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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

#171

Post by refulgentis »

Nextgrid wrote: post #159
refulgentis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're entirely correct. I put it to not-tech people as: "[insert_ridiculous_valuation] is because you can fire everyone tomorrow and keep operating" > "Tech was an outlier in this case because ZIRP allowed companies to retain full engineering teams to keep "engineering" the product despite it being essentially finished." This is wrong, though, it's unnecessarily tying in a pop-finance obsession with ZIRP. Un…

> companies took on debt to fund bloated engineering teams because no one noticed the engineering was done ZIRP allowed a lot of "businesses" to exist that wouldn't in a conventional, competitive capitalistic environment. Businesses in quotes because there was never any reasonable potential for profitability, but it didn't matter because VC money was cheap. Building a sustainable business is hard, playing "startup fo…

You hold ZIRP caused this, then cite crypto and AI as continuations, both post-ZIRP. Which is it?

> as long as cheap money is around you could endlessly "engineer" and pivot and bullshit around

I lived this in a particular industry firmly inside the ZIRP era. It doesn't begin to describe how things actually worked. Even if ZIRP is synonymous with endless money to you, on their end, they still had to choose how to allocate it, and it was finite. You're not going to a bank for a loan, you beg people with experience in software to believe you're trending up.

> During the ZIRP era it was all about "engagement" and DAUs/MAUs, then it was blockchain, and now it's all about AI.

Do you genuinely believe DAUs/MAUs stopped mattering once crpyto, then AI, arrived?

Your argument requires believing that engineers collectively ran a con that no investor, board member, or executive noticed for a decade, and the only people who figured it out were PE firms after 2022. That's conspiracy theory dressed in finance vocabulary.

The leveraged buyout model you're praising as "normal capitalism" is itself subsidized by cheap debt. You've correctly identified that cheap money distorts incentives. You've just misidentified which side of the transaction is the distortion.

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

#172

Post by hi_hi »

From the previous press about the aquisition:

BendingSpoon CEO: "At Bending Spoons, we acquire companies with the expectation of owning and operating them indefinitely, and we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together"

Vimeo CEO: "We are excited about this partnership, which we believe will unlock even greater focus for our team and customers as we continue to strive towards our global mission to be the most innovative and trusted video platform in the world for businesses"

Words no longer appear to mean things. While this isn't a surprise, it provides another data point that there can be no trust given to leaders words. I find it sad as it simply re-inforces this behaviour and normalises it.

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

#173

Post by j45 »

nness wrote: post #4
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…

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…

Sometimes solutions end up solving problems that don't need constant featuritis.

Maybe they're deciding to maximize locked in revenue and margin.

Laying off so many people doesn't seem signal the greatest confidence to the market, maybe they'll explain it as some kind of efficiency alignment.

After all, Twitter is still operating on some level after 75% layoffs?

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

#174

Post by gulugawa »

torben-friis wrote: post #62

Can someone in the know explain Bending Spoons? I routinely see job postings by them in my local dev circles, significantly above market rate, and the offers seem to keep reappearing forever. Their site namedrops known apps and services like wetransfer but otherwise seems to be just buzzwords. Are they VC buying existing IPs? What is exactly going on?

I describe Bending Spoons as an Italian private equity company. The CEO openly admits that the business model involves buying companies and trying to squeeze as much profit out of them.

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

#175

Post by george_perez »

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.

Watermelon+, too!

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

#176

Post by whalesalad »

hi_hi wrote: post #172

From the previous press about the aquisition: BendingSpoon CEO: "At Bending Spoons, we acquire companies with the expectation of owning and operating them indefinitely, and we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together" Vimeo CEO: "We are excited about this partnership, which we believe will unlock even greater focus for our team and customers as we continue to strive towards ou…

Things happen. Times change. It's just as important to know when to throw in the towel as it is to know when to persevere.

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

#177

Post by killingtime74 »

whalesalad wrote: post #176
hi_hi wrote: post #172

From the previous press about the aquisition: BendingSpoon CEO: "At Bending Spoons, we acquire companies with the expectation of owning and operating them indefinitely, and we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together" Vimeo CEO: "We are excited about this partnership, which we believe will unlock even greater focus for our team and customers as we continue to strive towards ou…

Things happen. Times change. It's just as important to know when to throw in the towel as it is to know when to persevere.

The acquisition concluded in November 2025, only 2 months ago.

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

#178

Post by nine_k »

nness wrote: post #4
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…

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…

So it's sort of a "white-dwarf maker" company. Pick a company with a steady cashflow, eject all the fluff that made it a big star, and collect the remaining energy / cash until the core cools down. The end state is a cold slab of iron, and nothing new is going to happen to the acquired business ever since, but the plentiful (if dwindling) cashflow will be collected without any obstacles.

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

#179

Post by gitgud »

Nextgrid wrote: post #151
wavemode wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Software is never "finished" Software may never be finished (in your opinion) but the budget of any customer is finite. If you keep reinvesting your revenue forever into "engineering" the product there's going to be a time where a competitor comes in with a finished product matching your customers' requirements and snatches him from you by both charging less and making a profit.

There’s also the much more common case of a competitor coming in with a similar product that has a few more features matching the customers’ requirements… which explains the endless product development treadmill that companies find themselves on.

Software doesn’t win by being “finished” it wins by out competing other software

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

#180

Post by wanderer2323 »

whalesalad wrote: post #176
hi_hi wrote: post #172

From the previous press about the aquisition: BendingSpoon CEO: "At Bending Spoons, we acquire companies with the expectation of owning and operating them indefinitely, and we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together" Vimeo CEO: "We are excited about this partnership, which we believe will unlock even greater focus for our team and customers as we continue to strive towards ou…

Things happen. Times change. It's just as important to know when to throw in the towel as it is to know when to persevere.

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