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What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

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Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#91

Post by robocat »

smrtinsert wrote: post #52
buckle8017 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classic PE strategy is to buy declining buy well known brands, borrow vast sums of money in the brands name, pay the PE firm huge consulting fees, and then bankrupt the acquired business. Which isn't exactly what they seem to be doing but also isn't that far off.

Scotts point was that these brands have already declined, and that the only thing left is a very strongly loyal subscription base. That perked my ears up for sure.

The classic PE monetization strategy is to take an intangible asset and mine it: The one we all see is buying a quality brandname and mining it into oblivion. Plus various accountancy tricks to move the gold into the PE coffers.

In your example "very strongly loyal subscription base" is the asset.

Fabulous article (I think evergreen through regular edits/updates): https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/the-mechanisms-of-enshittif...

Long on business keywords; a more soulless perspective than the above article: https://ahapartners.co/thinking/goodwill-isnt-a-rounding-err...

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#92

Post by mavelikara »

cess11 wrote: post #85
danabrams wrote: post #63

Earlier 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.

Is this practice good for the workers in the organisation?

Definitely, no.

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#93

Post by mavelikara »

Scoundreller wrote: post #19
cs702 wrote: post #12

Bending 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…

I had a vendor acquired by one of these types of outfits. I looked through their assets and it clicked: “this is where software goes to die”

> this is where software goes to die

The ones that IBM passed up on, yes.

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#94

Post by CharlesW »

The_Blade wrote: post #48
cs702 wrote: post #12

Bending 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...

Tip: It's straightforward to migrate from Evernote to Apple Notes. https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/migrate-from-evernote-to-ap...

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#96

Post by The_Blade »

CharlesW wrote: post #94
The_Blade wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Tip: It's straightforward to migrate from Evernote to Apple Notes. https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/migrate-from-evernote-to-ap...

eh, i backed up in a few places a bit ago. the actual concern is BS charged me when they shouldn't have (5x the former price, annual), won't refund, and turned off the account anyway. and PayPal seems to have an open marriage with PCI-DSS/SOC2 right now

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#97

Post by JumpCrisscross »

apparent wrote: post #56
cs702 wrote: post #12

Bending 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".

> Don't forget "slash the workforce, ensuring that the product will get worse over time"

Not commenting on Bending Spoons. But in general, a company built to grow is overprovisioned for one being put into maintenance mode. If you're growing, sure, let the designers change the UI every release. If you're trying not to lose customers, don't do that. Which means you don't need a crack team of in-house designers.

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#98

Post by JumpCrisscross »

NuclearPM wrote: post #72
danabrams wrote: post #63

Earlier 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 nothing wrong with it per se. Plenty of great products were ruined because management refused to accept that it wasn't in a growth market anymore and should be run for minimising customer losses, not gaining substantial new ones. That, in turn, means laying off a lot of the design, engineering and sales talent that was necessary for the previous configuration.

You can also be a bastard and jack up prices while cutting e.g. customer service. (Though absent new major revisions, service costs should go down.) But I'd argue we need, in tech, more of this strategy of calm wind-down than the everything-must-be-growth mindset.

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#99

Post by dmacedo »

Well I want to launch Straightening Forks: the B-Corp that hires experienced developers, designers, and other digital folks and instead of buying dying digital estate to extract the remaining bone hurting juice from its user-base, it would instead: re-implement (fork, LOL) open alternatives seeking viable business models or just FOSS a working path, with minimal product features serving those core users and their needs, centralising the core cross-product services and cost optimising the backend plus realising what's the actual features users "need" vs. "want", and try to create sustainable products which instead of just extracting value try to provide value in this world.

Surely this isn't difficult???...

Re: What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public

#100

Post by stock_toaster »

cs702 wrote: post #12

Bending 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…

So like Broadcom?
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