Everybody loves to hate BendingSpoon, but there is a lesson here. They consistently rewrite the code of their acquisitions with a tiny team, fire everybody and are able to maintain and improve the product. They basically skip everything but engineers, and they are kept at a minimum. Feedback from users is the products they take over 1) become more expensive, 2) they ship features waaaay faster.

It looks like next generation private equity, and my guess is more houses will start copying them.

Also, their core development team is in Italy and they are considered by many the best company in the IT space in Italy.

What it means is that they have the top Italian talent, they pay them a very good italian salary that is still way lower than an american one.

So basically they have very capable people working on their engineering, at a fraction of the cost of the original staff.

I think that’s always the thing with any of these things. The companies private equity or Bending Spoons acquire are frequently inefficient, bloated and not the best-run businesses.

But its basically an admission that the business is in its extraction phase and will no longer innovate.

Relevant quote:

Private Equity is engaged in buying artisanal semi-businesses, turning them into businesses, propping up the numbers while destroying them —then, hopefully, destroying itself.

Can you provide proof that products ship features faster after they lay off their teams?

> It looks like next generation private equity, and my guess is more houses will start copying them.

Isn't this the same that Broadcom does on a larger scale?

As a Vimeo OTT customer, this is producing mixed emotions.

>They consistently rewrite the code of their acquisitions with a tiny team, fire everybody and are able to maintain and improve the product.

"improve" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Evernote and meetup are in worse states post BS. Shipping features and shipping value is very different in this landscape.

>It looks like next generation private equity, and my guess is more houses will start copying them.

Yes, that's why I hate it.

Citation needed for “improve the product”