Bending Spoons' Playbook: Buy Low—and Hold

August 18, 2026 - 04:03

Most tech acquirers these days are looking for a quick flip. They buy a struggling app, cut costs, squeeze out whatever revenue they can, and then sell the shell to the next buyer within a year or two. Bending Spoons, the Italian software company behind Evernote and Meetup, is doing the opposite. Instead of flipping distressed digital brands, it buys them cheap and holds on for the long haul.

The company's playbook is simple on paper but hard to execute. It targets well-known but underperforming products, usually ones that have lost their edge or fallen behind on monetization. Then it strips down the operation, moves the core team to its own engineering hub, and rebuilds the product with a focus on subscription revenue and mobile-first design. The key difference is patience. Bending Spoons does not set a five-year exit clock. It treats each acquisition as a permanent addition to its portfolio, not a temporary asset.

That approach has raised eyebrows in the M&A world, where most deals are structured around a clear exit timeline. But the numbers are starting to speak. Evernote, once written off as a dying note-taking app, has seen a steady stream of updates and a growing subscriber base since Bending Spoons took over. Meetup, which struggled through the pandemic, is also being rebuilt with new features and a cleaner user experience.

The strategy is not without risk. Holding onto a brand for years means absorbing ongoing losses if the turnaround does not work. And Bending Spoons has been criticized for aggressive layoffs and a heavy-handed approach to product changes. Still, the company seems comfortable with that trade-off. In a market where most buyers are looking for a fast exit, Bending Spoons is betting that slow, steady rebuilding will win out. So far, that bet is paying off.