Sourcery

Inside Bending Spoons: Buying Airtable, AOL, Vimeo & Eventbrite

58 snips
Sep 14, 2026
Valentina Jerusalmi, AOL’s General Manager; Matteo Danieli, Bending Spoons’ Co-founder and VP of Product; and Francesco Patarnello, Co-founder and M&A chief, unpack the company’s acquisition machine. They discuss the failed Grindr deal, financing its journey from bank loans to IPO, founder-friendly takeovers, vesting-free ownership, radical leadership changes, AOL’s Yahoo carve-out, and the science of rebuilding products.
Ask episode
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
ANECDOTE

The Grindr Deal That Changed Bending Spoons

  • Bending Spoons pursued Grindr in 2019 despite limited experience financing a deal of that scale.
  • Although another bidder won, the process taught the team to raise debt, secure equity, and evaluate a transformative acquisition without derailing the company.
INSIGHT

How Bending Spoons Built Its Financing Engine

  • Bending Spoons built financing credibility incrementally by repaying small bank loans before pursuing US term loans.
  • Its public listing extended a decade-long process of educating investors about an unconventional acquisition-and-operations model.
ADVICE

How Bending Spoons Selects Acquisition Targets

  • Evaluate targets by asking whether your platform can unlock substantial value, not by restricting yourself to one industry.
  • Favor businesses with enough revenue scale to justify transformation costs and sufficiently predictable data to model outcomes.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Get the app