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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

#91

Post by jcynix »

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…

Hundreds of millions in revenue and three acquisitions in 2024 — what’s behind Bending Spoons’ success? | Sifted https://sifted.eu/articles/bending-spoons-italy-startup-ipo

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

#92

Post by toomuchtodo »

rickydroll wrote: post #90
toomuchtodo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. You're buying a cashflow. Bending Spoons has optimized their model for very specific types of cashflow enterprises to aggregate into their portfolio.

I use Harvest to track hours and expenses and to invoice my customers. Bending Spoons apparently bought them a while ago and just eliminated the shell company around Harvest. Based on my experience with Evernote, I don't trust Bending Spoons, and I'm wondering if I should look for a different time-tracking and invoicing system.

Yes.

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

#93

Post by jcynix »

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?

Hundreds of millions in revenue and three acquisitions in 2024 — what’s behind Bending Spoons’ success? | Sifted https://sifted.eu/articles/bending-spoons-italy-startup-ipo

So private equity is behind it.

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

#94

Post by lumost »

WJW wrote: post #74
lumost wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

but where does the money come from? it seems like a good way to avoid regulatory scrutiny if your acquisition goal is to simply exit a competitor from the market.

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

#95

Post by alistairSH »

Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #51
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…

For example, they bought the German hiking and cycling app Komoot. It's a mature app in terms of functionality, with a stable user base. There's little chance of hypergrowth with this type of app. It's also complicated to switch apps because transferring routes, collections, photos, etc. to another service is difficult. They laid off 90% of the teams. They migrated the app to their infrastructure to pool costs. Since…

It's also complicated to switch apps because transferring routes, collections, photos, etc. to another service is difficult.

Not really, sync everything through Strava, and then drop whichever service you don't want. Basically any bike ride I've done in the past decade is on 3+ services because they all sync.

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

munk-a wrote: post #80
everfrustrated wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#99

Post by Ekaros »

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…

Someone has actual financial plan. I know a unknown thing for VC and startups. If they do and can calculate reasonable rat of return on acquisition it makes sense for lot of investors. Especially when they start to have proven record.

Having paying customers, stopping giving things away for free and then cutting costs like wages and moon shots projects. A software starts to be tech again. That is marginal unit costs really do work.

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

#100

Post by bicepjai »

dotBen wrote: post #82
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

If your comment is referring to the bending spoons business model, it's worth pointing out they are not VC, they are private equity. If your comment is referring to the software company's exiting to provide a return to shareholders, that happens all the time whether it's venture-backed or privately owned. The owners of privately held bootstrapped companies still want an exit one day too. As an open source software en…

Not in the startup world beyond what I pick up on HN, but this distinction was helpful. My mental model going forward: - If a company is still validating the business model and optimizing for rapid growth, it’s typically a Venture Capitalist (VC) fit. - If a company is already established and the play is to improve operations, scale, or restructure (often involving a change of control), it’s typically a Private Equity (PE) fit.
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