Bending Spoons are the miserable tossers who bought Meetup and somehow made it worse by monetising every move you make. And it was pretty bad to start with.
What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
71–80 of 126 posts
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#72Bending Spoons is a company that acquires SaaS companies/products that are not growing or losing users but have a well-known brand and customers who stick around. The execs at Bending Spoon buy these SaaS services on the cheap, cut costs, jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible. Rinse and repeat. The goal is to generate the highest possible rate of return on inves…
There are four stages to any successful companies lifecycle and Bending Spoons's model is to maximize what they can get in the final stage of decline. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you're a user of one of these services you might take it as a hint to find an alternative.
“ There's nothing wrong with that”
Debatable
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#73I wonder how different AOL is since last time I checked. A few years ago at least, it was basically just Yahoo with different branding
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#74Bending Spoons is a company that acquires SaaS companies/products that are not growing or losing users but have a well-known brand and customers who stick around. The execs at Bending Spoon buy these SaaS services on the cheap, cut costs, jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible. Rinse and repeat. The goal is to generate the highest possible rate of return on inves…
> cut costs, jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible. Don't forget "slash the workforce, ensuring that the product will get worse over time".
That’s what “cut costs” means for SaaS, firing people.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are four stages to any successful companies lifecycle and Bending Spoons's model is to maximize what they can get in the final stage of decline. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you're a user of one of these services you might take it as a hint to find an alternative.
“ There's nothing wrong with that” Debatable
There's skill in being able to manage a declining or non-growth business in a way that still pleases your consumer base (and therefore reduces your attrition rate). Not everyone does it well.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t feel like the article was sortballing the company. They brought up things like the WeTransfer founder criticizing Bending Spoons’ decisions. As for my opinion on the company, I don’t really see anything particularly negative about it. I think the fact that they’ve never sold an acquired business is a rather admirable trait. In a way, they’re doing something that may not have been possible without this style o…
People are framing this like they're creating sustainable businesses, but if you look into the details, what they're consistently doing is stagnating on any kind of feature development, making the apps and sites more difficult to use and have more nags, and they're increasing prices, sometimes by 10x or 100x. When I look for a company that I think I would admire, I'm looking for customers that are satisfied and recom…
I certainly don’t find any of that positive, either, but sometimes what a lot of these companies need to survive is to increase prices and only worry about the feelings of the customers who find those higher prices to be worth it.
The $20,000 price plan wasn’t a real price, that was just a not so gentle nudge to move to a different offering. Maybe it feels bad but that plan effectively doesn’t exist anymore. Things change.
It’s got fewer features for the dollar, but if the previous company was not sustainable in the first place, it is what it is.
A company raising prices or cutting service quality is only a problem if they’re in a monopoly situation with no other market alternatives. None of the companies Bending Spoons has acquired are in that position. Many of them are far from being the market leaders.
The point is that Bending Spoons isn’t buying companies and saddling them with unsustainable debt like they’re Toys R Us. They’re buying companies that need drastic operating change and implementing that change so that they can exist in perpetuity.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#77Bending Spoons is a company that acquires SaaS companies/products that are not growing or losing users but have a well-known brand and customers who stick around. The execs at Bending Spoon buy these SaaS services on the cheap, cut costs, jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible. Rinse and repeat. The goal is to generate the highest possible rate of return on inves…
yes, they are trying to gouge me on Evernote that no longer works, that i tried to unsubscribe from here is a solid article from this week's Economist (that mentions another real jewel of a company): https://www.economist.com/business/2026/07/01/can-bending-sp...
I've moved to Joplin and am pretty happy with it. Was easy to self host on my WebDAV.
I believe it imports Evernote data too.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#78> What is Bending Sppons?
The company that made me unsubscribe from Evernote after 8 years because it got slow, buggy and skyrocketed their prices.
Good riddance, now I am using Obsidian + an LLM and works way better.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> cut costs, jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible. Don't forget "slash the workforce, ensuring that the product will get worse over time".
That’s what “cut costs” means for SaaS, firing people.
Yes, it is part of cutting costs, but there are other ways to cut costs ("synergies" from merging back office functions) that don't necessarily affect the product.
Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ There's nothing wrong with that” Debatable
There's skill in being able to manage a declining or non-growth business in a way that still pleases your consumer base (and therefore reduces your attrition rate). Not everyone does it well.
What you said is not synonymous with “maximize what they can get in the final stage of decline.”.