Bending Spoons goes public at $18 billion after startup failure lesson

Bending Spoons began trading on Nasdaq on July 1, 2026, opening at an over $18 billion valuation and ending its first day up 40 percent. The Milan-based company had filed a Form F-1 on June 8, 2026, and its debut put a sharp market price on a strategy built around buying digital products and operating them for the long term.

The company’s pitch is blunt: “We acquire and improve iconic products.” Founded in 2013 by Luca Ferrari, Matteo Danieli, Francesco Patarnello and others after their earlier startup Evertale failed, Bending Spoons turned that setback into a business model centered on discipline, selective hiring and product fixes rather than the usual founder myth of one breakout idea. Ferrari has said the founders spent the first two or three years focused on culture and hiring, a choice that helped shape a company that now looks more like an operating shop than a classic venture-backed startup.

That approach has produced a roll-up of familiar internet brands. Bending Spoons has acquired Meetup, Eventbrite, Vimeo and WeTransfer, extending a pattern of buying products with existing users and then trying to squeeze more value from them over time. The company’s own framing is that it wants to own and operate businesses indefinitely, a philosophy that sets it apart from the typical private equity playbook of buying, trimming and flipping.

The Vimeo deal shows the scale of the bet. On September 10, 2025, Vimeo said it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Bending Spoons in an all-cash transaction valued at about $1.38 billion, with Vimeo’s board unanimously approving the sale and calling it compelling, certain value for shareholders. That transaction, along with the company’s Nasdaq debut, underscored how a once-obscure Italian startup built in the wake of failure has become one of the clearest examples of a new kind of public-market software consolidator.