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Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

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Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#141

Post by f33d5173 »

wavemode wrote: post #126
Nextgrid wrote: post #106

I am surprised so many people don't understand the business model of Bending Spoons or are bewildered by it. In conventional infrastructure and product development you need engineering staff to build the product; once the product is built you need very little engineering. If you build a house you don't keep the builders on payroll once it's built to keep "building" it - you may need maintenance staff but that's it -…

The economics are different because the industries are fundamentally different. Software is never "finished" the way a building is finished. More features can always be added to software. If those new features create new product lines and attract new revenue, then the software engineers' salaries are more than paying for themselves. But, this obviously carries risk, that the new thing you develop won't be worth as mu…

The businesses they acquire are ones whose revenue has not appreciably grown in many years. They are being sold because the prior owner does not believe they can improve the business any more.

Any profit bending spoons earns they can run off and invest in another business if they like. They don't bother investing in the businesses they purchase because they believe, like the previous owner believed, that there is no more juice to squeeze from that particular lemon.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#142

Post by a_victorp »

torben-friis wrote: post #130
jcynix wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of millions in revenue and three acquisitions in 2024 — what’s behind Bending Spoons’ success? | Sifted https://sifted.eu/articles/bending-spoons-italy-startup-ipo So private equity is behind it.

Yeah, but AFAIK that means people buying companies, leaving them with a skeleton crew and milking the remaining users as long as possible. How does that fit with expensive hiring sprees? If anything I’d expect them to be continuously shedding absorbed employees.

They hire at higher pay because they want people that can/are willing to do the job of multiple people

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#143

Post by pnw »

ayhanfuat wrote: post #3

From "Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons in $1.38B all-cash deal" ( https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/vimeo-to-be-acquired-by-be... ): > Bending Spoons has a pattern of acquiring companies, then laying off staff and cutting features. For example, Bending Spoons acquired note-taking and task management app Evernote in 2022, after which the company laid off most of its U.S. and Chile staff and moved operations to E…

This is the same model Computer Associates used to run back in the day. Find product with marginal profit but dedicated user base, cut costs, increase pricing and milk it until the next product comes along.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#144

Post by Glawen »

bilekas wrote: post #20
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #2

4 months: Bending Spoons acquires Vimeo for $1.38B https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45197302

This comment from e98cuenc seems extremely prescient. > Everybody loves to hate BendingSpoon, but there is a lesson here. They consistently rewrite the code of their acquisitions with a tiny team, fire everybody and are able to maintain and improve the product. They basically skip everything but engineers, and they are kept at a minimum. Feedback from users is the products they take over 1) become more expensive, 2)…

I'm discovering Bending Sppon withn this thread, and I think they really got their business right. I hope they IPO soon

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#145

Post by Nextgrid »

refulgentis wrote: post #124
publicdebates wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly why I charge $999/hour for my software consulting. To the doubters, laugh all you want, but I've been doing this for literal decades , and will absolutely slaughter LLM generated code in terms of code reliability and maintainability amortized over 5 years.

I'd love to do this and have a quite marketable resume, but it is extremely, extremely, unclear to me how you build a clientele or where you'd even start. Only road I can imagine is highly specialized industry, with money, that often has time-sensitive needs, and smart management that knows how to recognize value or trusts their tech management. And even then I think you'd have to start in the coal-mines version of i…

The hard part is to get the client on the phone.

Once you have them on the phone, you can not only better understand their problem but also demonstrate your skill and credibility in a way no resume or branding could.

At that point it's just a sales game - generally you'd avoid hourly rates and sell them a solution (see my other comment) which will maximize your effective hourly rate while being structured in a way that's very good value for the client. Hourly should be a last resort, at which point generally you'd rather have the client bounce, so you quote a high rate.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#146

Post by [deleted] »

bradleybuda wrote: post #61
nness wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this model. Such significant layoffs would indicate that there is no real appetite for expansion or growth. Their goal might be be to acquire, dramatically cut costs, and then run the product for as long as they can at a profit before breaking it down and selling it off (or hope for a buyout by a bigger player.) But that wouldn't make sense — customers of a depreciating SaaS product surely churn af…

HN: VC is a cancer, businesses don't need to grow forever at all costs, products can be finished, what we need is sustainable small companies Also HN: No, not like that

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#147

Post by bcrosby95 »

bradleybuda wrote: post #61
nness wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this model. Such significant layoffs would indicate that there is no real appetite for expansion or growth. Their goal might be be to acquire, dramatically cut costs, and then run the product for as long as they can at a profit before breaking it down and selling it off (or hope for a buyout by a bigger player.) But that wouldn't make sense — customers of a depreciating SaaS product surely churn af…

HN: VC is a cancer, businesses don't need to grow forever at all costs, products can be finished, what we need is sustainable small companies Also HN: No, not like that

Imagine a world where you can't complain if something is directionally correct in what you want done.

Me: can you take out the trash? My kid: dumps trash on the front lawn.

Me: people are speeding a lot, can we do something about it? Cops: shoots anyone speeding in the face.

But I guess I can't say anything about it, because they're just doing what I want!

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#148

Post by PyWoody »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #85

This is potentially disastrous to content on the web. Vimeo provides a platform-as-a-service known as OTT, that powers well known branded streaming services, like Criterion Channel, HistoryHit, Dropout, DIRTVision, Speed 51, URLTV, Armflix, MHz Choice, Trinity Broadcasting Network, SommTV, IndieFlix, BroadwayHD, Full Moon Features, etc.

No, not the Criterion Channel, too! Hopefully they can migrate to a different service without too much fuss.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#149

Post by DANmode »

DANmode wrote: post #120
dostick wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a mystery to me, almost every product on market has serious user-facing issues that never get fixed. As if every company indeed have no development team, while all of them retain teams of developers.

If you finish the backlog, you’ll get laid off, the backlog keeps being increased (by you and your manager at times), so it never gets finished. Seems easy enough to explain. There has to be a dragon being fought to account for all this money. Even if the dragon is bs.

Sometimes the dragon is technical debt.

When you’re historical Google, building three or more competing chat platforms…? That’s pretty much bs.

Downvote away, but consider a reply explaining why.

Re: Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday

#150

Post by Eldt »

pnw wrote: post #143
ayhanfuat wrote: post #3

From "Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons in $1.38B all-cash deal" ( https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/10/vimeo-to-be-acquired-by-be... ): > Bending Spoons has a pattern of acquiring companies, then laying off staff and cutting features. For example, Bending Spoons acquired note-taking and task management app Evernote in 2022, after which the company laid off most of its U.S. and Chile staff and moved operations to E…

This is the same model Computer Associates used to run back in the day. Find product with marginal profit but dedicated user base, cut costs, increase pricing and milk it until the next product comes along.

Seems to be very common nowadays for PE
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