Bending Spoons, founded by Luca Ferrari, owns about 100 products including Remini, Evernote and Splice, and says it has around 150m monthly active users.
Ferrari says product-market fit is mostly luck, so Bending Spoons leaves product discovery to the market and buys established businesses instead.
Bending Spoons says it has been the highest bidder on every deal it has made an offer for, and now targets acquisitions priced between $50m and $1.5bn.
Bending Spoons buys proven apps and runs them better
Bending Spoons has reached a valuation above $2.5bn by buying established apps instead of inventing them. Ferrari holds that product-market fit is largely luck, while operating a digital product well is talent and effort, so the company buys what already has users and runs it better. A large portfolio means no single product has to win.
Takeaways
Buy product-market fit rather than search for it. Ferrari argues fit is mostly luck, while running a digital business well is mostly talent and hard work. So Bending Spoons leaves discovery to the market, buys established products and operates them hands-on, without filtering mainly by fit intensity.
A portfolio of about 100 products spreads the risk. The company has around 150m monthly users and revenue above $600m. Remini and Evernote each bring about 20% of revenue, Splice 12% to 14%. No single product is essential to its vision, unlike single-product companies.
Acquisition targets now run up to $1.5bn. Hands-on operations take as much work for small businesses, so targets now cost $50m to $1.5bn. It looked at over 3,000 companies last year and says it has been the highest bidder on every offer it made.
Funding stayed modest and valuation moderate by choice. Little equity came in until about $50m in summer 2023, then just over $150m in early 2024 at a valuation just above $2.5bn. A moderate valuation lets it pick investors and secure governance terms. Bank debt normally stays up to about three times.
Good returns do not require category dominance. Against Notion and Apple's notes, Evernote can earn good returns without the most market share. Ferrari would still burn hundreds of millions to make it the most used app if an efficient path existed.
AI pushes single-product companies toward selling. Ferrari argues single-product companies are likelier to sell when AI threatens them, and AI makes capable people more capable. Opportunities for acquirers like Bending Spoons will shrink over time without disappearing.
Hiring is slow and Italy shapes the company. Selection takes over five hours per candidate and draws mostly fresh graduates. Ferrari says Italy has talent but few opportunities for the ambitious. He says Europe trails the US on market size, culture, regulation and a suspicion of success.
How the company got here
2010: Ferrari co-founds Evertale, an AI diary startup. It raises about 1m euros, finds no users and is liquidated.
2013: Bending Spoons is founded with less than $40,000 left over, starting in Copenhagen before moving to Italy.
2014: Its first acquisition, an iPhone keyboard app, costs about $10,000.
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2016 or 2017: Revenue reaches around $10m, up from a few tens of thousands of dollars in 2013.
2018: It buys the video editor Splice from GoPro for millions of dollars.