Vimeo has not had major growth in recent years, but it was making progress, however slowly. Just nowhere near the 10x expectations out there. Nobody was going to lose anything.
This sounds more like a reverse mortgage line of business, to me. Bending Spoons is betting they can eek enough revenue out of Vimeo to pay the interest on the $1.4B loan by cutting the $400M expense run rate.
The actual loan principal will be paid out (if it ever does) of the money they expect to bring in when they inevitably go to an IPO.
And at that point you have speculators carrying risk, bankers getting rich off interest, leadership raking in millions, and a once reasonably healthy business is jeopardized (subject to the performance of other Bending Spoons properties, risky management, etc). All in the name of growth that may or may not be achievable.