?

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

#104

Post by rpdillon »

Grombobulous wrote: post #76
rpdillon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are framing this like they're creating sustainable businesses, but if you look into the details, what they're consistently doing is stagnating on any kind of feature development, making the apps and sites more difficult to use and have more nags, and they're increasing prices, sometimes by 10x or 100x. When I look for a company that I think I would admire, I'm looking for customers that are satisfied and recom…

I certainly don’t find any of that positive, either, but sometimes what a lot of these companies need to survive is to increase prices and only worry about the feelings of the customers who find those higher prices to be worth it. The $20,000 price plan wasn’t a real price, that was just a not so gentle nudge to move to a different offering. Maybe it feels bad but that plan effectively doesn’t exist anymore. Things c…

> Things change.

This is true, but there are choices you can make in life to really minimize the impact. I've been using TiddlyWiki for more than 20 years and it always Just Works. I picked it precisely because I value endurance in the software I choose. I know that's not a fad right now, but folks just don't have to subject themselves to this standard of treatment.

That aside, my objection is the use of shady tactics to achieve that goal (constant nags and popups, massive price increases for reduced service, rejection of previously "lifetime" memberships, etc.), at the expense of the customer. Swaddling that in a blanket of "it's sustainable" makes me feel only a tiny bit better about it. To make an extreme comparison: fraud is also sustainable; I guess I'm saying sustainability is not an inherent good. If (hypothetically) every Evernote customer would be better off if they were using Joplin, keeping Evernote around would be a bug, not a feature. I don't think this is actually true, might it might be close.

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

#105

Post by hollerith »

lovich wrote: post #102
danabrams wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are four stages to any successful companies lifecycle and Bending Spoons's model is to maximize what they can get in the final stage of decline. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you're a user of one of these services you might take it as a hint to find an alternative.

Can a business not just reach a steady state after maximizing its market?

It makes no economic sense for AOL to stay in a steady state after having been thoroughly disrupted by newer products.

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

#106

Post by Quiza12 »

ethagnawl wrote: post #7

Whatever they are, they let Evernote devolve into a buggy pile of crap -- especially on Android. I migrated to Joplin, stopped paying for my obscenely expensive plan ($$$ per year) and haven't looked back.

Same - what's funny is that if they'd lifted prices 20-30% I might have stayed, but they went with the big bang of 85%.

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

#107

Post by apparent »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #97
apparent wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cut costs, jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible. Don't forget "slash the workforce, ensuring that the product will get worse over time".

> Don't forget "slash the workforce, ensuring that the product will get worse over time" Not commenting on Bending Spoons. But in general, a company built to grow is overprovisioned for one being put into maintenance mode. If you're growing, sure, let the designers change the UI every release. If you're trying not to lose customers, don't do that. Which means you don't need a crack team of in-house designers.

I agree that a company in growth mode needs more employees than one in maintenance mode. But wouldn't the owners already have cut unnecessary employees before selling out to PE or similar?

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

#108

Post by JumpCrisscross »

apparent wrote: post #107
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't forget "slash the workforce, ensuring that the product will get worse over time" Not commenting on Bending Spoons. But in general, a company built to grow is overprovisioned for one being put into maintenance mode. If you're growing, sure, let the designers change the UI every release. If you're trying not to lose customers, don't do that. Which means you don't need a crack team of in-house designers.

I agree that a company in growth mode needs more employees than one in maintenance mode. But wouldn't the owners already have cut unnecessary employees before selling out to PE or similar?

> wouldn't the owners already have cut unnecessary employees before selling out to PE or similar?

Usually not. It's emotionally difficult. And knowing what you need and don't need to cut (versus transition or aggregate with your conglomerate's administrative layer) is its own expertise. If you had that, you wouldn't need Bending Spoons or whomever.

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

#109

Post by pigeons »

mavelikara wrote: post #93
Scoundreller wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a vendor acquired by one of these types of outfits. I looked through their assets and it clicked: “this is where software goes to die”

> this is where software goes to die The ones that IBM passed up on, yes.

That avoided the Apache Foundation.

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

#110

Post by pigeons »

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…

So like Computer Associates?
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