Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO

lhoff

They also own Komoot and I am anxiously awaiting the enshittification. As of now my use cases still work and it certainly helped that I bought the lifetime all-world map package.

elffjs

Per Wikipedia, Bending Spoons owns: AOL, Brightcove, Eventbrite, Evernote, Harvest, Issuu, Komoot, Meetup, MileIQ, Remini, StreamYard, Tractive, Vimeo, and WeTransfer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons

righthand

Interesting, Vimeo sat under IAC for almost 20 years claiming it would go public, when it finally did it was eventually sold off to Bending Spoons not even 5 years in.

xnx

But how will they make it about AI...?

raphman

> "Founded in 2013, Bending Spoons reported a net income of $27.5 million on revenue of $601 million for the three months ended March 31, compared to a net loss of $112.2 million on revenue of $259 million a year earlier. A large chunk of its revenue comes from recurring subscriptions, providing a more predictable stream of income." Gergely Orosz did an interview with them in 2024: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/twisting-the-rule...

moralestapia

It's still a big mystery to me how they were able to pull billion-dollar acquisitions while being one or two orders of magnitude lower in revenue. >inb4 leverage Yeah, I know leverage exists but still, you cannot go to a bank and ask them to help you acquire something 100x worth your cap.

foresterre

Their strategy always was "buy company" and "instantly lay off about everyone" to save costs and rapidly increase subscription pricing (1). So far they've been relatively soft (for their doing) on Komoot, which I too am most anxious off. Bikepacking.com has a good read about Komoot; it was probably unsustainable in the long run before bending spoons took over anyways (2), yet I much rather had they stayed a sort of indie company driven by their passion. I will cancel my long standing Komoot subscription the day enshittification news breaks. (1) https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/03/komoot-acquired-history-... (2) https://bikepacking.com/plog/when-we-get-komooted/

k310

IMO, they buy companies, lay off en masse and sell the now sunsetted products. Reminiscent of "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, but he gutted and then flipped whole companies. I think of them as the bakery outlet store that sells only stale goods.

martin_drapeau

20VC had an interview with them: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/luca-ferrari I came in thinking they would be like PE and just put products on life support sucking all the recurring they can. But it seems they care and improve the products. I think that has merrit.

mmarian

I'm often thinking about building a better Meetup, it's so expensive for organizers these days. But then I acknowledge the network effects and I give up. And they own Eventbrite too! Savvy people.

ChrisArchitect

Some history from only the past year in discussions: Bending Spoons acquires Vimeo for $1.38B https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45197302 AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45749161 Bending Spoons Acquires Eventbrite https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124673 Tell HN: Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707699

kome

IPOing just before an evident .com tech bubble is about to explode is courageous. Good luck to everyone. That said, their business model seems fairly solid, and despite the naysayers, they improve things a bit on most of their acquisitions. So there might be some real value in what they do. Yet, the expected market valuation is way off. But worry not: market will fix that.

Zigurd

I'm old enough to have been acquired by Computer Associates at a company that acquired my company. CA's business model was to buy companies and then fold their products into an omnibus license, all of their customers, including the ones they just acquired, becoming involuntary licensees whatever the cat dragged in this quarter. It turns out a lot of corporate IT has no idea how to switch vendors in case a product they use gets acquired by a company with this business model.

defmetrix

Another IPO that I will be avoiding.

easyThrowaway

Mark my words: they will keep growing until they collapse, and once that happens, they will use their reach and contacts with the Italian government to ask to be bailed out out of debt. It’s not a matter of “if”, but “when”. It’s a well known strategy that has been applied by several Italian companies, FIAT (now Stellantis) first and foremost.

gulugawa

I looked at the Bending Spoons employee handbook, and they openly admit that employee performance is evaluated on "making an impact". To me, this means adding pointless features for the sake of getting better ratings. Since Bending Spoons purchased Meetup, I have noticed the UI becoming more cluttered and hard to use. Also, I consistently get ads asking me to buy an organizer subscription to host events, even when on the page for a group I'm an organizer for. After seeing this emphasis on "impact" cause Meetup's UI to degrade, I'm skeptical about the company's long term future.