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.

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.

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

> "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...

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/

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.