We acquire and improve iconic products.
Milan, Italy
Joined March 2011
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“We qualified for the Olympics. Now we’re going for gold."
Why listing on Nasdaq was the starting gun, not the finish line. How lean teams get more done. And who's really replying to Luca's emails...
Luca, Matteo, and Rebecca get into this and more.
Watch the video: bndspn.com/videocast_part2
Bending Spoons retweeted
Bending Spoons got 800,000 job applications last year. They hired fewer than 300.
@luke10ferrari, CEO, has built one of the most unusual companies I've studied.
@bendingspoons buys iconic companies (@evernote, @WeTransfer, @Vimeo, @AOL), rebuilds them from the ground up, and never sells them. Often with a 25-year-old in charge.
10 things I took away from my conversation with Luca:
1/ A Harvard or Stanford degree predicts performance a lot less than you'd think. Entitlement is usually what cancels the edge.
2/ People should fluidly move between IC and lead. Org charts should be tools, not religions.
3/ Slope > experience. Extreme ownership + raw smarts beats “I’ve seen this movie” experience almost every time. 25 years olds > 45 year olds more often than people admit.
4/ Throw high-talent people into the deep end. Formal training is 10% of it. The other 90% is giving them extreme responsibility and surrounding them with other high caliber people to emulate.
5/ Interviews are the worst predictor in the hiring process, so let's stop pretending. Unless you script every question and grade the answers separately
6/ Default to “no” on complexity. The person who wants to add anything carries the full burden of proof.
7/ Never lie. Never omit something important. Even when it costs you. Be the kind of person you can trust is telling you things as they are.
8/ Teenage political activism that stops in your early 20s is a weirdly strong predictor of agency.
9/ Most serial acquirers keep companies semi-independent. Bending Spoons turns them into products on one operating system.
10/ Org charts should be tools, not religions. People should fluidly move between IC and lead.
New episode of Long Strange Trip. Full episode in the comments.
0:00 – Introduction
1:15 – How Bending Spoons works: buy, rebuild, hold forever, and why operating beats picking
8:00 – Building a talent flywheel from nothing: calling hundreds of graduates
13:34 – Hiring signals: why Harvard barely matters and teenage activists do
17:56 – HubSpot's sales role-play and the reference question that gets the truth
21:33 – Strategy beats org charts: management by chaos vs. eight direct reports
25:14 – Good leader, bad manager? Head in the clouds, feet in the trenches
30:06 – Slope over experience: why 25-year-olds run the companies he buys
40:29 – Radical candor, one improvement a year, and no executive team
50:23 – "Approximately mediocre": first principles and relentless simplification
55:42 – Why Milan: building a world-beating company outside Silicon Valley
59:47 – Never lie, never omit: integrity, plus Brian's takeaways
Bending Spoons retweeted
BREAKING: Bending Spoons 🥄 is Eating Silicon Valley
FULL INTERVIEW
CEO Luca Ferrari (@luke10ferrari)
$BSP is quickly becoming tech’s buyer of choice. They look at 100s of companies a year & buy 5-10.
Airtable, AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Evernote, WeTransfer, Tractive, & now Miro under agreement.
Why? @bendingspoons spent a decade building 50+ proprietary tools in-house. Every company they acquire gets rebuilt on top of them.. & it's working.
Spoon Stats:
› 500M+ monthly active users
› 9M+ paying customers
› ~$100M/year in est. savings from internal technology
› 800K job applications (~286 hires in 2025)
› 50+ acquisitions
› 50+ proprietary internal tools
› 3,000+ experiments last year
› 95% of code written by AI
› 2–3X more productive, according to Luca
Part II of our Bending Spoons series, from Milan HQ
Check out Part I: HQ Tour with Luca + Sit down interviews w/ Co-Founders Francesco & Matteo, + GM of AOL Valentina
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Luca Ferrari, Co-Founder & CEO, Bending Spoons
(00:45) The deal that broke the Internet
(03:41) Why Silicon Valley overspends on Hype
(07:35) Half a billion monthly active users
(16:17) What makes a company worth buying
(20:07) Inside the platform powering every product
(32:16) Debunking the Private Equity comparison
(38:23) $4 Million in revenue, per employee
(43:44) The secret to zero churn
(47:40) The one value that defines Bending Spoons
(51:52) The AI tool every Spooner uses
(57:58) Going Independent from the AI labs
(59:02) Have we actually reached AGI?
(1:08:05) The AI question nobody's asking
(1:12:54) Luca's next big bet
Bending Spoons retweeted
My conversation with Luca Ferrari, co-founder of Bending Spoons.
0:00 Fanatical founders building enduring companies
1:23 Luca on building the best company there ever was
4:22 The origins of Bending Spoons
5:47 Talent and why experience is overrated
15:05 Turning hiring into a science
23:30 Why Bending Spoons doesn't use bonuses
29:26 Why everyone in the company has the same job
42:41 On finding great potential and saturating their capacity
49:50 Insisting on a culture of extreme ownership
59:28 Luca's principle of relentless simplification
1:05:15 Why Bending Spoons doesn't use job titles
1:10:27 The proprietary operating system behind Bending Spoons
1:17:07 Why Bending Spoons isn't private equity
1:19:32 How Bending Spoons acquired & transformed Evernote
1:28:01 How Bending Spoons uses AI
1:40:42 How Bending Spoons thinks about capital allocation
1:43:50 Why procrastination without laziness is good
1:46:46 Operational excellence is not optional
1:49:07 How Bending Spoons negotiates acquisitions
1:54:47 Logic over numbers
Includes paid partnerships.
“Everyone at Bending Spoons has the same job.”
@davidsenra talks with our co-founder @luke10ferrari about finding talent, leveraging AI, negotiating acquisitions… and why we don’t use job titles.
Check out the episode: bndspn.com/david-senra.
Bending Spoons retweeted
BREAKING: Inside Bending Spoons $BSP
Milan, Italy
@bendingspoons has completed 50+ acquisitions & never sold a single one
Buying up some of tech's most recognizable companies, including AOL, Airtable, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Evernote, WeTransfer, Tractive & Brightcove, with Miro now under agreement.
I went to Italy to sit down w/ 4 leaders behind one of tech’s most aggressive acquisition machines:
› Luca Ferrari (@luke10ferrari), Co-Founder & CEO
› Francesco Patarnello (@frapatarnello), Co-Founder & Head of M&A
› Matteo Danieli, Co-Founder & VP Product
› Valentina Jerusalmi, GM of AOL
The thesis: acquire great products, centralize the capabilities underneath them, & unlock value at a scale that would be difficult for each company to build independently.
We cover:
› 1,000 potential acquisition targets & 5–10 deals per year
› How Bending Spoons’ centralized platform creates value across acquisitions
› “Startup mode,” talent density & cutting headcount after acquisitions
› Why even founder roles & the CEO job are up for grabs
› Rebuilding AOL & what happens after Bending Spoons takes over
Head of M&A Francesco Patarnello on what they look for:
“We want to see our platform be able to unlock a lot of value if applied to that business. That can mean different things. Sometimes it's ability to attract talent, process data & get insights, [or] attract new users.”
Stats:
› 50+ acquisitions completed, & never sold a material business
› 500M+ monthly active users, 9M+ paying customers
› $2.64B of enterprise value across Airtable & Miro in 5 weeks
› $1.5B for AOL, $1.38B for Vimeo, $500M for Eventbrite
› Under 1% voluntary churn, with equity that carries no vesting
This is Part I of a II-Part Series
Full Sit-down Interview w/ CEO Luca Ferrari coming next..
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
(00:00) Bending Spoons Co-Founders Luca Ferrari, Francesco, Matteo & GM of AOL Valentina
(01:11) The two traits that matter most
(03:16) The Biggest lesson from every acquisition (Airtable, AOL, Miro...)
(05:37) Why the CEO didn't ring the Nasdaq bell
(07:37) The Acquisition that got away
(15:21) What makes a company worth buying
(18:27) Why Founders choose Bending Spoons
(21:30) Why Employees can cash out early
(28:44) Choosing to step aside as CPO
(40:10) What "Startup mode" actually means
(49:31) Why most product ideas fail
(51:25) The emotional story behind the IPO speech
(57:39) Betting on Bending Spoons early on
(1:01:00) The Mindset behind the rapid growth
(1:05:22) What actually happens during an acquisition
(1:09:44) Why they never ship without testing
(1:16:17) What's coming next for AOL
Bending Spoons retweeted
I love this idea from Bending Spoons founder Luca Ferrari:
Find someone young and talented and “saturate their capacity.”
“Everybody at the company should have way more on their plate than feels even remotely comfortable.”
“Let's say you have 10 possible tasks, each with a certain ROI attached. If I add an 11th, assuming you select well, it's impossible that adding an 11th task will lower the ROI of what you choose to do because you still have the other 10.”
“If this is a lower ROI than the others, you're going to do the others. But it's possible that it happens to be the highest ROI of all, and so you end up doing something more valuable.”
“The more work you give people, the better the opportunity for them to create value.”
“When you give people a lot more work than feels comfortable, you're really forcing them to come to terms with the immensity of the possible.”
My conversation with Luca Ferrari, co-founder of Bending Spoons.
0:00 Fanatical founders building enduring companies
1:23 Luca on building the best company there ever was
4:22 The origins of Bending Spoons
5:47 Talent and why experience is overrated
15:05 Turning hiring into a science
23:30 Why Bending Spoons doesn't use bonuses
29:26 Why everyone in the company has the same job
42:41 On finding great potential and saturating their capacity
49:50 Insisting on a culture of extreme ownership
59:28 Luca's principle of relentless simplification
1:05:15 Why Bending Spoons doesn't use job titles
1:10:27 The proprietary operating system behind Bending Spoons
1:17:07 Why Bending Spoons isn't private equity
1:19:32 How Bending Spoons acquired & transformed Evernote
1:28:01 How Bending Spoons uses AI
1:40:42 How Bending Spoons thinks about capital allocation
1:43:50 Why procrastination without laziness is good
1:46:46 Operational excellence is not optional
1:49:07 How Bending Spoons negotiates acquisitions
1:54:47 Logic over numbers
Includes paid partnerships.
Hot off the press!
Yesterday, we released our Q2 earnings. Here are the headlines:
• Revenue was $704 million, up 126% from Q2 2025.
• Adjusted Operating Income was $381 million, up 150% from Q2 2025.
• We’re using AI. A lot.
… and (Q3 spoilers!) our July IPO raised $1.1 billion.
Link to the full release: bndspn.com/Q2-2026.
A sneak peek at one of our oldest traditions. 👀
Every six months, we get together in Milan to present recent challenges, achievements, and product improvements.
Watch the video for a snippet of State of the Spoon: December 2025 edition. 👇
So we’re acquiring a business.
What now?
Integrating it into our platform. Devising a long-term strategy. Developing new features. Optimizing user experience and monetization.
@luke10ferrari, @fedesimio, and communications lead Rebecca spill the beans on all this and more. 👇
Looking forward to it. 🚀
Happy Monday. On today’s show:
– @eglyman (Ramp)
– @Reedjd (Night Media)
– @Srasgon (Bernstein)
– @luke10ferrari (Bending Spoons)
– @healeycypher (BoomPop)
– John Tenet (CHAOS)
See you on the stream.
Here’s a challenge the Evernote team can’t solve alone…
Should we optimize for consistency or for logic?
When a user moves a note to a different notebook, it’s “updated” even though the content hasn’t changed. Not a huge issue, but it’s irritating. Because the newest, most relevant notes get buried below much older ones.
The solution seems obvious: change the logic.
But it’s not that simple. This is how Evernote has functioned for years, and it’s what users know. So the team has a hard call to make. Optimize for consistency or for logic?
How would you tackle the problem?
STEM students and recent grads in Milan, this one’s for you! 📣
Applications are open for our next Follow the White Rabbit Aperitivo. Join us on September 12 for an evening of tech chats, cibo, and cin-cins.
Apply now: bndspn.com/followthewhiterab… 🔗
Exceptional teammates. Major challenges. Rapid growth.
That’s what to expect with a career at Bending Spoons.
Check out our open positions: bndspn.com/open-positions. 🔗
Over 5,000 acquisitions considered every year. 🤯
So what makes our team say, “That’s interesting”?
Check out the interview (in Italian) here: bndspn.com/CEOInterview.
P.S. Thanks for having us, Pietro.
15 shiny new features and a 50% boost in signups. 🚀
That’s what the first year post-acquisition looked like for StreamYard—alongside making the platform stronger than ever by squashing bugs and improving reliability.
Next on the agenda: further platform optimization and delivering some highly requested new features. 🤫
Grande, team! 💪
Is >2 seconds too long to wait for a note to load in Evernote?
Our performance squad thought so. Especially since nearly a third of Android users were waiting that long.
To speed things up, the team reworked how the Editor loads: Instead of loading when a note is opened, it now preloads in the background when the app launches. This dropped slow loads from around 33% of Android users to just 3%. It sped up note creation for 15% of users, too.
It’s a small update that impacts only a portion of users, but it reflects how we work: always improving, never done.
We’re making a big bet. And we don’t know if it will pay off. 😅
Issuu is a complex beast—more than 130 microservices in six different programming languages. Shipping an improvement means coordinating across multiple databases, backends, frontends, and web libraries. At the testing phase, pieces need to be run locally or shipped to the cloud. Not exactly efficient.
To address this, we’re aiming to refactor the architecture from 130 microservices down to six.
It’s a massive effort, requiring months of major investment. But if it’s a success, we’ll be able to deliver security patches, dismiss legacy tools, and ship features in less than half the time.
It’s far from certain, but we’re betting we can pull it off. Godspeed, team. 🚀