Item — HN Reader

Bending Spoons has recently been buying aging SaaS companies that have established PMF and customers and decent brands (Evernote, Komoot, WeTransfer, Meetup).

I guess it's mostly a private equity play—usually after being acquired by BS, prices go up, paywalls go everywhere, companies get "more efficient" (aka layoffs) and the product stops evolving.

I wish there was a better outcome for beloved brands with good products that won't experience any more hypergrowth.

2 comments

I will transfer my remaining domains from Gandi this month.

In case anyone else needed a reminder.

Wait why. I'm out of the loop.

The founders decided "it had been a wild ride but all journeys come to an end" so the prices and upselling now keep increasing so that the private equity that bought them can see fast short-term gains (the only thing they care about).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35080777

https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/montefiore-investment...

https://news.gandi.net/en/2019/02/futureofgandi-the-adventur...

Thanks, transferring out now.

For Meetup at least the product did evolved after it got aquired.

From my perspective, it "evolved" to force you to have an account, to aggressively kick off organizers who can't pay for the rising prices of posting, and the search algorithm got worse. I could barely find meetups I knew existed with a direct query.