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Bending Spoons' Acquisition Strategy
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- DeepHorus
Bending Spoons, an Italian software company, has announced the acquisition of Airtable, a popular collaborative database platform, for $1.285 billion in cash. This figure is notably less than the $1.4 billion in total funding Airtable had previously raised and falls dramatically short of the company's $11 billion valuation from its last funding round in December 2021. The deal signals a significant down exit for the once high-flying startup.
The acquisition fits Bending Spoons' established business model. The company specializes in purchasing well-known but struggling software brands, paying a cash premium relative to the product's operational state. Following the purchase, Bending Spoons typically takes over all operations, often replacing the original team with its own engineering staff based in Italy and Europe to run the product with a leaner structure.
Bending Spoons' playbook was clearly demonstrated after its 2023 acquisition of Evernote. The company's engineering team discovered Evernote was running on an outdated Java 11 monolith with user data manually sharded across 750 virtual machines. They successfully migrated the system to a modern, cloud-native architecture with managed databases and microservices in about six months, improving performance and reliability.
The primary criticisms of this strategy involve price increases and layoffs. After improving Evernote's infrastructure, Bending Spoons significantly raised subscription fees, with some plans jumping from $37 per year to $250 per year by 2026. The company also let go of most of the U.S.-based Evernote team, centralizing operations internally to maximize efficiency and revenue, even if it means a smaller customer base.
The Airtable acquisition underscores a tough market reality for software companies unable to scale profitably. It represents a capitulation for Airtable, which saw its valuation plummet by over $9 billion. For Bending Spoons, it provides another high-profile brand to add to its portfolio of restructured and monetized applications.
Looking ahead, industry observers will watch for how Bending Spoons handles the Airtable transition. The company will likely focus on immediate operational optimization and backend improvements. Subsequent moves will probably include staff reductions, potential price adjustments for subscribers, and a shift toward profitability, continuing the controversial but financially driven model seen with Evernote.
