According to Financial Times News, Italy-based Bending Spoons, a private company valued at $11 billion, is aggressively acquiring distressed public tech firms. This week, it announced a $500 million deal to buy online ticketing platform Eventbrite. This follows its $1.4 billion purchase of video platform Vimeo a few months ago and the acquisition of streaming tech firm Brightcove a year earlier. The company paid premiums of 80-90% for these targets, but that’s based on severely depressed stock prices—Eventbrite’s shares are down nearly 90% from their post-IPO highs. Bending Spoons’ portfolio also includes legacy names like AOL and Evernote, and its CEO, Luca Ferrari, is now a billionaire. The firm’s stated goal is to reimagine these companies so successfully that they are never sold.
The Graveyard Shift Strategy
So what’s really going on here? Bending Spoons is basically playing a high-stakes game of tech archaeology. They’re digging up companies that the public markets have left for dead. Eventbrite, Vimeo, Brightcove—these weren’t obscure failures. They were once high-flying names that got crushed when the era of free money ended. Investors lost patience with fuzzy growth narratives, and the stocks tanked. Now, Bending Spoons swoops in, arguing that public investors are myopic and that real intrinsic value is being overlooked.
But here’s the thing: their plan isn’t to polish these companies up for a quick flip back to the public markets. CEO Luca Ferrari says that’s not the goal. Instead, the value extraction is supposed to come from “wringing out cash flows” through better management and, let’s be real, probably some serious cost-cutting and leverage. It’s a pure-play private equity move dressed in tech-founder visionary clothing. They’re betting on mind over markets—or what the FT cleverly calls “financial psychokinesis.”
Who This Actually Impacts
For users of these services, this is a massive wait-and-see moment. When a PE-style owner focused on cash flow takes over, the product roadmap often shifts dramatically. Will Eventbrite start charging higher fees to event organizers? Will Vimeo’s free tier get squeezed to push more subscriptions? The “reimagined user interfaces and monetisation engines” Ferrari promises almost certainly mean you’ll pay more or see more ads. It’s rarely about pouring money into new, user-friendly features.
For the broader market, it’s a fascinating case study. Bending Spoons is highlighting a real problem: public markets are incredibly hostile to small-to-mid-cap tech stocks. If you’re under a $1 billion valuation, analysts ignore you, funds won’t buy you, and your stock languishes. That creates a weird opportunity for well-funded private players to arbitrage the disconnect. But is Bending Spoons a savior, or just a liquidator with a nicer website? Their status as Europe’s 10th most-valuable unicorn gives them credibility, but their trophy cabinet is starting to look like a museum of the internet’s past.
The Big Question
Can you actually “reimagine” a company like AOL or Evernote? I’m skeptical. These aren’t hidden gems with broken go-to-market strategies; they are brands that have been thoroughly disrupted. Eventbrite got hammered by a pandemic, yes, but it also faces brutal competition from behemoths. Vimeo pivoted away from creators and never found solid footing. Buying these companies is one thing. Performing the sustained, creative operational magic needed to make them “so successful they will never be sold” is a whole other story.
And let’s not ignore the backing. With investors like Baillie Gifford, Fidelity, and Eric Schmidt, Bending Spoons has the war chest and patience to try this experiment. But that high-class backing also expects high-class returns. The pressure to show real profit, not just vague potential, will be immense from day one. This isn’t a venture capital bet on a 10x moonshot. This is about buying assets at a discount and making them spit out cash. It’s a bold, contrarian strategy. Now we get to see if bending spoons with your mind is easier than bending these tech relics back into shape.
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