Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by mynameisjody » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

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…

You're assuming all or most paying customers are paying attention. That is sometimes not the case. For example folks/businesses who forgot they signed up. Alternatively it could be that the cost to switch is too painful.

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

#222

Post by philipallstar » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #186

CiccioNizzo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been a paiyng Evernote customer since its launch. I unsubscribed at the beginning of 2025 after 7/8 years of shitty releases, not fixing old bugs, and new useless features.

I don't user Evernote very often, but I have a bunch of stuff stored in there and use it basically in a read-only mode. For a long time I was able to get the $36 / year plan which I felt pretty good about. It was a great app and service which I didn't use very much, so that felt like a fair price and I felt good about supporting them at that level. Basically every time I opened Evernote, I was paying $2. But then the…

If everyone gets salaries and equity is paid for then everyone's done great. And then we can build another one, or an open source equivalent once all the money's been spent researching useful features, and then we're done.

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

#223

Post by _DeadFred_ » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

joelthelion wrote: post #205

epolanski wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called butt cigar investing or corporate raiding. They acquire startups and companies without a huge growth potential but modest cash flow and little profits. They cut the operating expenses to the minimum and jack up the prices to sky rocket profits till their mathematical models will tell them they will profit on the investment. Rinse and repeat.

Have there been any serious legal efforts to make this less profitable? It's very clearly detrimental to society.

In the Reagan loving greed of the 1980s this was considered vile, movies were made and the people that did it excluded from polite company.

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

#224

Post by Nextgrid » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

refulgentis wrote: post #171

Nextgrid wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 all…

ZIRP was the era of where any tech startup was seen as a good investment no matter how stupid. Take any stupid business that doesn't work, say you do it with tech, get millions thrown at you. Then it was blockchain - same story, conventional business that doesn't work, but with blockchain - boom, instant money. Now the same with AI.

> you beg people with experience in software to believe you're trending up

Considering how much stupid shit I've seen funded (that quietly "incredible journey'd" away or folded by now) I don't think much begging was involved. Capital was desperate to find a place, no matter how ill-advised. Everyone in the startup food chain enjoyed it.

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

What started mattering is a clear path to monetize said DAUs/MAUs. You can't just show up with (potentially flawed) analytics saying you have DAUs and you're gonna figure out monetization later. Now you need to actually figure it out now and show up with analytics + proof of actually monetizing those users. Well, except if you're selling AI - then it's ok to sell inference at a major loss and figure out monetization later.

> collectively ran a con that no investor, board member, or executive noticed for a decade

"Investing" in a Ponzi can still be profitable as long as you get out before it collapses. There was a lot of passing around the hot potatoes between VCs too, so a VC can rightfully determine something to be a scam, but still invest if they believe SoftBank will happily hold the bag (and those guys ended up taking a lot of bags).

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

#225

Post by Etheryte » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

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…

I'm not really sure this argument makes sense. Plenty of software I've built is finished, it does the thing I need it to do and I haven't touched it in years. Adding features just because is not a useful way to spend anyone's time, doubly so in a business context.

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

#226

Post by epolanski » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

k1rd wrote: post #161

Yes bending spoon will stop growing these companies and stop add features. These role will be just replaced by engineers and employee in Italy, where bending spoon is form, and where people cost many times less than in the US. Italy is like a higher quality India in a sense.

Bending Spoons pays very high rates for their own engineers.

Of course if your comparison is Bay Area or Zurich, there's no match, but if you exclude such outliers (where the compensation is what it is due to the insane costs of living and competition for talent) they are paying rates higher than pretty much any other part of the world.

They pay rates that are closer if not higher than London or Munich averages (which are very high).

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

#227

Post by tmp10423288442 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

joelthelion wrote: post #205

epolanski wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called butt cigar investing or corporate raiding. They acquire startups and companies without a huge growth potential but modest cash flow and little profits. They cut the operating expenses to the minimum and jack up the prices to sky rocket profits till their mathematical models will tell them they will profit on the investment. Rinse and repeat.

Have there been any serious legal efforts to make this less profitable? It's very clearly detrimental to society.

Why would it be detrimental to society? Many companies have developed all the products they're likely to ever develop, so why would you maintain the same level of operational costs as when you expected growth? There's no guarantee that the prices charged before the acquisition were sustainable either.

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

#228

Post by refulgentis » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #224

refulgentis wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 all…

ZIRP was the era of where any tech startup was seen as a good investment no matter how stupid. Take any stupid business that doesn't work, say you do it with tech, get millions thrown at you. Then it was blockchain - same story, conventional business that doesn't work, but with blockchain - boom, instant money. Now the same with AI. > you beg people with experience in software to believe you're trending up Considerin…

> "except if you're selling AI - then it's ok to sell inference at a major loss and figure out monetization later"

So the dynamic you attributed to ZIRP is alive and well, just wearing different clothes. Your original framework was "ZIRP allowed this, now real capitalism is correcting it." Now it's "this is permanent, it just rotates themes." These are different arguments.

> "Investing in a Ponzi can still be profitable as long as you get out before it collapses... a VC can rightfully determine something to be a scam, but still invest"

You've just moved the con from engineers to VCs. If investors knowingly played hot potato, then engineers weren't running a grift, they were employees doing jobs while capital played musical chairs above their heads.

So which is it: were engineers "deadweight" padding out finished products, or were they ordinary workers caught in a game VCs were knowingly playing? Because "VCs knew it was a scam but invested anyway" is a very different story than "engineers tricked everyone into thinking the product wasn't finished."

You're retreating into "everyone knew it was fake."

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

#229

Post by johnnyanmac » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

philipallstar wrote: post #218

johnnyanmac wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, "return money to owners" ends more like the owner selling off the company and leaving all the workers under them in freefall. And people wonder why loyalty is dead.

Well, the workers already got paid for their time; the owner didn't for their time and (more importantly) risk. No one wonders why loyalty is dead.

The owner got a big pay package from the sale on top of usually being one of the more highly compensated employees at such companies. What do you mean by "the owner didn't get paid"?

>No one wonders why loyalty is dead.

I see you missed the recent narrative of "Gen Z is lazy" and "most managers avoid hiring Gen Z" out there. I assure you many managers are baffled, bit blame the (relative) children instead of seeing how work culture has shifted since they were that age

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

#230

Post by epolanski » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC

joelthelion wrote: post #205

epolanski wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called butt cigar investing or corporate raiding. They acquire startups and companies without a huge growth potential but modest cash flow and little profits. They cut the operating expenses to the minimum and jack up the prices to sky rocket profits till their mathematical models will tell them they will profit on the investment. Rinse and repeat.

Have there been any serious legal efforts to make this less profitable? It's very clearly detrimental to society.

This is just how capitalism works in a competitive environment: it allocates capital as efficiently as possible.

I despise their business model, but it is what it is.