Bending Spoons Buys Eventbrite for $500 Million

The Milan-based company Bending Spoons is acquiring Eventbrite for $500 million, continuing a buying spree that has already included some familiar internet brands. The acquisition highlights how a relatively low-profile European company has emerged as one of tech’s most acquisitive purchasers — and an increasingly dominant player in consumer and prosumer software.

Unlike traditional private equity, Bending Spoons insists it is operator first, owner second. Its playbook is to acquire hot but under-optimized products, reinvigorate the tech and business model, and keep them in-house instead of flipping. That mode has inspired fierce debates among users but also a history of resurrecting brands at global scale.

Who Is Bending Spoons, the Milan-based acquirer?

Bending Spoons calls itself a company that buys and turns around digital businesses. The company has a team of about 400 to 500 employees — internally referred to as “Spooners” — bringing together product, engineering, and growth in an HQ that is currently in Milan, with that kind of spread being repeated across major European cities as well as remote workers.

Its origins go back to a Copenhagen startup created by a handful of founders that had pivoted from building their own apps to buying and growing existing ones. CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari has spoken to the change in a rare interview on the 20VC podcast — focusing on disciplined product iteration, pricing tests, and relentless A/B testing.

On a scale note, Bending Spoons says that products in its orbit are used by over a billion people and together have more than 300 million monthly active users, with 10 million paying customers across the portfolio. One of the few products it developed was Immuni, the Italian government’s official COVID-19 tracing app that it contributed at no cost.

Inside Bending Spoons’ portfolio of recognizable brands

Bending Spoons already has acquired a series of well-known names: the services Evernote, WeTransfer, and Meetup, alongside StreamYard, Issuu, Filmic, and an AI photo enhancer named Remini. It also unveiled an all-cash take-private for Brightcove and revealed that it had deals to buy AOL and Vimeo, the latter of which remains subject to customary approvals, including a shareholder vote. Bending Spoons said AOL is still a top-10 email provider, with 8 million daily active users and 30 million monthly.

Post-acquisition changes have been significant. Filmic’s employees were laid off after the agreement. Evernote’s free tier was tightened. WeTransfer made its free plan less generous. These are all parts of the company’s playbook: fix infrastructure, simplify features, and retwiddle monetization to make sure unit economics look good for big, loyal user bases.

More recently, Bending Spoons branched out into productivity and workflow with Komoot, a popular route planner, and Harvest, a time-tracking and billing system. The throughline is the same: popular brands with products that click, but which have economics or velocity that can be supercharged by centralized expertise and capital.

Why Eventbrite fits Bending Spoons’ acquisition playbook

Eventbrite is a global ticketing and event discovery platform with a powerful self-serve motion for independent organizers and significant consumer traffic. The price — $500 million — is a sliver of the company’s valuation when it went public, leaving room for operating upside under new ownership.

Look for Bending Spoons to chase faster iterations when it comes to the checkout experience, the tastes of organizers, and pricing strategy, while pressuring tighter integrations and cross-sell loops with nearby portfolio assets. Meetup could drive in-person community meetings into ticketed experiences; StreamYard could run live and hybrid events; Issuu and WeTransfer provide distribution and editorial tools for creators; Remini’s AI and video skills might appear downstream in marketing materials for event organizers.

The tension will be a familiar one: Users always want things to be simple and free with generous tiers, while Bending Spoons is optimizing for sustainability. Users should look for more granular plans, value-based pricing that is clearer, and perhaps new bundles for marketing, analytics, and post-event engagement.

How the recent acquisitions and deals are being financed

Bending Spoons became one of the rare tech decacorns in Europe last month when it raised $270 million in primary capital from institutional investors like T. Rowe Price, along with returning backers Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, Durable Capital Partners, and Fidelity. That was accompanied by a $440 million secondary sale of stock held by existing shareholders. The firm also announced $2.8 billion in debt financing to help fund acquisitions, including its bid for AOL.

Based on filings in the Italian Business Register, Forbes put the CEO Luca Ferrari at about $1.4 billion and co-founders Matteo Danieli, Luca Querella, and Francesco Patarnello each near $1.3 billion. Among Bending Spoons’ cap table is a lineup of sports and entertainment personalities and tech giants including Andre Agassi, Bradley Cooper, Eric Schmidt, Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram), Xavier Niel, The Weeknd, The Chainsmokers, and Maluma.

Inside Bending Spoons’ execution model and hiring approach

The company centralizes product and growth craft in Milan at the time of hiring, then becomes very flexible with location afterward (other offices or remote). It freely acknowledges a grueling workplace and reports receiving over 600,000 job applications in the past year — a sign that its operator-led model has resonated with talent.

Within its portfolio companies, Bending Spoons is hands-on: refactoring codebases, instrumenting user flows, and running rapid-fire experiments on onboarding, paywalls, and feature packaging. It has stressed time and again that it wants to own companies forever, steering clear of the short-term flips prevalent in financial buyouts.

What to watch next for Eventbrite users and regulators

Eventbrite users should expect to see a product roadmap that emphasizes reliability, discovery, and organizer monetization — not to mention possible product simplifications and clearer price tiers.

Regulators and counterparties will be looking at the pending AOL and Vimeo deals, which might broaden Bending Spoons’ reach into consumer communications, media, and video.

If Bending Spoons follows its playbook, Eventbrite could have faster shipping cycles and better economics, but as with any company, face pushback from changes that break cherished workflows. That balance — pragmatic optimization without shattering user trust — will decide whether the deal behind this headline becomes yet another proof point for the “acquire and transform” playbook.