After $18B IPO, Bending Spoons founder says success comes from minimizing luck
After $18B IPO, Bending Spoons founder says success comes from minimizing luck
IPO 估值 180 亿美元后，Bending Spoons 创始人称成功源于将运气因素降至最低
AOL is public again — sort of. Its owner Bending Spoons, the 13-year-old Italian company that has been quietly acquiring beloved but ailing Internet brands for the past decade, went public on the Nasdaq today, opening at an over $18 billion valuation, with the stock then popping 40% by market close. AOL 又上市了——某种程度上是这样。其母公司 Bending Spoons 是一家拥有 13 年历史的意大利公司，过去十年里一直在悄悄收购那些备受喜爱但陷入困境的互联网品牌。该公司今日在纳斯达克上市，开盘估值超过 180 亿美元，收盘时股价大涨 40%。
Headquartered in Milan, Bending Spoons applied some of the private equity playbook to a long series of acquisitions — Meetup, Eventbrite, Vimeo, WeTransfer, and many others. But it is not a flip-and-sell scheme: it wants to transform these companies with tech and then hold onto them. “We want to place ourselves as an operator that takes beloved brands and makes them much better,” its cofounder and chief product officer, Matteo Danieli, told TechCrunch. Bending Spoons 总部位于米兰，它将私募股权的部分策略应用于一系列长期收购中，包括 Meetup、Eventbrite、Vimeo、WeTransfer 等。但这并非“转手倒卖”的套路：它希望利用技术改造这些公司并长期持有。其联合创始人兼首席产品官 Matteo Danieli 在接受 TechCrunch 采访时表示：“我们希望将自己定位为一家能够接手受人喜爱的品牌，并使其变得更好的运营商。”
The ‘how’ has generated controversy over the years, especially around layoffs. But the company also drove revenue growth, even more so with AI. “In the past year and a half, we’ve witnessed an incredible acceleration in the pace at which we were able to ship new features and create value for users,” Danieli told TechCrunch. 多年来，其运营方式引发了不少争议，尤其是在裁员方面。但该公司也推动了收入增长，在人工智能的加持下更是如此。Danieli 对 TechCrunch 表示：“在过去的一年半里，我们见证了发布新功能和为用户创造价值的速度有了惊人的提升。”
That may be the right thing to say when investors, public and private, have much more appetite for AI than for aging SaaS businesses. But Bending Spoons has a case: its F-1, the equivalent of S-1 forms for foreign companies, includes a chapter called ‘AI before it was cool’ — a nod to its roots. 当公开市场和私募市场的投资者对人工智能的兴趣远高于老牌 SaaS 业务时，这或许是正确的说辞。但 Bending Spoons 确实有底气：其 F-1 文件（外国公司相当于 S-1 的招股书）中包含一个名为“在 AI 流行之前”的章节，以此致敬其创业初衷。
Before Bending Spoons, there was Evertale, “a product that would automatically create a diary of your life by leveraging what you would call AI today, and that we called machine learning then,” Danieli said. That startup failed, but it taught lessons to the cofounders and team members who now lead Bending Spoons — Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, Luca Querella, and Danieli himself. 在 Bending Spoons 之前，还有 Evertale。Danieli 说：“那是一款利用今天所谓的 AI（当时我们称之为机器学习）自动为你创建生活日记的产品。”那家初创公司虽然失败了，但它为如今领导 Bending Spoons 的联合创始人及团队成员——Luca Ferrari、Francesco Patarnello、Luca Querella 以及 Danieli 本人——上了重要的一课。
“It sparked a reflection around the fact that you don’t always find perfect correlation between how talented entrepreneurs are and the success they have, especially from zero to one. Luck is a very big component of that equation. So we developed an obsession for finding a strategy that would, as much as possible, reduce the role that luck plays in growth and success,” Danieli said. “这引发了我们的反思：企业家的才华与他们取得的成功之间并不总是存在完美的正相关，尤其是在从 0 到 1 的阶段。运气是这个等式中非常重要的一部分。因此，我们痴迷于寻找一种策略，尽可能减少运气在增长和成功中所扮演的角色，”Danieli 说道。
The company also mentioned this philosophy in its F-1 with such lines as, “Luck plays a big role in finding product-market fit,” and “luck is irrelevant when pursuing operational excellence.” Those mantras show up in areas like pricing its products. “We try to leverage the sophisticated data tracking, analytics infrastructure and experimentation toolkit that we’ve developed.” 该公司还在其 F-1 文件中提到了这一理念，例如“运气在寻找产品与市场契合度方面起着重要作用”以及“在追求卓越运营时，运气无关紧要”。这些准则体现在产品定价等领域。“我们尝试利用我们开发的复杂数据追踪、分析基础设施和实验工具包。”
According to Danieli, this sometimes leads the company to release more features for free to drive word of mouth. But it has also led to price increases that sparked complaints from long-term subscribers. Despite this, however, he says customer retention has been “remarkably stable.” 据 Danieli 称，这有时会促使公司免费发布更多功能以推动口碑传播。但也曾导致价格上涨，引发了长期订阅用户的抱怨。尽管如此，他表示客户留存率一直“非常稳定”。
One acquisition was particularly scrutinized. “Evernote may be the first product we acquired that was genuinely loved by users, so we had very strict judges.” That’s the one he’s most proud of — including its AI-heavy v11 update. He said the company eventually won over users with its changes that were praised by many subscribers, including Evernote cofounder Phil Libin. 其中一项收购受到了特别关注。“Evernote 可能是我们收购的第一个真正被用户喜爱的产品，所以我们面临着非常严苛的评判。”这是他最引以为傲的项目——包括其以 AI 为核心的 v11 更新。他说，公司最终凭借这些改进赢得了用户，并得到了包括 Evernote 联合创始人 Phil Libin 在内的许多订阅用户的称赞。
Bending Spoons itself started getting more support over the years. Valued at $11 billion in a private equity round before its IPO, it had both VC firms and VIPs on its cap table, including big names from tech and entertainment. In its earlier years, however, VCs struggled to understand its approach. “We’ve got a lot of ‘you’re crazy’ reactions throughout the years,” Danieli recalled. That’s also captured by the company’s tagline, “Impossible. Maybe.” 多年来，Bending Spoons 本身也获得了越来越多的支持。在 IPO 前的一轮私募股权融资中，其估值达到 110 亿美元，其资本结构中既有风投机构也有贵宾投资者，包括来自科技和娱乐界的大腕。然而，在早期，风投们很难理解其经营方式。Danieli 回忆道：“多年来，我们收到了很多‘你们疯了’的评价。”这也体现在公司的标语中：“不可能？也许吧。”
Focusing on talent was also one of the lessons that Bending Spoons’ founders learned from their Evertale days, and hiring became a focus. The co-founder Ferrari “invested the best part of the first two or three years working on culture and hiring processes. We believe we now excel at spotting talent, especially when young and when they don’t have a great track record yet.” 专注于人才也是 Bending Spoons 创始人从 Evertale 时期学到的经验之一，招聘因此成为了重点。联合创始人 Ferrari “在最初的两三年里，投入了大部分精力来打造企业文化和招聘流程。我们相信，我们现在非常擅长发掘人才，尤其是那些年轻且尚未有辉煌履历的人才。”
The numbers seem to agree. According to its SEC filing, “in part helped by progress in AI, revenue per full-time equivalent Spooner increased from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, and was $0.97 million in Q1 2026.” 数据似乎印证了这一点。根据其向美国证券交易委员会（SEC）提交的文件，“在 AI 进步的推动下，每位全职员工（Spooner）创造的收入从 2023 年的 112 万美元增加到 2025 年的 257 万美元，2026 年第一季度为 97 万美元。”
This also explains why Bending Spoons took the unusual decision of bringing the whole company to New York to celebrate its listing. “It’s one more tool for us to access the liquidity that we need to fuel our acquisitive strategy, but we also thought that for one day it would be the right thing to take it all in and enjoy the moment with all our colleagues,” Danieli said. 这也解释了为什么 Bending Spoons 做出了一个不同寻常的决定：将全公司员工带到纽约庆祝上市。“这是我们获取流动性以推动收购战略的又一工具，但我们也认为，花一天时间让大家聚在一起，与所有同事共同享受这一时刻是正确的做法，”Danieli 说。
That’s just one day, though. After that, Bending Spoons will go back to buying companies — and take advantage of slashed SaaS valuations it has itself managed to escape, according to Danieli. “From a buyer’s perspective and as a company that grows through acquisitions, that’s actually a great opportunity and moment to deploy capital.” 不过，这只是一天。此后，Bending Spoons 将回归收购公司的老路——并利用 SaaS 估值大幅缩水的机会，而它自己却成功避开了这种估值下滑，Danieli 说道。“从买方的角度来看，作为一家通过收购实现增长的公司，这实际上是部署资本的绝佳机会和时刻。”