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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

#411

Post by pgodzin »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #343
everfrustrated wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the company was profitable they wouldn't have needed to sell. It was always living on borrowed time. If a US owner bought it they'd have done exactly the same thing (layoffs) albeit possibly with new jobs in a different state than country.

>If the company was profitable they wouldn't have needed to sell. And it's always the workers who pays the price, not the businessman. Does that see fair? >If a US owner bought it they'd have done exactly the same thing (layoffs) albeit possibly with new jobs in a different state than country. That'd be unfortunate, but it still means jobs are created in the US. It also gives he opportunity (slim) to have people move…

Vimeo's stock lost 90% of value after its IPO. Plenty of investors and businessmen paid the price.

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

#412

Post by hobbified »

Animats wrote: post #261

Is there a solid source for this? Vimeo laid off most of their operation in Israel recently.[1] At least according to "www.calcalistech.com", which seems to be some minor news source in Israel. Their comment was that the office was damaged in a recent war. Rebuilding may not have been worth it. Their headquarters is in New York. [1] https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjtjgbabzx

The BusinessInsider story is as much as you're going to get right now, because Bending Spoons is declining to provide specifics, and those just let go aren't free to tell all. But yes, "globally" means significant cuts in New York and the US in general.

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

#413

Post by fsckboy »

HKH2 wrote: post #339
fsckboy wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some people look at business as making money for the sake of making money. However other people look at making money as a means to better society. if the two sides you describe agree on those definitions as mutually exclusive but in union describing the universal set of people, then they are both wrong. as long as people engaged in a market make their own choices, then money is a direct measure of happiness on the…

Society depends on long-term 'happiness'. Short-term 'happiness' often makes society worse.

what you are actually saying is that a certain class of people "know better" than what another class thinks they want.

If you look at financial markets and finance theory, there is no validity to the idea that people are long term blind and short term mistaken. markets discount the future, they are the best estimates of the future rather than somebody with no skin in the game magically "knowing better"

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

#414

Post by Ekaros »

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 healthy working free market. There should be competition delivering better product at cheaper price.

Maybe one thing we should do is to allow suing company executives for breach of fiduciary duty when they waste resources on some useless project or feature. This could make many companies more efficient.

Oh and also ban dumping. You should not be allowed to sell stuff below cost of production. Development effort with big maybe ignored.

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

#415

Post by hobbified »

dabinat wrote: post #304

Vimeo’s prices are insanely low for what they’re offering. You could not host on AWS and match them on price, nor probably even Hetzner. I never knew if they built out custom infrastructure or if they’ve just been losing money this whole time.

Lots of custom infrastructure. A bit of losing money as well, but moderately profitable on the whole. They were a publicly traded company in their own right from 2021 to 2025, so you can look at the 10-Ks. There was a massive boost in business from COVID in 2020 and early 2021... which meant that the spinoff in May 2021 left investors in a position to be perpetually disappointed, sort of like Peloton.

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

#416

Post by varshith17 »

Bending Spoons' playbook: acquire established product, gut the team, run it on fumes with skeleton crew + AI tooling. They did this with Evernote, Meetup, now Vimeo. Classic private equity move dressed up as a tech company. Extract value, minimize costs, ride the brand until it dies.

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

#417

Post by Ekaros »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #388
Invictus0 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are literally not harmed. The end of an at-will employment agreement is not a harm.

>The end of an at-will employment agreement is not a harm. So if you got fired tomorrow for no reason in particular, you would not feel "harmed"? No family to support, bills to pay, or career to progress cut short? No trips nor big purchases that need to be re-planed or cancelled? No obligations you need to cancel because last week you were fine and this week it's all about scambling for a new job? This is the most a…

They were at-will employment. That should have been considered with their every purchasing decision ever. Their personal and moral failures is not their employers failures.

Budgeting is trivial thing. Spend less than you earn. And it is not like these were minimum wage workers. They should have known to have plenty of buffers at this point. It is entirely their own fault of not reach that point.

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

#418

Post by SkiFire13 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #165
ragall wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they're paying very competitive salaries. For example: https://jobs.bendingspoons.com/positions/67c6dc18c70c531d6db... .

> Typically, we offer individuals at the start of their career an annual salary of £85,797 in London and €66,065 elsewhere in Europe. That would be excellent pay for a junior engineer in Italy.

AFAIK that's what they offer to juniors straight out of university and usually even give a substantial pay rise after the first year. I don't know other places in Italy that can match that.

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

#419

Post by reddalo »

jen729w wrote: post #164
apparent wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just realized the acronym for Bending Spoons is BS. Seemingly appropriate.

In my youth -- the mid-90s -- one of the most scathing slurs our circle of friends could bestow on a person was that they were 'a spoon-bender'. Uri Geller being a … well, this is a family site. Finish that yourself.

I'm still mad at Uri Geller for suing Nintendo and preventing Kadabra from appearing in games.

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

#420

Post by lylo »

I see these acquisitions as a reset. They spend a huge sum to acquire established, but struggling, products and strip the size of the company to the minimum required to keep it operating. This is very much the Musk model.

At this point they have stopped the cash bleeding and made profit margins healthy again. From there they can more easily rationalise how to take it forward over the next 5-10 years.

That might mean stripping unpopular product features, rebranding, going upmarket, whatever.

It’s a real shame for all the staff, of course, but from a business point of view it’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out.

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