Interview
Bending Spoons Founders on Buying Airtable, AOL, Vimeo & Miro
Sourcery with Molly O'SheaLuca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, Matteo Danieli, Valentina Jerusalmi, Molly O'Shea
- Bending Spoons has executed a series of high-value acquisitions, including:
- BuyMiro for $1.3 billion.
- Ventbrite for $500 million.
- Airtable for $1.25 billion.
- AOL for $1.5 billion.
- The company operates with a decentralized office structure, maintaining core teams in Milan, London, Madrid, and Warsaw, with additional acquired offices in the US and Tokyo.
- The headquarters in Milan will expand into a neighboring building with nine floors, increasing capacity to accommodate 500–1,000 employees.
- Internal operations utilize an open-desk booking system with no dedicated product offices, fostering a culture of equality and flexibility.
- Hiring criteria prioritize two core traits:
- "Smart" individuals who demonstrate rapid learning agility.
- "Caring" individuals who exhibit extreme ownership and a desire to maximize team impact.
- The acquisition strategy favors small, high-caliber teams granted near-total autonomy, a formula confirmed to generate superior outcomes compared to larger, bureaucratic structures.
- Acquisition negotiation success is driven by offering the highest price, enabled by Bending Spoons' operator effectiveness in integrating acquired businesses with their technology and talent platform.
- A distinct value proposition for founders is the company's commitment to "forever ownership," ensuring acquired products remain under the stewardship of an engineering-focused team rather than a Private Equity firm requiring a 3–5 year exit window.
- Bending Spoons went public via an unconventional IPO where CEO Luca Ferrari declined to ring the Nasdaq bell, instead allowing a finance colleague named Laura to press the button as a symbolic gesture to highlight collective effort over individual leadership.
- The company previously attempted to acquire Grindr in 2019 for a potential $20 billion deal, a transaction that collapsed in early 2020 despite a fully financed offer, ultimately resulting in the company raising $500 million in committed debt to build institutional financing experience.
- Financing evolution has shifted from small bank loans in 2017 to large-scale term loans with US lenders in 2025, requiring new credit ratings and relationships with unfamiliar lenders.
- Equity raising shifted from secondary rounds with Italian investors to a major 2023 institutional round involving Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, and Durable.
- The company targets 5–10 acquisitions annually from a pipeline of 1,000 potential targets, focusing on businesses with:
- Unlockable potential through Bending Spoons' platform.
- Significant revenue scale to justify transformation efforts.
- Predictable data trends, regardless of whether the business is growing, flat, or shrinking.
- The company offers annual tender processes for employees to sell equity, allowing staff to realize liquidity and value without the traditional "cliff" vesting periods found in public companies.
- Bending Spoons has eliminated standard vesting schedules, a move that has maintained an annual employee churn rate of under 1% due to a strong culture of ownership.
- Internal meritocracy is so rigorously applied that leadership has stepped down to make way for younger, higher-performing successors, including a CPO who was replaced by a product manager who had matured beyond the previous leader's capability.
- CEO Luca Ferrari annually circulates a confidential survey to gauge whether a different leader could better manage the company, reinforcing a culture where no position is permanently protected.
- The "Startup Mode" philosophy involves optimizing team density and reducing headcount in acquired companies to eliminate bureaucracy, thereby increasing shipping frequency and product quality.
- Vali, the General Manager of AOL, joined the company after three rejection attempts and previously managed the Mosaic acquisition suite before leading the AOL transformation.
- The AOL acquisition involves a complex technical carve-out from Yahoo, requiring a migration of the entire platform to Bending Spoons' infrastructure.
- AOL is described as a healthy business with millions of active users, specifically highlighting the high retention rates of its email product and the potential for AI-driven content recommendations on its news portal.
- Product development at Bending Spoons relies on rigorous A/B testing, refusing to release features without clear KPI validation to avoid "analysis paralysis."
- Typical product team composition involves a 60/40 split between business-oriented roles (product, growth, design) and engineering roles.
- Forward-looking plans include prioritizing a rich M&A pipeline and fully integrating AOL to leverage synergies with existing portfolio products.