Iād love to see what their potential acquisition database looks like.
after living through what they did to Evernote, i know when i see their name on an upcoming acquisition of a platform i use, i need to immediately launch a migration project out and away.
Harvest, ugg, i have used it for decades (?)
Vimeo. so sad. apple even tapped them when YouTube wouldnāt step up to VisionOS!
Eventbrite. ugg. making profits off of human performances is just leechy and vulgar
ALL OF THESE transactional platforms should and shall be vibe coded and put out of business by entrepreneurial types posting open source alternatives to github. letās do it.
Totally agree. Itās the first time Iāve come across a company that I would ditch the app asap if they acquired it. Bending Spoons buy iconic, struggling apps, lay off the original teams, gut the free tiers, and massively hike prices. Using them for important core apps will be an expensive venture. They seem to view software products essentially as inventory to be optimized for cash flow.
I will be intrigued to see where the popular apps they purchased are in 5 years.
Citing the article, I find this is impressive by any metrics.
Core headcount may not have increased by much, but productivity has. āIn part helped by progress in AI, revenue per full-time equivalent Spooner increased from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, and was $0.97 million in Q1 2026,ā the company said
took me a 3rd read to realize that last figure was just for one quarter. So basically headed for a $4M+ productivity/employee for the year.
From what Iāve read:
Bending Spoons is highly stable as a financial institution right now because they have an enormous cash cushion from their IPO and high subscription margins. However, they are unstable as a traditional software ecosystemāthey operate in a constant cycle of aggressive corporate disruption, massive layoffs, and high financial leverage.
Plus their very high (90%) reliance on AI for their code means that one glitch will have a rather large impact as the same infrastructure services all their apps. As AI is still in a massive state of flux, use of traditional software is beginning destabilise. Massive investment in struggling iconic software may not be as lucrative in the future as it has been which is Bending Spoons bread and butter.
Ummm, no. Iām on the Board of a small performing arts nonprofit that relies on the services that EventBrite offers, and willingly pays for them. Iām not going to vibe code an alternative to them, and I wouldnāt rely on anyone elseās vibe coded solution, eitherānot when weāre talking about payment processing, tracking ticket sales, producing print at home and mobile tickets, etc etc etc. I have no particular loyalty to EventBrite: if I find a reliable competitor that offers us better services at a better price, Iāll switch. But thereās no way Iād hand the job over to an open source project on GitHub that wasnāt supported by one of the major nonprofit consortiums or service organizations.
I knew nothing about Bending Spoons prior to their acquisition of Evernote. I was a paying user of EN from around 2009? to 2018 but stopped using it after, IMO, they lost their way. (Evernote socks?)
Much of the criticism of BS that Iāve read has to do with the job cuts that follow their acquisition of a company. I worked in manufacturing for a couple of large corporations for nearly 20 years, so I know something about layoffs.
In general, layoffs are frequently caused by overhiring or changes in the business (losing a contract, etc). But regardless of the reason, if you try to avoid a layoff for too long the business can fail, and everyone loses their job.
IMO Bending Spoons differs from most other ācorporate raidersā by keeping the companies they purchase. As far as gutting free tiers and hiking prices, thatās just business.
It is a kind of business parasitism, though: taking over products and services where users have a lot of switching costs and then hiking prices.
Parasites are valid species in an ecosystem, of courseā¦ but no one likes them!
An interesting take here on Linked In about the company.
From what I understand they do improve products, while putting up prices. I think I read e
Evernote users on here may say it is expensive but a lot of the bugs are now fixed.
I guess one of the advantages of competion is that some smart person will develop a new/better/cheaper product and become the next big thing.
I probably shouldnāt admit to the rabbit trail about symbiotic parasites that @ryanjamurphy prompted.
Thinking about Bending Spoons and its portfolio a bit more, they seem like their investment can often be good for those who are most heavily invested in using an app and getting value from it. Theyāre either irrelevant or helpful to people who barely use or stopped using the apps. The middle ground of customers is the one that suffers because they liked paying small/moderate amounts for small/moderate usage and both the features and the price are tuned away from that.
āBending Spoonsā is one of the reasons I use only Open Source software on-top of macOS. Infuse - Video Player for Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, Mac & Vision | Firecore is the only exception.
What are your favorite open source apps?
Orrrrrr, and hear me out here. The original owner didnāt have a business model that worked, so ended up having to sell the asset they had for minimal money and Bending Spoons are trying to make it profitable by making unpopular choices, especially with long term users who are used to getting a lot for not a lot of money.
I donāt agree with Bending Spoonsā business model, especially immediately laying off 90%+ of the original teams, but many of the companies theyāve acquired either burned through PE investment money and never became sustainable (Evernote), Are niche and never likely to turn a decent profit in their previous incarnation (Eventbrite, Vimeo), or are old tired brands which have been passed from pillar to post without finding a home or a purpose (AOL).
And in many cases, these brands were already failing and in this current climate likely to shed employees anyway.
Iām playing devilās advocate to a certain extent, but the Scale Fast and get bought model that companies like Evernote are evocative of were never going to be profitable unless they charged everyone, or a big enough percentage paid through the nose. I was a user (and an advocate) back in 2009. Loved it, but as the restrictions kicked in, they ruined the desktop App, sold branded socks (WTF) and the costs increased it was hard to justify the expense. Iāve still not found anything to replace it, but canāt justify Ā£150 a year.
The more organisations start with an aim to run sustainably, the quicker theyāll either fail or grow organically. AI businesses are a classic example of the wrong way to grow something which can live long.
sure, here the GUI apps. Many more CLI apps I use
brew list --cask
feather joplin maccy orcaslicer thunderbird
ghostty keepassxc mullvad-browser proton-mail transmission
iina ledger-wallet netnewswire signal trezor-suite
Reposting my thoughts from another thread: So Bending Spoons is that farm upstate where all the companies from the last bubble go toā¦live out the rest of their days. I guess Bending Spoons is picking up the scraps that Apollo didnāt want to acquire.
Spoons piled on debt, bought a bunch of really weird tech companies, gutted the staff, hiked prices and left the corpses out to dry. Evernoteās price increase and shoe-horned AI features had some folx move away from it. Vimeo (oh poor Vimeoā¦) was the only potential competitor to YouTube, but it was shifted to enterprise media, which I guess can be viable? AOL is just a joke.
and yet ā¦
Evernote has tripled their paying subscribers since 2023. Vimeo enterprise subscribers tripled from 2021-24. ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ
