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This comment from e98cuenc seems extremely prescient. > Everybody loves to hate BendingSpoon, but there is a lesson here. They consistently rewrite the code of

by bilekas 9mo ago

This comment from e98cuenc seems extremely prescient. > Everybody loves to hate BendingSpoon, but there is a lesson here. They consistently rewrite the code of their acquisitions with a tiny team, fire everybody and are able to maintain and improve the product. They basically skip everything but engineers, and they are kept at a minimum. Feedback from users is the products they take over 1) become more expensive, 2) they ship features waaaay faster. It looks like next generation private equity, and my guess is more houses will start copying them

altairprime 9mo ago
Honestly, I wish more businesses would do this. It turns out that grandiose dreams make grandiose staffing, but a lot of great business ideas would thrive and bloom if the gardeners would just prune them back more often.
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago
  The part about "they get more expensive" makes me actively not want this, despite otherwise being someone obsessed with optimization. I'm not here to optimize billionaires' pockets at the expense of the people I actually make the product for.
  - altairprime 9mo ago
    I don’t understand the basis for your hostility here to charging more money and making a profit, especially given that Hacker News is founded and run by a venture capital firm whose goal is repeatedly that in hundreds of attempts at once. At minimum, Vimeo should have been raising prices by inflation% per year, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t doing that. Better the platform continue and thrive doing what works than founder uselessly on the zero-price pivot shoals like most startups these days. And there’s a sense of cosmic irony that both Vimeo and Dropout are now run by a very small team rather than a large one. Perhaps Vimeo will learn the lesson of Dropout and switch to the boring but effective 100% paying-customers-only model that other successful businesses use. I’m rooting for them.
Glawen 9mo ago
I'm discovering Bending Sppon withn this thread, and I think they really got their business right. I hope they IPO soon
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago
  I'm not privy to support, as another reply put it, "Enshittification as a Servce". And this is just modern private equity. The whole point is to avoid all those pesky regulations going public brings.
gulugawa 9mo ago
Considering what Bending Spoons did to Meetup.com after buying the site, I wouldn't trust them to improve a product. Here are some of the issues I noticed. - Group searches consistently return irrelevant results across multiple cities. As a test, I tried searching for soccer groups in Dallas, Texas, and one of the results was for a backgammon group. Users will also often have a hard time finding events I host on Meetup. - An organizer being charged $357.98 per year to host a group on Meetup.com. - The pages for my Meetup events are full of clutter and duplicate data, while relevant information such as RSVPs is hidden. - My Meetup.com home page is full of pointless distractions, including a banner asking me to become an organizer when I already organize events. - When editing an event, Meetup shows an option to generate a description by using generative AI. Generative AI is a scam and I try to avoid it. That being said, you are right that they are becoming more expensive and ship features faster. I describe Bending Spoons as Italian private equity.
- dangoor 9mo ago
  As a heavy Meetup user, I can say that Bending Spoons absolutely fixed some glaring, long-standing bugs. But their massive price increases have really driven people away, and some of their attempts to grab more money (Meetup+) really rankled a lot of people. Also, search still sucks.
  - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
    This is why "running lean" for a B2C business is never something to take as a good sign from the consumer standpoint. Let alone the client. Those savings are not being passed to you, quite the contrary. they will in fact have their care and eat it by trying to throw more costs at you despite the supposed lower overhead.
red-iron-pine 9mo ago
Enshitification As A Service (EaaS)

by bilekas 9mo ago

altairprime 9mo ago

Honestly, I wish more businesses would do this. It turns out that grandiose dreams make grandiose staffing, but a lot of great business ideas would thrive and bloom if the gardeners would just prune them back more often.

johnnyanmac 9mo ago
The part about "they get more expensive" makes me actively not want this, despite otherwise being someone obsessed with optimization. I'm not here to optimize billionaires' pockets at the expense of the people I actually make the product for.
- altairprime 9mo ago
  I don’t understand the basis for your hostility here to charging more money and making a profit, especially given that Hacker News is founded and run by a venture capital firm whose goal is repeatedly that in hundreds of attempts at once. At minimum, Vimeo should have been raising prices by inflation% per year, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t doing that. Better the platform continue and thrive doing what works than founder uselessly on the zero-price pivot shoals like most startups these days. And there’s a sense of cosmic irony that both Vimeo and Dropout are now run by a very small team rather than a large one. Perhaps Vimeo will learn the lesson of Dropout and switch to the boring but effective 100% paying-customers-only model that other successful businesses use. I’m rooting for them.

Glawen 9mo ago

I'm discovering Bending Sppon withn this thread, and I think they really got their business right. I hope they IPO soon

johnnyanmac 9mo ago
I'm not privy to support, as another reply put it, "Enshittification as a Servce". And this is just modern private equity. The whole point is to avoid all those pesky regulations going public brings.

gulugawa 9mo ago

Considering what Bending Spoons did to Meetup.com after buying the site, I wouldn't trust them to improve a product. Here are some of the issues I noticed. - Group searches consistently return irrelevant results across multiple cities. As a test, I tried searching for soccer groups in Dallas, Texas, and one of the results was for a backgammon group. Users will also often have a hard time finding events I host on Meetup. - An organizer being charged $357.98 per year to host a group on Meetup.com. - The pages for my Meetup events are full of clutter and duplicate data, while relevant information such as RSVPs is hidden. - My Meetup.com home page is full of pointless distractions, including a banner asking me to become an organizer when I already organize events. - When editing an event, Meetup shows an option to generate a description by using generative AI. Generative AI is a scam and I try to avoid it. That being said, you are right that they are becoming more expensive and ship features faster. I describe Bending Spoons as Italian private equity.

dangoor 9mo ago
As a heavy Meetup user, I can say that Bending Spoons absolutely fixed some glaring, long-standing bugs. But their massive price increases have really driven people away, and some of their attempts to grab more money (Meetup+) really rankled a lot of people. Also, search still sucks.
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago
  This is why "running lean" for a B2C business is never something to take as a good sign from the consumer standpoint. Let alone the client. Those savings are not being passed to you, quite the contrary. they will in fact have their care and eat it by trying to throw more costs at you despite the supposed lower overhead.

red-iron-pine 9mo ago

Enshitification As A Service (EaaS)