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From the previous press about the aquisition: BendingSpoon CEO: "At Bending Spoons, we acquire companies with the expectation of owning and operating them inde

by hi_hi 9mo ago

From the previous press about the aquisition: BendingSpoon CEO: "At Bending Spoons, we acquire companies with the expectation of owning and operating them indefinitely, and we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together" Vimeo CEO: "We are excited about this partnership, which we believe will unlock even greater focus for our team and customers as we continue to strive towards our global mission to be the most innovative and trusted video platform in the world for businesses" Words no longer appear to mean things. While this isn't a surprise, it provides another data point that there can be no trust given to leaders words. I find it sad as it simply re-inforces this behaviour and normalises it.

whalesalad 9mo ago
Things happen. Times change. It's just as important to know when to throw in the towel as it is to know when to persevere.
- killingtime74 9mo ago
  The acquisition concluded in November 2025, only 2 months ago.
- wanderer2323 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - dangus 9mo ago
    It sucks that people get laid off, but there are a whole lot of finished low growth products like this that have bloated teams. I don’t really see any lying going on. Which statement was a lie?
- taurath 9mo ago
  These are the things that happen - taking a company and strangling it to make a 10% short term return. It’s like of funny, we give corporations personhood, but the type of person that can be owned by another person, or murdered for profit
  - nasaeclipse 9mo ago
    Imagine what would happen if we tried these actions like we do for real murder trials. "CEO John Doe is found Guilty of maiming Company B to the point of bleeding it dry of its funds, resulting in bankruptsy. Due to person-hood laws, we sentence you to life in prison. Thank you for your attention on this matter."
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago
  That statement was from September. I can even dig up the discussion here on the annoucement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45197302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45197302 Reading the comments there, I shouldn't be surprised at this maneuver.
growt 9mo ago
After reading through the other comments about bending spoons and reading yours again: the bending spoons CEO is technically telling the truth! They intend to run the acquired companies forever. After cutting most of the staff, but he didn’t say that part of course.
- csallen 9mo ago
  I wouldn't even say it's "technically" the truth. It's just the truth. Nothing in the statement even comes close to implying that there wouldn't be layoffs. Hell, one of the quotes even mentions "focus", which if anything is a euphemism or hint for downsizing in these kinds of statements, not the opposite.
  - onemoresoop 9mo ago
    "excited about this partnership, which we believe will unlock even greater focus for our team and customers as we continue to strive towards our global mission to be the most innovative and trusted video platform in the world for businesses" There's no hint of laying off all the staff here though. Now it sounds like they "were" excited to lay off people to maximize profits. Maybe "unlock even greater focus for our team" means to unlock their focus to find other jobs but it's quite perverse. I agree with the OP, that "Words no longer appear to mean things"
    - csallen 9mo ago
      > There's no hint of laying off all the staff here though. Now it sounds like they "were" excited to lay off people to maximize profits. What? Just because a statement says "we're excited to do X" doesn't mean they're not also planning to do A, B, C, Y and Z. I'm not defending the layoff. It just seems weird to interpret the statement itself as somehow being misleading about a subject that it literally didn't mention.
      - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
        There's letter and spirit of the word. You're arguing against the spirit of the word because the letter of the word is technically impossible to prove as a lie right now. We call this lawful evil logic for a reason. It's how you empower stuff like Jim Crow laws (or the current US administration in general. "Well he isn't going to actually invade a NATO ally, he's just saying he wants Greenland. I want a Ferrari!")
999900000999 9mo ago
Of course words don't actually mean anything. I've been through this myself once upon a time I was at a company and the way they described it is they just changed owners habitually. Within about 4 months of this ownership change they fired my entire office. Luckily I was already some place new.
- jongjong 9mo ago
  Yes. It's a zero trust society. Nobody can trust anybody else. The only thing that's trusted is money in a bank account... And we really shouldn't be trusting our eyes there because the money is backed by nothing and there is no reliable consensus between different banks (look at the details of correspondant banking and factor in things like the Eurodollar, stablecoins...). It's like; the thing we trust the most cannot be trusted but so long as we keep using money in its current form, this implicit form of trust is devaluing the trust of everything else that's not money. Our relationship with money sets the bar for all other relationships. If it's a deceptive relationship and we tolerate it, we will tolerate every other relationship which is equally deceptive. We become accustomed and tolerant to a certain level of deception. We are also emboldened to deceive others. Our relationship with money is highly deceptive and getting worse over time. We can expect to see the same trend in our relationships. I think money CAN buy trust; it works by devaluing the entire concept of trust to the level that it can afford to buy it outright. It maintains a monopoly on trust.
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago
  So are we just going to acept that words no longer mean anything and carry on through life distructing of everything we navigate through? That isn't the only way.
cowsandmilk 9mo ago
Nothing the bending spoons ceo said isn’t true. They are still operating Vimeo.
- Invictus0 9mo ago
  There's a large contingent on hacker news that still thinks it's some kind of moral failure to fire people
  - bagels 9mo ago
    Obviously sometimes a business is unsustainable, and it's unavoidable, but it's pretty sociopathic to not consider that people are harmed by being laid off.
    - Invictus0 9mo ago
      They are literally not harmed. The end of an at-will employment agreement is not a harm.
      - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
        >The end of an at-will employment agreement is not a harm. So if you got fired tomorrow for no reason in particular, you would not feel "harmed"? No family to support, bills to pay, or career to progress cut short? No trips nor big purchases that need to be re-planed or cancelled? No obligations you need to cancel because last week you were fine and this week it's all about scambling for a new job? This is the most asinine thing I've heard here yet. I didn't have a choice in my society on what contract to take. And the power dynamic is unequal. I don't consider being suddenly laid off as "harmless" with that in mind.
        Ekaros 9mo ago
        They were at-will employment. That should have been considered with their every purchasing decision ever. Their personal and moral failures is not their employers failures. Budgeting is trivial thing. Spend less than you earn. And it is not like these were minimum wage workers. They should have known to have plenty of buffers at this point. It is entirely their own fault of not reach that point.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
joe_the_user 9mo ago
As others mentioned, the statement seems true. But even more, it seems like the statement implies layoffs if they are acquiring a startup or growth-orient company. Bending Spoon is saying they intend to run the web site/web app as-is and make money. That means they will discard employees who have been employed with hope of growing/pivoting/etc the company. In start-ups, that can be a lot of the employees.

by hi_hi 9mo ago

whalesalad 9mo ago

Things happen. Times change. It's just as important to know when to throw in the towel as it is to know when to persevere.

killingtime74 9mo ago
The acquisition concluded in November 2025, only 2 months ago.
wanderer2323 9mo ago
[flagged]
- dangus 9mo ago
  It sucks that people get laid off, but there are a whole lot of finished low growth products like this that have bloated teams. I don’t really see any lying going on. Which statement was a lie?
taurath 9mo ago
These are the things that happen - taking a company and strangling it to make a 10% short term return. It’s like of funny, we give corporations personhood, but the type of person that can be owned by another person, or murdered for profit
- nasaeclipse 9mo ago
  Imagine what would happen if we tried these actions like we do for real murder trials. "CEO John Doe is found Guilty of maiming Company B to the point of bleeding it dry of its funds, resulting in bankruptsy. Due to person-hood laws, we sentence you to life in prison. Thank you for your attention on this matter."
johnnyanmac 9mo ago
That statement was from September. I can even dig up the discussion here on the annoucement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45197302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45197302 Reading the comments there, I shouldn't be surprised at this maneuver.

growt 9mo ago

After reading through the other comments about bending spoons and reading yours again: the bending spoons CEO is technically telling the truth! They intend to run the acquired companies forever. After cutting most of the staff, but he didn’t say that part of course.

csallen 9mo ago
I wouldn't even say it's "technically" the truth. It's just the truth. Nothing in the statement even comes close to implying that there wouldn't be layoffs. Hell, one of the quotes even mentions "focus", which if anything is a euphemism or hint for downsizing in these kinds of statements, not the opposite.
- onemoresoop 9mo ago
  "excited about this partnership, which we believe will unlock even greater focus for our team and customers as we continue to strive towards our global mission to be the most innovative and trusted video platform in the world for businesses" There's no hint of laying off all the staff here though. Now it sounds like they "were" excited to lay off people to maximize profits. Maybe "unlock even greater focus for our team" means to unlock their focus to find other jobs but it's quite perverse. I agree with the OP, that "Words no longer appear to mean things"
  - csallen 9mo ago
    > There's no hint of laying off all the staff here though. Now it sounds like they "were" excited to lay off people to maximize profits. What? Just because a statement says "we're excited to do X" doesn't mean they're not also planning to do A, B, C, Y and Z. I'm not defending the layoff. It just seems weird to interpret the statement itself as somehow being misleading about a subject that it literally didn't mention.
    - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
      There's letter and spirit of the word. You're arguing against the spirit of the word because the letter of the word is technically impossible to prove as a lie right now. We call this lawful evil logic for a reason. It's how you empower stuff like Jim Crow laws (or the current US administration in general. "Well he isn't going to actually invade a NATO ally, he's just saying he wants Greenland. I want a Ferrari!")

999900000999 9mo ago

Of course words don't actually mean anything. I've been through this myself once upon a time I was at a company and the way they described it is they just changed owners habitually. Within about 4 months of this ownership change they fired my entire office. Luckily I was already some place new.

jongjong 9mo ago
Yes. It's a zero trust society. Nobody can trust anybody else. The only thing that's trusted is money in a bank account... And we really shouldn't be trusting our eyes there because the money is backed by nothing and there is no reliable consensus between different banks (look at the details of correspondant banking and factor in things like the Eurodollar, stablecoins...). It's like; the thing we trust the most cannot be trusted but so long as we keep using money in its current form, this implicit form of trust is devaluing the trust of everything else that's not money. Our relationship with money sets the bar for all other relationships. If it's a deceptive relationship and we tolerate it, we will tolerate every other relationship which is equally deceptive. We become accustomed and tolerant to a certain level of deception. We are also emboldened to deceive others. Our relationship with money is highly deceptive and getting worse over time. We can expect to see the same trend in our relationships. I think money CAN buy trust; it works by devaluing the entire concept of trust to the level that it can afford to buy it outright. It maintains a monopoly on trust.
johnnyanmac 9mo ago
So are we just going to acept that words no longer mean anything and carry on through life distructing of everything we navigate through? That isn't the only way.

cowsandmilk 9mo ago

Nothing the bending spoons ceo said isn’t true. They are still operating Vimeo.

Invictus0 9mo ago
There's a large contingent on hacker news that still thinks it's some kind of moral failure to fire people
- bagels 9mo ago
  Obviously sometimes a business is unsustainable, and it's unavoidable, but it's pretty sociopathic to not consider that people are harmed by being laid off.
  - Invictus0 9mo ago
    They are literally not harmed. The end of an at-will employment agreement is not a harm.
    - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
      >The end of an at-will employment agreement is not a harm. So if you got fired tomorrow for no reason in particular, you would not feel "harmed"? No family to support, bills to pay, or career to progress cut short? No trips nor big purchases that need to be re-planed or cancelled? No obligations you need to cancel because last week you were fine and this week it's all about scambling for a new job? This is the most asinine thing I've heard here yet. I didn't have a choice in my society on what contract to take. And the power dynamic is unequal. I don't consider being suddenly laid off as "harmless" with that in mind.
      - Ekaros 9mo ago
        They were at-will employment. That should have been considered with their every purchasing decision ever. Their personal and moral failures is not their employers failures. Budgeting is trivial thing. Spend less than you earn. And it is not like these were minimum wage workers. They should have known to have plenty of buffers at this point. It is entirely their own fault of not reach that point.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

joe_the_user 9mo ago

As others mentioned, the statement seems true. But even more, it seems like the statement implies layoffs if they are acquiring a startup or growth-orient company. Bending Spoon is saying they intend to run the web site/web app as-is and make money. That means they will discard employees who have been employed with hope of growing/pivoting/etc the company. In start-ups, that can be a lot of the employees.