After $18B IPO, Bending Spoons founder says success comes from minimizing luck

AOL is public again — benignant of. Its proprietor Bending Spoons, the 13-year-old Italian institution that has been quietly acquiring beloved but ailing Internet brands for the past decade, went nationalist connected the Nasdaq today, opening astatine an implicit $18 ​billion valuation, with the banal past popping 40% by marketplace close.

Headquartered successful Milan, Bending Spoons applied immoderate of the backstage equity playbook to a agelong bid of acquisitions — Meetup, Eventbrite, Vimeo, WeTransfer, and galore others. But it is not a flip-and-sell scheme: it wants to alteration these companies with tech and past clasp onto them.

“We privation to spot ourselves arsenic an relation that takes beloved brands and makes them overmuch better,” its cofounder and main merchandise officer, Matteo Danieli, told TechCrunch.

The ‘how’ has generated contention implicit the years, especially astir layoffs. But the institution besides drove gross growth, adjacent much truthful with AI. “In the past twelvemonth and a half, we’ve witnessed an unthinkable acceleration successful the gait astatine which we were capable to vessel caller features and make worth for users,” Danieli told TechCrunch. 

That whitethorn beryllium the close happening to accidental erstwhile investors, nationalist and private, person overmuch much appetite for AI than for aging SaaS businesses. But Bending Spoons has a case: its F-1, the equivalent of S-1 forms for overseas companies, includes a section called ‘AI earlier it was cool’ — a motion to its roots.

Before Bending Spoons, determination was Evertale, “a merchandise that would automatically make a diary of your beingness by leveraging what you would telephone AI today, and that we called instrumentality learning then,” Danieli said. That startup failed, but it taught lessons to the cofounders and squad members who present pb Bending Spoons — Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello, Luca Querella, and Danieli himself. 

“It sparked a reflection astir the information that you don’t ever find cleanable correlation betwixt however talented entrepreneurs are and the occurrence they have, particularly from zero to one. Luck is simply a precise large constituent of that equation. So we developed an obsession for uncovering a strategy that would, arsenic overmuch arsenic possible, trim the relation that luck plays successful maturation and success,” Danieli said.

The institution besides mentioned this doctrine successful its F-1 with specified lines as, “Luck plays a large relation successful uncovering product-market fit,” and “luck is irrelevant erstwhile pursuing operational excellence.”

Those mantras amusement up successful areas similar pricing its products. “We effort to leverage the blase information tracking, analytics infrastructure and experimentation toolkit that we’ve developed.” 

According to Danieli, this sometimes leads the institution to merchandise much features for escaped to thrust connection of mouth. But it has besides led to terms increases that sparked complaints from semipermanent subscribers. Despite this, however, helium says lawsuit retention has been “remarkably stable.”

One acquisition was peculiarly scrutinized. “Evernote whitethorn beryllium the archetypal merchandise we acquired that was genuinely loved by users, truthful we had precise strict judges.” That’s the 1 he’s astir arrogant of — including its AI-heavy v11 update. He said the institution yet won implicit users with its changes that were praised by galore subscribers, including Evernote cofounder Phil Libin.

Bending Spoons itself started getting much enactment implicit the years. Valued astatine $11 billion successful a backstage equity circular earlier its IPO, it had some VC firms and VIPs connected its headdress table, including large names from tech and entertainment. In its earlier years, however, VCs struggled to recognize its approach. “We’ve got a batch of ‘you’re crazy’ reactions passim the years,” Danieli recalled. 

That’s besides captured by the company’s tagline, “Impossible. Maybe.”

Focusing connected endowment was besides 1 of the lessons that Bending Spoons’ founders learned from their Evertale days, and hiring became a focus. The co-founder Ferrari “invested the champion portion of the archetypal 2 oregon 3 years moving connected civilization and hiring processes. We judge we present excel astatine spotting talent, particularly erstwhile young and erstwhile they don’t person a large way grounds yet.”

The numbers look to agree. According to its SEC filing, “in portion helped by advancement successful AI, gross per full-time equivalent Spooner accrued from $1.12 cardinal successful 2023 to $2.57 cardinal successful 2025, and was $0.97 cardinal successful Q1 2026.”

This besides explains wherefore Bending Spoons took the antithetic determination of bringing the full institution to New York to observe its listing. “It’s 1 much instrumentality for america to entree the liquidity that we request to substance our acquisitive strategy, but we besides thought that for 1 time it would beryllium the close happening to instrumentality it each successful and bask the infinitesimal with each our colleagues,” Danieli said. 

That’s conscionable 1 day, though. After that, Bending Spoons volition spell backmost to buying companies — and instrumentality vantage of slashed SaaS valuations it has itself managed to escape, according to Danieli. “From a buyer’s position and arsenic a institution that grows done acquisitions, that’s really a large accidental and infinitesimal to deploy capital.”