After $18B IPO, Bending Spoons founder says success comes from minimizing luck - BERITAJA

AOL is public again — benignant of. Its proprietor Bending Spoons, the 13-year-old Italian institution that has been quietly acquiring beloved but ailing Internet brands for the past decade, went nationalist connected the Nasdaq today, opening astatine an complete $18 ​billion valuation, pinch the banal past popping 40% by marketplace close.

Headquartered successful Milan, Bending Spoons applied immoderate of the backstage equity playbook to a agelong bid of acquisitions — Meetup, Eventbrite, Vimeo, WeTransfer, and galore others. But it is not a flip-and-sell scheme: it wants to toggle shape these companies pinch tech and past clasp onto them.

“We want to spot ourselves arsenic an usability that takes beloved brands and makes them overmuch better,” its cofounder and main merchandise officer, Matteo Danieli, told TechCrunch.

The ‘how’ has generated contention complete the years, especially about layoffs. But the institution besides drove gross growth, moreover much truthful pinch AI. “In the past twelvemonth and a half, we’ve witnessed an unthinkable acceleration successful the gait astatine which we were capable to vessel caller features and create worth for users,” Danieli told TechCrunch. 

That whitethorn beryllium the correct point to opportunity erstwhile investors, nationalist and private, person overmuch much appetite for AI than for aging SaaS businesses. But Bending Spoons has a case: its F-1, the balanced of S-1 forms for overseas companies, includes a section called ‘AI earlier it was cool’ — a motion to its roots.

Before Bending Spoons, location was Evertale, “a merchandise that would automatically create a diary of your life by leveraging what you would telephone AI today, and that we called instrumentality learning then,” Danieli said. That startup failed, but it taught lessons to the cofounders and squad members who now lead Bending Spoons — Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, Luca Querella, and Danieli himself. 

“It sparked a reflection about the truth that you don’t ever find cleanable relationship betwixt really talented entrepreneurs are and the occurrence they have, particularly from zero to one. Luck is simply a very large constituent of that equation. So we developed an obsession for uncovering a strategy that would, arsenic overmuch arsenic possible, trim the domiciled that luck plays successful maturation and success,” Danieli said.

The institution besides mentioned this accuracy successful its F-1 pinch specified lines as, “Luck plays a large domiciled successful uncovering product-market fit,” and “luck is irrelevant erstwhile pursuing operational excellence.”

Those mantras show up successful areas for illustration pricing its products. “We effort to leverage the blase information tracking, analytics infrastructure and experimentation toolkit that we’ve developed.” 

According to Danieli, this sometimes leads the institution to merchandise much features for free to thrust connection of mouth. But it has besides led to value increases that sparked complaints from semipermanent subscribers. Despite this, however, he says customer retention has been “remarkably stable.”

One acquisition was peculiarly scrutinized. “Evernote whitethorn beryllium the first merchandise we acquired that was genuinely loved by users, truthful we had very strict judges.” That’s the 1 he’s about proud of — including its AI-heavy v11 update. He said the institution yet won complete users pinch its changes that were praised by galore subscribers, including Evernote cofounder Phil Libin.

Bending Spoons itself started getting much support complete the years. Valued astatine $11 billion successful a backstage equity information earlier its IPO, it had some VC firms and VIPs connected its headdress table, including large names from tech and entertainment. In its earlier years, however, VCs struggled to understand its approach. “We’ve sewage a batch of ‘you’re crazy’ reactions passim the years,” Danieli recalled. 

That’s besides captured by the company’s tagline, “Impossible. Maybe.”

Focusing connected talent was besides 1 of the lessons that Bending Spoons’ founders learned from their Evertale days, and hiring became a focus. The co-founder Ferrari “invested the champion portion of the first 2 aliases 3 years moving connected civilization and hiring processes. We judge we now excel astatine spotting talent, particularly erstwhile young and erstwhile they don’t person a awesome way grounds yet.”

The numbers look to agree. According to its SEC filing, “in portion helped by advancement successful AI, gross per full-time balanced Spooner accrued from $1.12 cardinal successful 2023 to $2.57 cardinal successful 2025, and was $0.97 cardinal successful Q1 2026.”

This besides explains why Bending Spoons took the different determination of bringing the full institution to New York to observe its listing. “It’s 1 much instrumentality for america to entree the liquidity that we request to substance our acquisitive strategy, but we besides thought that for 1 time it would beryllium the correct point to return it each successful and bask the infinitesimal pinch each our colleagues,” Danieli said. 

That’s conscionable 1 day, though. After that, Bending Spoons will spell backmost to buying companies — and return advantage of slashed SaaS valuations it has itself managed to escape, according to Danieli. “From a buyer’s position and arsenic a institution that grows done acquisitions, that’s really a awesome opportunity and infinitesimal to deploy capital.”