IAC sold 17 apps to Bending Spoons. $100M deal, all 330 employees fired
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I wonder if any of these illustrious backers are aware of the true business model of Bending Spoons, which can only be described as scammy:
1. Buy apps that have loyal users.
2. Fire all or most of the employees.
3. Update the apps with the most possibly intrusive adware, to milk user data for cash, earning a nice return.
Most users will thoughtlessly tap "OK" when asked to agree to the barrage of new permissions requested by the updated apps.
The company does other things too, but this is its main business.
So, instead of the people who know my work (from FOSS projects) it was a random gaggle of Stanford, etc people. I don't have a degree at all so to say I was intimidated and miserable and feeling very judged is an understatement.
Even my recruiter there had gone to Stanford and mentioned that her sister went to some other school and looks down at her lowly Stanford. wild place.
I remember one of my Uber drivers was getting their PHD in Machine Learning/AI.
They must have a huge funnel from Stanford. I'm not sure what other good schools are over there.
I can't help but find this funny
> Competitive salary and stock options. Our compensation packages are designed to attract and retain the best talent in the industry. Individuals just starting their career joining on a full-time contract are offered a salary of €63,965 along with a €1,200 welfare bonus. If you already have a few years of relevant work experience, you can expect to earn between €105,737 and €143,330, depending on your expertise
I think this is every app's business model now.
I bet their portfolio managers did that, and then attached their names to the deal to lend it an air of credibility, probably negotiating some sweet bonuses and spiffs for themselves in the process, and now this reads like they're all a POS, which, while that may be true for other reasons, hides the likely fact that the real POS's here are the stockbrokers.
If I buy shares in Phillip Morris, then I better be ok with people smoking cigarettes and everything that entails.
Especially if I’m publicly attaching my name with “prepend supports Phillip Morris.”
There’s gradations of being a dick, but approving your portfolio managers plan to buy shady companies is still a dick move. So is not being aware of what your portfolio manager buys.
I'm not absolving them of their participation in bendingspoons and other such companies, I'm saying to not forget that it's the soulless portfolio managers that are the minds that move the body of evil.
I do blame them for their participation, but not as much as the people offering them the opportunity to profit from the exploitation of others.
It's like the Bernie Madoff "victims". A bunch of them were in on it to some degree so they could make a quick buck. I have no more sympathy for them than they do for me.
But the majority of the people who both profited and lost from Madoff were people who were letting their 401k retirement plans be managed by a company which were ultimately being used to fund the scheme.
Not a one of them likely knew that this was how their money was being used and they are all actually victims.
The real jerks are the stockbroker portfolio managers. If they didn't offer to enable rich-jerk douchery for fun and profit, it wouldn't be a thing they were all doing.
Only soulless people hire soulless portfolio managers.
A portfolio manager, like a lawyer or attorney, is really specific and takes a lot of selection. People choose intentionally.
Madoff didn’t work with 401ks. No one had their 401k funds with Madoff. It was all rich people using private hedge funds. Also, Madoff was a fraud, not an asshole.
It’s very different to harm people with adware infected, terrible apps than to run a Ponzi scheme. Madoff deceived his investors. Bendingspoons says exactly what they’re going to do and then does it. They aren’t deceiving anyone.
The jerk stockbrokers are all demand side. If people weren’t jerks they wouldn’t hire jerk stockbrokers. It’s a thing because people want it.
I can see how owning stock is a bet on the future success of a company, but not an endorsement. Maybe I don't understand stocks.
I think you do endorse the company whose shares you hold, in particular if it’s public knowledge.
This is the part I don't understand. You generally buy stock from other stock holders. The company doesn't get the proceeds.
No, no, and no.
Will they stop mining if no-one holds their public shares? Lol, no, lots of privately held mining companies exist who tend to perform even less ethically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hancock_Prospecting#Attitudes_...
So, if they're going to dig the stuff up to sell to China anyway, I'm happy earning some money from it. I don't endorse their behaviour, but I do endorse the 10 - 15% return I've been getting on something they're doing already.
Your vote may be paltry, but it’s still your vote. Use it wisely. It matters.
Generating the energy to fire a neuron giving the dude sympathy is energy wasted.
To be fair, Taika Waititi is known to be a bit of a very self-confident dickhead, which is why he achieved the success he did, you need that kind of unflappable-almost-delusional self-belief to make it in film, especially when you're starting from a small isolated island nation and trying to break into Hollywood.
But yeah, in this case, a financial advisor spotted a great opportunity.
They're doing exactly as you are describing.
How is the new owner of Evernote using my data?
I'm not sure what other term I could/should have used ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Instead, their messaging strongly implied that, while it was still being tested, this would be mandatory, destroying community trust. An absolutely flubbed rollout.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/15/20893343/meetup-users-fu...
https://wptavern.com/meetup-com-introduces-rsvp-fees-for-mem...
Not saying it’s not a good app, but your selling your book.
I'm not sure what your point is. Someone requested an alternative, an alternative was proffered and the personal interest disclosed.
This implies that this app is the established norm in the Netherlands, which it isn't (but the OP would like it to be).
It's great that people can post alternatives, but personal interests aren't what I took umbrage with.
>> In the Netherlands we use Erbij, (https://erbij.app), which is now going international.
This implies that there is nationwide traction for the app which there isn't. It has 300 reviews on the app store. That's called astroturfing (or, lying).
We use datumprikker.nl, Facebook, WhatsApp and sometimes Signal or Meetup.com.
https://github.com/JonLatane/jonline https://jonline.io https://bullcity.social https://oakcity.social
When I lived in SF, I used Meetup to start + run OpenLate, a tech meetup with a few thousand members. Not having access to member email addresses was the worst part of Meetup, and it's probably the main reason the site still has users. (Data portability is a big focus of Booklet).
He doesn't have the discoverability of Meetup, of course, but handles the RSVPs and organizing. Pricing is on the website.
I’m not aware of anything else out that works like that.
It's almost more surprising that Bending Spoons thinks they can squeeze out any money out of Meetup.
Specifically, “Endorsement, trademarks, and agency logos You cannot use government materials in a way that implies endorsement by a government agency, official, or employee. For example, using a photo in your advertisement of a government official wearing or using your product is not permitted. You also cannot use federal government trademarks or federal government agency logos without permission. For example, in general, you cannot use an agency logo or trademark on your social media page to suggest endorsement or sponsorship by the agency.”
NOAA does have a licensing program, but I somehow doubt that this app was part of that program. Assuming that’s true, then this is likely a case of poor enforcement.
Seems crazy that, say, an outdoor clothes retailer couldn't share a photo of a group trek where the park ranger was wearing its gear. Or that SpaceX couldn't publish a photo of NASA astronauts flying in its spacecraft - even with NASA's permission.
SpaceX can use the photos as such for factual reporting, which usually ends up being marketing for them indirectly. That is allowed. If SpaceX were to market themselves actively as having government ties, that would not be allowed.
In a similar vein, I notice most startups using government logos in their marketing. That is also not allowed - even if the agency is using your software. You are not allowed to display those logos, except for "factual marketing" - say, a white paper on the government agency using your software. Even mentioning something on the lines of "DOD improved its purchasing efficiency by 10x (heh!)" is forbidden explicitly.
I'm not sure about most of the agencies themselves, but the FDA is very strict about enforcing this rule and has often fined Big Pharma for this infraction many times.
> You cannot use government materials in a way that implies endorsement by a government agency, official, or employee. For example, using a photo in your advertisement of a government official wearing or using your product is not permitted.
No exemption made for photos where the government official really did use your cowboy hat or starship! No exception for situations where the government really did endorse you as a service provider of rugged outdoor clothing, or manned space missions.
After all, if the situation was just "you aren't allowed to fraudulently claim the government used or endorsed your product, when they did no such thing" it would barely need mentioning.
Anyway, if this is remotely relevant, get a lawyer and ask the agency in question since they’ll likely have some nuances.
https://shaungallagher.pressbin.com/blog/nasa-vsvn.html
I was baffled, because I assumed that any government-created content was public domain by default. But agency marks are a big exception to that.
This post goes into detail about the law about government agencies' logos and "fair use" arguments.
But reading the comments here, I get another impression of the company.
So yes, if you are not part of the cabal, I would expect your edits to be reverted...at some point in time. I have very little faith in the system.
If you are part of the cabal, how long did it take to learn the handshake? /s
I have about a thousand edits now. Some of them were reverted, but most weren't. I think the reason people perceive there to be a "cabal" is that they edit articles that are either very contentious to begin with (national identity, gender, politics) or are high traffic and most of the content has already been discussed at length.
Even in those areas, I think there is not a cabal, just lots of angry individual people who oftentimes end up being banned if they get angry enough.
But I don't generally edit in high traffic areas generally because I don't like long litigations on talk pages. The last time I saw the "cabal" in effect on Wikipedia was when I tried to rephrase some things on a page related to a controversial topic. There were two users working together to load the page with some very biased terms. I tried to remove them but was swiftly reverted. I think that's what you mean when you say the cabal.
I gave up editing that article because a long fight didn't interest me. Since then, both of the users trying to guard that article against edits have since been banned from editing in the area that article was in. The "cabal" as you see it is usually just a small number of very interested editors with a strong opinion. If their opinions are too strong, then they're usually in violation of Wikipedia policy and they get cleaned out eventually. I don't like to fight with those people though.
My favourite thing to do on Wikipedia is clean up around the edges.
If you follow this link, you'll be taken to a random article which is tagged as being written in a promotional tone. There are around 25,000 articles like this on Wikipedia at the moment.
https://randomincategory.toolforge.org/All_articles_with_a_p...
These articles could use attention from an average, unbiased person to help tidy them up and read more neutrally. I see fixing Wikipedia articles like a kind of gardening. There is a lot to do in areas which are not trafficked so highly.
I hope you would consider contributing one day.
"Evernote was acquired and everyone was laid off."
"Immuni was awarded but less than 1% used it."
"Acquired some company and fired its entire team."
Literally sounds like some tech scavenger.
I was not planning to do that, and I don't wish that they force me to do that.
Isn't that because there's not much further the Evernote app can fall?
Also, the professional plan has GPS tagged notes, which I tend to like. Evernote doesn't have much alternatives for what I use it for. Notion doesn't work offline, Obsidian is too information dense and not easy to collaborate with. I use Obsidian + publish for my digital garden, but it doesn't work well for other things I use Evernote for.
I never had the data loss people mentioned about, either.
Lastly, I don't care about AI stuff in either Evernote or Notion. I neither trust the tech, nor I consent to train these "things" with my data.
I think the downhill slide has begun - they recently changed the terms / capabilities on their free version to make it even more limited and, presumably, to get more people to upgrade.
It's good to know this because it gives me the push I needed to finally move off my very limited use of the app.
Apples free notes app replaced it and other than being SLIGHTLY annoying that I have to log into the web app on windows machines... I dont miss evernote at all.
though
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/990813/o...
Looks like a webapp wrapper. It is snappy in my use though on a 2010 i7 MBA running Ubuntu 2022.
Is this just an aggressive PE firm or what?
I guess this is what the exact opposite of acqui-hire looks like. Acquire only for the app's customers, and their currently ongoing subscriptions, and nothing else.
Does anyone know if they maintain these apps well over time, or they just rot?
That would seem like a useful app.
Frankly Apple and Alphabet should offer such a service but I don't have much confidence that they will.
Unfortunately defining what that means becomes rather tricky once you consider that the company owning the app can change ownership. That ownership can be shared and go through arbitrarily many indirections, and if it's a publicly traded company, some of its shares change ownership all the time.
Indie app A, owned by a developer, Joe. Company B buys A outright, including employing Joe. They keep the brand around for name recognition.
How does the app store know this? None of this has to be public info if A & B aren't public. The company registration hasn't changed. At best, maybe the bank account number changed.
I realize this sounds tongue in cheek but a PE firm trying to get around ownership disclosure requirements can do something just as easily, both with public and private companies.
For private, large companies, its a simply attestation. You could open source monitoring for changes - if the company makes an PR announcement of any kind , or if a member of the public reports submits proof of change of control exercise in their contract, ask the company to update their attestation and compare.
They don't provide it ? They get a nice little red banner alerting users of shadiness going on.
There is no simple rule that can be applied at scale. Determining beneficial ownership requires a case-by-case review of not just the chain of legal ownership, but management, contracts, incentives, etc.
Any fixed rules can be gamed. For example, a company could license out its name as a "franchise" who is legally independent but whose franchise contract has so many arms of control that they de facto function as a single company. Another example is that a majority donor of a nonprofit controls the nonprofit even if they have no board seats or de jure power to appoint or fire board members.
They buy apps/products that mature and don’t need a lot of work, fire all the workers and hire a skeleton crew to manage them in a cheaper labor market.
They also harvest data from the apps and resell it.
I had a chuckle at that unlikely turn of phrase.
Digital burial business is so apt that I’m stealing it, thanks
I guess most organizational addicts have moved to Notion at this time
Even though I think that the people that apply there have quite low moral/ethical ones.
Out of curiosity, why? It doesn’t seem like these apps are either critical nor need those developers anymore.
You're joining a team of jackals trying to squeeze any money out of users that depend/love a specific product while putting these applications on minimal support.
I just think that at the end of the day it's nicer if you can think you contributed to the world, or even just one user making his life any better, that company just has none of it, it's mission is just plain the opposite.
Just how do you move from there? I helped Bending Spoons squeezing any money left in application X by butchering all non essential features and rising the price 3 times?
I’m looking at the apps in the article and see a private app impersonating NOAA, one to “create stylish, impactful content for social media,” and a series of cheap knock-offs of best-in-class apps. They deserve to exist and make money, and there is no shame in working on them. But it’s hard to argue anyone was responding to a higher calling.
Developers are expensive. It’s hard to argue for geographic premiums on top of that, or maintaining the staff required in a build-up during maintenance or run-down, when WFH has challenged the first and basic economic reality (driven home by positive real interest rates) the latter.
cringe
You have to really try to put in 40 hours of work a week and create negative value but by god they seem like they're best in class.
What's wrong with rightsizing workforce to be commensurate with work?
They wrote "mature and don’t need a lot of work". Why would anyone put lots of people on a product that is mature and doesn't need a lot of work?
> This usually means a degraded customer experience.
Why? If the product is mature, works well, then surely you need fewer people to keep it in good shape and support customers?
I’m pointing out that intent makes a difference. If Bending Spoons plans to put the apps on life support and squeeze out revenue - a fair assumption - then user experience will suffer.
Nobody is suggesting anyone put 'lots of people' on a mature product. However, there are always things that need to be done.
Apps need to be updated for new devices, OS/library/security updates, and general bug reports to name a few. That's just on the app side, the same is true for any build pipelines/hosting infrastructure.
These apps don't run themselves regardless of how mature they are.
You're right in that fewer people are needed and I'm all for optimizing but what I feel like you're missing is that it's quite easy to over-optimize for cost at the expense of users.
I have known about psychics claiming to bend spoons seemingly forever
But yeah I was using the word fucking as a metaphor, like in common english it's not only used to describe physical penetrative act but it's common to use it to describe unpleasant situations, so no need to come to teach anything, so worth pointing out if your braincells are playing peekaboo instead of talking to each other
"Robbing the Inattentive"
"Abusing the Gullible"
"Parasitic Operations"
"Scruples Be Damned"
"Helping the World Burn"
Those I have the feeling that redirect the guilt of being fired to the people affected, while their only guilt was working for a company, it can happen to anyone, you work for someone, this gets bought secretly and then you're out of job, how are you gullible or inattentive then?
With that I thought they could go stuff themselves and went to unsubscribe, but they offered a drastic discount if I didn't. So they managed to keep me for another year. :/
But if they don't get their Python SDK in order soon I might drop them anyway.
LOL ok I'm sure they are going to escalate this to the top. For you, and maybe one other person. :)
Robokiller for example is a paid service with a business division. You're talking developers, sales teams, support, and everything else that goes with it.
Every time a data harvester moves operations to Europe for cheaper labor, it seems like a game of Russian roulette. When will the day come that the EU drives Bending Spoons out of existence?
The US should adopt intent nationalistic laws against international businesses collecting American’s data. Not because of National Security (but that’s what the politicians can say) but simply because Americans are the most valuable markets and it’ll drive many of these companies out of business, and generally disrupt the market.
Individual countries in the EU can make things more bureaucratic than they need to be for smaller businesses but that has little to do with the EU.
There’s a wide range of options here:
- zero person team, and hope to recover cost from buying from existing subscribers and new buyers/subscribers over time before the app dies.
- replace them with marketeers, and hope to get enough more new buyers/subscribers before the app dies.
- smaller team, making it easier to break-even.
- cheaper developers, making it easier to break-even.
A new development team might just be a skeleton team to keep the app running across OS upgrades, or it might be a much larger team, or anything in-between.
In this case I do wonder how much those apps are actually worth, IAC is apparently happy to take $100M for them, which would indicate that in their current form they aren't going to make $6M each in the short term.
Both companies seem rather strange, they don't appear to have any actual coherent business plan.