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

Bending Spoons S1: How Italy's Software Acquirer Built a $20B Empire From the Discount Rack

Run the Numbers

Bending Spoons S1: How Italy's Software Acquirer Built a $20B Empire From the Discount Rack