Bending Spoons' Acquisition Strategy and Its Impact
How the Italian app developer transforms struggling tech companies through operational efficiency
1Major Acquisition: Airtable
Bending Spoons announced this week its acquisition of Airtable for $1.285 billion in cash. This price falls below the $1.4 billion total funding Airtable had raised and significantly undercuts its $11 billion valuation from December 2021. The purchase represents a struggling company admitting defeat and seeking maximum cash exit rather than attempting a turnaround.
2The Bending Spoons Business Model
Bending Spoons specializes in acquiring distressed but well-known brands at premium cash valuations, then taking over operations with dramatically reduced staff. Typically, most or all original team members are let go as product operations shift to their in-house engineering team based in Italy and Europe. This approach creates an efficiency-focused business model with ruthless cost optimization.
3The Evernote Case: Outdated Tech
What Bending Spoons discovered in Evernote's technology stack was shocking for 2023: The note-taking service ran as a Java 11 monolith with user data sharded across 750 manually provisioned VMs on Google Cloud. This architecture was remarkably inefficient at a time when cloud-native setups (managed databases, microservices) had been industry standard for years.
4Evernote's Transformation
Bending Spoons' engineering team rationalized Evernote's architecture by migrating user data from 750 manual VMs to a managed database and breaking the monolith into microservices - all completed in about 6 months without disrupting user experience. These changes dramatically improved backend performance while reducing operational costs, demonstrating their technical execution capabilities.
5Price Hikes and Backlash
The most consistent criticism of Bending Spoons' takeovers involves aggressive price increases. Evernote's Pro plan jumped from $37/year pre-2023 to $250/year by 2026. This reflects their profit-maximization approach: while some customers defect to competitors, others pay premium prices for more reliable, better-maintained services - fundamentally changing the product's business model.
6Layoffs and Efficiency Gains
Bending Spoons laid off most of Evernote's US team, bringing operations in-house - a standard part of their playbook. The rearchitecture example demonstrates the advantages of starting fresh without legacy team resistance to changes enabling more efficient operations. Their model explicitly trades employee retention for operational optimization.
7The StreamYard Acquisition
Another significant Bending Spoons acquisition was StreamYard from Hopin. After purchasing StreamYard for $250M in 2021, Hopin sold it to Bending Spoons in 2024 as part of their liquidation process. All Hopin staff face layoffs as operations transition to Bending Spoons' efficiency-focused model, essentially making StreamYard the surviving entity.
8Hopin's Spectacular Collapse
Hopin's trajectory represents a classic case of hypergrowth and collapse: Founded in 2019, it raised $1B during 2020-2021 reaching a $7.75B valuation. But 2022 saw three layoff waves (totaling 58%), a $50M fire sale of core assets in 2023, and finally liquidation in 2024 - with StreamYard becoming the only remaining valuable asset from their acquisition spree.
9Acquisition Criteria
Bending Spoons' acquisition strategy targets three key characteristics: Well-known but struggling brands, inefficient technology infrastructure, and significant operational cost reduction potential. They've specialized in rapidly modernizing such companies' architectures to boost profitability through ruthless efficiency improvements and staffing changes.
10Engineering Prowess
Bending Spoons' engineering team has demonstrated remarkable capability in modernizing acquired companies' infrastructures. The Evernote case - migrating from 750 manual VMs to managed databases and decomposing the monolith into microservices within months - showcases their strong technical execution skills in complex legacy system transformations.
11Long-Term Implications
Questions remain about the long-term viability of Bending Spoons' model. While it delivers operational efficiency and profitability gains, risks include brand equity erosion and increased price sensitivity. Currently though, they serve as effective turnaround specialists for companies with particularly poor technology debt situations.
12Industry Takeaways
Bending Spoons' approach offers important lessons for highly valued but operationally inefficient tech companies. It demonstrates that rapid architectural transformation is possible, but typically requires radical changes and staffing overhauls. Their model reflects the tech industry's ongoing pursuit of operational efficiency, even through controversial means.
Original article: The Pragmatic Engineer — Bending Spoons'un Satın Alma Stratejisi ve Etkileri