In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ breaks down Bending Spoons’ F-1 filing and the acquisition machine behind AOL, Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, and more. He unpacks the company’s playbook: buy under-optimized digital businesses, transform operations, raise prices, reinvest earnings, and repeat — while asking the core question: how much was built, and how much was bought?
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LINKS:
Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsN
CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/
Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com
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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 What is Bending Spoons?
1:03 The Internet's attic: the portfolio
3:11 The metrics rundown
5:44 Revenue: $1.3B, 95% growth
6:04 82% of growth was bought, not built
6:29 Gross margin: 66%
6:50 Subscription mix and NRR
7:33 Net income: basically zero
8:00 Cash: $741M, debt: $4.4B
8:35 Revenue per employee: $2.57M
9:39 Sponsors — RightRev | Rillet | EY
12:42 Organic growth is mostly price hikes
13:50 A house of adjustments
14:54 Add-backs bigger than the profit
15:22 The reorganization line: cost of firing
19:21 Sponsors — SpendHound | Brex | Aleph
22:51 Does the playbook actually work?
23:07 Evernote: the proof point
23:45 Romini: the growth proof point
24:10 AI in three directions at once
25:45 The debt engine
27:50 Red flag 1: material accounting weaknesses
28:38 Red flag 2: pro forma numbers come with a confession
29:00 Red flag 3: App Store dependency
29:11 Red flag 4: no long-term contracts
29:30 Red flag 5: foreign private issuer
29:52 Red flag 6: they've never sold anything
30:19 Cap table and board
31:07 Valuation: 14–18x
33:00 Bull vs. bear case
33:55 Miscellaneous: the S1 is already stale
35:25 Credits
Colombia