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

#71

Post by tootie » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

gtowey wrote: post #10

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…

> 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 In the 80's people who did this were known as "corperate raiders". Nowadays it's just called business.

Corporate raiders is a bit of a different concept. That implies a hostile takeover. Like aggressively buying up shares in order acquire a majority stake and set company policy against the wishes of other insiders.

Bending Spoons is what we'd call vulture capitalists which have and continue to exist. Basically they buy weakening businesses and carve them up for parts, selling anything of value and squeezing max revenue of whatever is left.

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

#72

Post by cheschire » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

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

It’s almost as if HN were a community of voices instead of just one…

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

#73

Post by prmoustache » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:55 PM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #55

What I've always found unusual (but not necessarily bad) about BS is ... how come a company that came out of nowhere starts buying tech companies here and there? Billion dollar deals? In cash? It can't be just a few "enthusiastic" random guys (as they portray), you need a lot of capital to pull that off. IMO they're someone's family office with an obfuscated name. Edit: and my comment suddenly goes to the bottom desp…

Money laundering?

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

#74

Post by WJW » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:55 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #30

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…

Are these hostile takeovers? buying a competitor out through a PE deal could be cheap relative to competing with them.

No, they just come in and offer a lot of money to the current owners. Bending spoons are ruthless businesspeople but AFAIK they do offer a reasonable price for the businesses they acquire.

(I used to work for WeTransfer and some time after I left it got acquired at about the price it was once considering IPO-ing at. This was apparently such a good offer that it took very little deliberation to agree to the deal.)

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

#75

Post by DonHopkins » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

MrDarcy wrote: post #69

jjice wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is what I think Bending Spoons does, mostly based on the Evernote situation. Product has paying users and it's in a "complete" state. Cut costs to optimize profit for a bit and hope not everyone leaves. In the case of Evernote, it's probably really hard to get 10 year users off of it at this point, so they can double subscriptions and they're locked in. My assumption is that there's a serious amount of peop…

Terrible for those laid off but perhaps not for Evernote customers if it means there isn’t unwelcome feature creep.

Just unmitigated bug and software rot creep.

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

#76

Post by donohoe » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

VladVladikoff wrote: post #39

xnx wrote: post #32

What is Vimeo for as compared to YouTube or self-hosting video files?

Our business uses Vimeo because we get a discounted rate on acami CDN via their bulk purchasing power. YouTube is free but that comes with a lot of headaches. For example not being able to hide the recommended videos at the end of a video, which annoyed our clients in the past when we did use YouTube. YouTube also needs to be public to be embeddable, which also created issues for us. However this announcement has me…

Similar boat. Would appreciate hearing of options you end up considering.

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

#77

Post by DonHopkins » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

cheschire wrote: post #72

bradleybuda wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s almost as if HN were a community of voices instead of just one…

Yes, we're are all individuals! Yes, we're all different!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QereR0CViMY

(I'm not.)

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

#78

Post by WA » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

Komoot gets shittier every week too. Takes way too many taps to plan a route, search still sucks, "go premium" in your face all the time.

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

#79

Post by everfrustrated » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

moralestapia wrote: post #55

What I've always found unusual (but not necessarily bad) about BS is ... how come a company that came out of nowhere starts buying tech companies here and there? Billion dollar deals? In cash? It can't be just a few "enthusiastic" random guys (as they portray), you need a lot of capital to pull that off. IMO they're someone's family office with an obfuscated name. Edit: and my comment suddenly goes to the bottom desp…

They're a Milan, Italy company so don't get a lot of visibility in the US.

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

#80

Post by munk-a » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

everfrustrated wrote: post #70

t1234s wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"corporate raiders" are a definitely real thing.

That usually means stripping the company for parts. Bending Spoons is just trying to run the company sustainably.

Vimeo employed somewhere north of a thousand people a year ago with 28% being in the engineering team (according to random google results - this isn't an area I have personal knowledge of). If they dropped from around 300 people to 15 that sounds like gutting - not trimming.