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Tag: Bending Spoons

  • Why WeTransfer co-founder is building another file transfer service | TechCrunch

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    Nalden, who co-founded the file transfer service WeTransfer in 2009 along with Rinke Visser and Bas Beerens, is not pleased with the company’s direction after the service was acquired by Bending Spoon last year — and he doesn’t mince his words about it.

    “Bending Spoons doesn’t really care about people, and even though I get that it is their private equity strategy, I notice that since I left [WeTransfer] in 2019, there were a lot of updates that were basically killing the product, in my point of view,” he told TechCrunch.

    Post-acquisition, WeTransfer made a confusing move related to transfer link experiences and laid off 75% of its staff. This year, the company was caught in a controversy around using its users’ content to train AI models and had to backtrack on changes to its terms.

    Around this time, Nalden had creatives reaching out to share their frustration with WeTransfer. He realized that he wanted to build an alternative to WeTransfer with the original ethos of the service around simplicity. The service is called Boomerang, and you can use it to transfer files without logging in.

    “Why do tech companies always make things so complicated? I’ve always struggled with this, and I just wanted to offer another tool that is just, it’s all about user experience, it’s ease of use, it’s the simplicity of sharing something quickly, and that just saves time. You don’t need to sign up, you don’t need to verify via email,” Nalden told TechCrunch about the ethos of the service.

    Image Credits: Boomerang

    For casual users, the non-login experience would be sufficient, but it has its limits. You can have 1GB of total space, and upload files of up to 1GB in size with a seven-day expiration. If you want a bit more, you can choose to create a free account. That will get you 3GB of total space with a file upload limit of 3GB per file. You’ll asl get access to your upload history, the ability to add and delete files anytime, and the ability to customize emojis on the page while sending the file.

    If you want even more, there is a €6.99 per month paid tier, which will give you 200GB per space (folders) and 500GB total storage with a file upload limit of 5GB per file. Plus, you’ll get custom covers for spaces, password protection for files, up to 90 days of expiry, and the ability to invite unlimited users to access files in a space.

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    Image Credits: boomerang

    Nalden is clear that with this new service, he doesn’t want to offer advertising to users and keep a simple structure for payment. He feels that there is a lot of complexity in the advertising business, and with Boomerang, he wants to get the least amount of data he can from users.

    “I just want to offer a tool that works for users. It’s like buying a hammer. You possibly don’t want to buy a fancy hammer, but a hammer that just works,” he noted.

    Boomerang’s site and interface are barebones, and that is by design. Nalden noted that a lot of design is to please investors, and he feels that stripping down the experience is a refreshing change. While companies are looking to add more and more AI features, Nalden said that he is largely using AI to build the product, but he doesn’t want to use it around user-facing features.

    Boomerang is available on the web, but the company said it is planning to release a dedicated Mac app soon.

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    Ivan Mehta

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  • Why ‘hold forever’ investors are snapping up venture capital ‘zombies’ | TechCrunch

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    Italian company Bending Spoons flew largely under the radar — until last month. In a span of 48 hours, the company announced the acquisition of AOL and a massive $270 million raise, quadrupling its valuation to $11 billion, up from $2.55 billion set in early 2024.

    Bending Spoons has grown rapidly by acquiring stagnating tech brands like Evernote, Meetup, and Vimeo, then turning them profitable through aggressive cost-cutting and price increases. While the company’s approach is similar to private equity, there is one key difference: Bending Spoons has no plans to sell these businesses.

    Andrew Dumont, the founder and CEO of Curious, a firm that also acquires and revitalizes what he calls “venture zombies,” is convinced this “hold forever” strategy will become increasingly prominent in the coming years as AI-native startups make older VC-backed software businesses less relevant.

    “Our belief is that the venture power law, in which 80% of companies ‘fail,’ produces many great businesses, even if they’re not unicorns,” Dumont told TechCrunch.  

    Dumont defines a “great business” as one that can be purchased at a low price and quickly revived to generate substantial cash flows. This “buy, fix, and hold” strategy is the playbook for a growing number of investors, from the 30-year-old Constellation Software, which pioneered the model, to newer players, including Bending Spoons, Tiny, SaaS.group, Arising Ventures, and Calm Capital, according to Dumont.

    “Our whole model is to buy these companies, make them profitable, and use those earnings to grow the business,” Dumont said.

    In 2023, Curious raised $16 million in dedicated capital for buying software companies that have stalled and can no longer secure follow-on investment.

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    Since then, the firm has bought five businesses, including UserVoice, a 17-year-old startup that raised $9 million in VC funding from Betaworks and SV Angel.

    “It’s a great business, but the cap table wasn’t aligned with keeping it. These funds get old, and these companies just sit there,” Dumont said. “We provide liquidity and also reset these companies for profitability.”

    Although Dumont didn’t disclose how much he paid for UserVoice, he said that stagnant companies sell for a fraction of the valuation commanded by healthy SaaS startups, which typically sell for 4x annual revenue or more. Based on our conversation, we estimate that “venture zombies” sometimes sell for as low as 1x yearly revenue.

    By implementing cost-cutting and price increases, Curious can push these businesses to achieve 20% to 30% profit margins almost immediately. “If you have a million-dollar business, you’re kicking off $300,000 in earnings,” he offered as an example.

    They achieve the turnarounds because, unlike the stand-alone companies, they can centralize functions like sales, marketing, finance, and other admin roles, across all of their portfolio companies. “We’re not trying to sell the businesses we acquire and don’t need VC-scale exits, so we can balance growth and profitability more sustainably,” Dumont said.

    When asked why VCs don’t urge their startups to be profitable like Curious does, Dumont responded by saying: “Investors don’t care about earnings; they only care about growth. Without it, there’s no VC-scale exit, so there’s no incentive to operate with that level of profitability.”

    The cash generated from Curious’ companies is then used to buy other startups, Dumont said.  

    The firm plans to buy 50 to 75 startups like UserVoice over the next five years, and Dumont is certain he won’t have a shortage of targets to choose from. Curious is focused on acquiring startups that generate $1 million to $5 million in recurring revenue annually, a segment of the software market that, according to Dumont, private equity shops and secondary investors have historically ignored.

    “We’ve been doing this for a little under two years now, and we’ve probably looked at at least 500 companies, and we bought five,” Dumont said.

    While Bending Spoons’ big valuation hike may validate the “venture zombie” acquisition model, Dumont doesn’t expect a lot of new competition. Turning profits out of stagnation isn’t easy. “It’s a ton of work,” he said.

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    Marina Temkin

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  • What is Bending Spoons? Everything to know about AOL’s acquirer | TechCrunch

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    Bending Spoons’ four cofounders this week joined the billionaire ranks.

    CEO Luca Ferrari’s stake in the Milan-based tech conglomerate is now reportedly worth $1.4 billion, while cofounders Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella, and Francesco Patarnello each hold stakes worth $1.3 billion, according to Forbes estimates based on shareholder data published by the Italian Business Register.

    The valuations come on the heels of Bending Spoons’ latest funding round: $270 million from investors including T. Rowe Price and earlier backers Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners, and Fidelity, plus a $440 million secondary share sale by existing shareholders. It’s unclear whether any of the cofounders sold stock in the secondary transaction. Bending Spoons has declined to comment on its cofounders’ stakes.

    Despite its catchy name, Bending Spoons has stayed remarkably under the radar. The 12-year-old outfit typically makes headlines only when it adds another recognizable brand to its growing portfolio — most recently this past week, when it agreed to acquire AOL. for an undisclosed amount.

    But Bending Spoons isn’t a traditional private equity firm or a pure financial investment vehicle. Its focus is on acquiring underperforming but popular tech brands, then transforming them to serve millions of users more efficiently. 

    The company tends to make news when it restructures these acquired companies, often through significant layoffs, or makes controversial changes to beloved products — or both in the case of Evernote and WeTransfer.

    Still, Bending Spoons itself remains largely unknown, even though its roster of products has served more than a billion people, with over 300 million monthly active users and 10 million paying customers. Here’s what you need to know about the company reshaping some of the internet’s most recognizable brands.

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    What is Bending Spoons?

    Bending Spoons describes itself as a company that acquires and transforms digital businesses. Having grown to a headcount of 400 to 500 “Spooners,” its main focus is on making improvements to products and services that others have created.

    However, it didn’t start that way — the Bending Spoons’ founders had taken a stab at building their own apps and products before eventually shifting their focus.

    The little-known backstory is that Bending Spoons was born out of the remains of Evertale, a Copenhagen-based startup that participated in Disrupt SF 2011’s Startup Alley and raised seed funding for its photo sharing app, Wink. 

    Evertale failed not long after, and investors got an out, but its founders and a couple of employees kept working together, initially on in-house apps. Soon enough, the team made its first acquisition, followed by many others, CEO and cofounder Luca Ferrari told the 20VC podcast in a rare interview. 

    In 2020, Bending Spoons made an exception when it created and donated Immuni, Italy’s official COVID-19 contact tracing app. But other than that, it has mostly been honing a formula: Bending Spoons identifies a popular product it thinks it can improve inside and out, and buys it from owners who have reached their limits.

    After the acquisition, Bending Spoons is anything but a passive owner, making changes to the products’ user experience and features but also to the underlying tech; monetization strategy, including pricing; and team organization, including headcount.

    While this focus on efficiency and revenue overlaps with private equity strategies, Bending Spoons claims a key difference: it “aims to hold forever, and has never sold an acquired business.” It is building a live portfolio, not collecting internet relics or presiding over a tech graveyard.

    To be clear, Bending Spoons’ acquisition targets so far haven’t necessarily been failing businesses — many still had substantial user bases and revenue. But they’ve tended to be stagnant, neglected, or had owners looking to exit. Let’s recap these key deals, and also what happened in their aftermath.

    What companies has Bending Spoons acquired?

    While Bending Spoons acquired several companies between 2014 and 2021, including AI photo enhancer Remini, its most notable acquisitions happened more recently.

    In 2022, it acquired Filmic, known for its popular video and photo editing apps, and laid off the entire staff in December 2023.

    In a deal also announced in 2022 and finalized in early 2023, Bending Spoons also cquired Evernote, the note-taking app that had reportedly reached a $1 billion valuation before hitting trouble. Layoffs followed the acquisition, as well as cuts to Evernote’s free offering.

    The first half of following year, 2024, was particularly active, with the acquisition of Meetup, app maker Mosaic Group, and Hopin’s StreamYard in the first half of the year. 

    In July 2024, it went on to acquire the publishing platform Issuu and the file transfer service WeTransfer, where it later cut staff and made changes to its free plan, introducing stricter limits. Later in the year, Bending Spoons announced it would spend $233 million on an all-cash take-private deal to acquire video platform Brightcove. 

    The acquisitions have continued apace in 2025, with acquisitions that include the outdoors route planner Komoot and management software maker Harvest. 

    Bending Spoons also announced its intention to acquire Vimeo in a $1.38 billion all-cash deal, and even more recently, to acquire AOL from Yahoo. (Disclosure: both AOL and Yahoo are former owners of TechCrunch, in which Yahoo retains a small interest.) 

    According to Bending Spoons, the acquisitions of AOL and Vimeo are expected to close by the end of the year, subject to standard closing conditions and regulatory approvals, including, in the case of Vimeo, approval by its stockholders. 

    How much is Bending Spoons worth?

    As of the end of October 2025, Bending Spoons is one of Europe’s rare tech decacorns (companies valued at more than $10 billion). The startup last raised at a $2.8 billion valuation in 2024, making its newest latest round a significant step up.

    Though long bootstrapped, Bending Spoons had previously raised equity financing several times, including in September 2022 and early 2024. It also has VIPs on its cap table, including tennis and entertainment stars Andre Agassi and Bradley Cooper; tech industry bigs Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger, and Xavier Niel; and performers The Weeknd, The Chainsmokers, and Maluma.

    According to Bending Spoons, its new funding will support future acquisitions and investment in its proprietary technology and AI capabilities. This comes in addition to the $2.8 billion in debt financing the company disclosed as it announced its intention to acquire AOL, debt that will fund the AOL deal and future acquisitions.

    What’s next?

    Bending Spoons says it intends to continue pursuing new acquisitions that expand its portfolio of consumer and enterprise digital products, and it now has funding to afford more prominent targets going forward.

    AOL and Vimeo already carry far more name recognition than earlier targets, even if deal terms remain undisclosed. The properties also have some reach. In announcing the AOL deal, Bending Spoons claimed that AOL remains one of the top 10 most-used email providers in the world, with 8 million daily active users and 30 million monthly active users. (Not long before acquiring AOL, Bending Spoons was also rumored to be eyeing app maker Elysium and Typeform, the Barcelona-based SaaS company known for its form creation tools.)

    Presumably to support its continued efforts to acquire companies, it also has openings across various roles, with new hires initially working from its Milan headquarters before gaining the option to work from offices in London, Madrid, and Warsaw, or remotely.

    In fact, despite warning candidates that Bending Spoons is a “demanding environment,” the company has said it already received more than 600,000 job applications in 2025, a figure that will likely climb as its recent deals generate additional attention.

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    Anna Heim

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  • Bending Spoons to acquire AOL | TechCrunch

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    Bending Spoons, one of Europe’s largest mobile app developers, announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to buy AOL from Yahoo, which is backed by private equity giant Apollo. Bending Spoons says it has secured a $2.8 billion debt financing package to support the purchase.

    The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year and is subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

    “AOL is an iconic, beloved business that’s in good health, has stood the test of time, and we believe has unexpressed potential,” said Bending Spoons CEO and co-founder, Luca Ferrari, in a press release.

    “By our estimation, AOL is one of the top ten most-used email providers in the world, with a highly retained customer base counting around 8 million daily and 30 million monthly active users,” he continued. “We intend to invest significantly to help the product and the business flourish. Bending Spoons has never sold an acquired business—we’re confident we’re the right long-term steward for AOL, and look forward to serving its large, loyal customer base for many years to come.”

    The news doesn’t come as a surprise, as Reuters reported earlier this month that Yahoo was in talks to sell AOL to Bending Spoons for around $1.4 billion.

    Wednesday’s news signals a new chapter for AOL, which was once one of the most recognized brands on the internet, known for its email service and “You’ve Got Mail” notification. AOL has had several owners over the past decades. It was owned by Time Warner from 2001 to 2009, and then by Verizon Communications from 2015 to 2021.

    The acquisition marks Bending Spoon’s latest purchase in a string of other American brands like Vimeo, Evernote, Meetup, and more.

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    Aisha Malik

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  • Evernote’s biggest update since 2020 goes all in on AI

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    If you’re like me, it’s probably been a hot minute since you’ve thought about Evernote. For years, the note-taking app, once a darling of the App Store, faced declining popularity and profitability. The last time it grabbed headlines was in 2022 when it was sold to Milan-based developer Bending Spoons. Approximately nine months later, Bending Spoons laid off nearly all of Evernote’s US workforce, and relocated what remained of the company’s operations to Europe. Now, Evernote wants to be in the conversation again. 

    Since taking over the app, Bending Spoons has released more than 200 improvements, culminating today with the release of Evernote v11. The company is touting the update, which is the first major release for Evernote since its poorly received v10 release back in 2020. The new version brings a handful of new AI features to Evernote, including one that Bending Spoons collaborated with OpenAI to develop.      

    “My wish for v11 is that people give it a try and see how fast and reliable it is, how complete it is in what it offers,” Federico Simionato, Evenote’s product lead, said over a video chat. “I think people have an outdated opinion of Evernote that used to match reality, when Evernote was slow and unreliable.”    

    The first of the new features Bending Spoons is introducing today is called AI Assistant. Simionato describes it as having ChatGPT inside of Evernote. No surprise since the company collaborated with OpenAI to make it. As you can probably guess, you can use AI Assistant to search through your notes and notebooks, but the tool’s utility goes beyond that. It allows you to interact with your documents and ask follow-up questions. AI Assistant can also generate new content, and you can decide how what it creates is integrated within your existing notes and notebooks. In my demo, Simionato used AI Assistant to add a flight ticket number to a note he had dedicated to an upcoming trip to Spain. Over time, Bending Spoons plans to make AI Assistant more powerful, with the company working on making it possible for the chatbot to assign tags to notes and perform bulk actions across multiple documents, among other capabilities. 

    By default, Bending Spoons will enable AI Assistant for all paid users. A set of granular controls will allow people to decide what content AI Assistant can access. The agreement Bending Spoons has with OpenAI means the company can’t train its models on data from Evernote users. Additionally, any data sent to the cloud for processing will only be held as long it takes to complete the user’s request.  

    Part of the reason Bending Spoons is taking a more forward approach with AI Assistant is due to user feedback. In 2023, the company released a tool called AI Search. Simionato says his team was “extremely careful” to add friction to the experience to ensure people felt Evernote was respecting their privacy. To that end, you had to dig into the app’s settings to enable AI Search before it would work. According to Simionato, users found that setup was “too cumbersome,” and with most people becoming more comfortable with AI tools, the company decided to make AI Assistant visible from the jump. 

    The other new feature Bending Spoons is introducing today is one some Evernote users have been waiting for a decade: Semantic Search. Instead of trying to find a note using an exact word or phrase you used inside of it, Semantic Search allows Evernote to filter through your documents using context. Simionato demonstrates the feature in action by typing “Barcelona trip” into the new interface, and Evernote surfaces a note he created about a trip to Girona. If you’re not familiar, Girona is a city about 62 miles northeast of Barcelona and part of Catalonia. The document Evernote pulled up had no mention of Barcelona in it, but that didn’t prevent the tool from finding it. According to Simionato, this is the most requested feature of longtime Evernote users and one Bending Spoons is happy it can finally deliver on. 

    Lastly, the company has expanded the app’s built-in recording and transcription capabilities. Building on AI Transcribe, which Bending Spoons first introduced in 2024, Evernote can now record audio from both in-person and online meetings and automatically transcribe and summarize what’s said. This feature should work in every language that Evernote currently supports. 

    As mentioned, Evernote’s new AI features are available to all paid users. Simionato said Bending Spoons is working on making a trail available to free users sometime in the next few months. For now, the price of Evernote’s paid plans isn’t going up, but Simionato noted the company plans to adjust pricing in the coming months, mostly to account for the fact there aren’t many notable differences between the Personal and Professional tiers. 

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