Letter #333: Luca Ferrari (2026)
Bending Spoons Cofounder & CEO | S-1 Letter from the Team
*KG Note
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Intro
More on this newsletter here.
Today’s letter the Bending Spoons S-1 Letter from the Team written by Luca Ferrari on behalf of the Bending Spoons team.
Short Bios
Luca Ferrari is the Cofounder and CEO of Bending Spoons.
Full Bio, Summary, and Related Resources below paywall
Letter
Origins
It’s the middle of the night on August 2, 2010, in Lombok, Indonesia. The three of us — Francesco Patarnello, Matteo Danieli, and Luca Ferrari — are exhausted from long days of backpacking on this trip to mark our graduation in engineering. We should have passed out hours ago, but that’s not happening. We’ve just decided to start a company together. And we’re too fired up to sleep.
Two months later, Evertale is up and running. The idea is to create a smartphone app that uses AI to automatically generate a user’s diary. We go on to raise a million dollars, recruit a scrappy team of ten, launch the product, and try to grow it. We work ourselves to the bone, to little avail. By mid-2013, we have essentially no revenue, barely four months of runway in the bank, and a hard truth to reckon with: Evertale is a failure.
That failure is painful, humbling — and galvanizing. It leaves us wiser for our many mistakes and hungry to build again, to build better. We liquidate Evertale and use the leftover $40,000 to start a new company alongside Luca Querella and Tomasz Greber, two Evertale standouts. We vow that product-market fit, Evertale’s Achilles’ heel, won’t be an issue again.
Enter Bending Spoons
As we analyzed our experience during the Evertale years, two insights emerged:
Luck plays a big role in finding product-market fit. We’d observed phenomenal entrepreneurs fail in their ventures and less remarkable ones succeed. Even accepting that our own judgment was flawed in some cases, it was apparent that luck mattered a great deal at the early stages of a business. This implied that many successful businesses were likely being run suboptimally, such that a more skilled operator could improve them.
Luck is irrelevant when pursuing operational excellence. Developing world-class skills is about talent and dedication coupled with effective feedback loops. After three years of hard work and lots of lessons learned, we’d gotten much better at operating a digital business. Too bad our skills were being wasted on products nobody wanted.
Based on these insights, and to prevent our future success from depending on luck more than necessary, we devised the following strategy for Bending Spoons:
Build the perfect operating machine. We would put our hearts and minds into becoming the best possible operators of digital businesses. The better our operating machine became, the more a digital business would gain as part of Bending Spoons versus as a standalone entity.
Compound capital through acquisitions. Operational excellence would unlock an opportunity to grow efficiently through acquisitions. We would, in effect, be outsourcing the search for product-market fit, while directing all of our energy toward excelling at everything else.
Our Playbook would be simple: acquire digital businesses, implement deep transformations and ongoing optimizations to sustainably expand earnings, and reinvest in additional acquisitions, thereby continuing the compounding cycle.
By executing this Playbook, we would come to own and operate many different businesses, each with its respective products. From the outset, we decided to treat the operating machine itself as our most important product, and to direct our greatest efforts toward building it. We were convinced that if we succeeded there, everything else would follow.
The name
We chose to call the company “Bending Spoons,” a nod to the fictional concept of bending spoons with the mind. We loved (and still love) the name, as it served as a metaphor for a few ideas dear to us:
Attempting the seemingly impossible. Our determination to aim high didn’t stem from arrogance or naivety (if we’d ever suffered any delusions of infallibility, Evertale quickly set us straight). Rather, it stemmed from the conviction that our lives would be best lived by pursuing bold objectives.
The power of the mind. We viewed imagination, logic, and rationality as some of the most precious tools at our disposal as we tackled the hard problems that inevitably arise on an ambitious journey. To bend spoons, we’d need to push the mind to its limit.
The paramount importance of effort. The metaphor of bending spoons with the mind evoked relentless dedication — a singularity and intensity of focus that we considered a prerequisite for any extraordinary achievement.
Finally, we liked the silliness of Bending Spoons as a company name. We were about to attempt to create a world-class company with $40,000, a team of five, and a track record that read 0 for 1. A touch of irony seemed appropriate.
Thirteen years seeking perfection
In 2013, we had little idea of how to build a good operating machine, much less a perfect one.
Since then, we’ve developed Bending Spoons from first principles and through trial and error, confident that each iteration would move us closer to that Platonic ideal. Along the way, we learned about Henry Singleton at Teledyne and Tom Murphy at Capital Cities, whose examples were inspiring and instructive. In recent years, we studied Broadcom, Danaher, and TransDigm, each of which demonstrated how excellence in operating businesses can generate attractive financial outcomes through acquisitions.
Our Playbook (acquire, transform and optimize, then reinvest) has stayed essentially the same since 2013. What has evolved significantly is our understanding of what it takes to execute it well. Effective execution comes down to three things: people, proprietary technologies, and proprietary data. This prospectus describes in detail how these elements — which together form what we call our Platform — improve the quality of our acquisition decisions and help us sustainably expand the earnings of the businesses we acquire. We’ve been developing this Platform since our founding and see it as our primary source of competitive advantage, one that we believe will continue to strengthen as we grow.
Enabled by our Platform, we’ve conducted our acquisitions while applying internal-rate-of-return hurdles we regard as compelling: 65% on a levered basis and 25% on an unlevered basis for acquisitions completed in 2023 through Q1 2026 [1]. Despite the increase in capital deployed in acquisitions ($2.01 billion in Q1 2026 compared with $194 million in all of 2023), our return hurdles have remained stable during this period. Still, it’s plausible that we’ll have to lower them as we scale further. We’re comfortable with this scenario, as there’s plenty of room for returns to fall before we’d find them unattractive. Accordingly, we expect to allocate almost all available capital to acquisitions for many years to come. Then, like Singleton and Murphy, perhaps our best acquisition opportunity will be the shares of our own company.
[1] These thresholds reflect the return criteria applied by our Business Acquisitions team in nearly all acquisitions completed during the period. For each acquisition, the unlevered internal rate of return was calculated based on the estimated free cash flow directly attributable to the acquired business over the five years following the expected closing date, together with a terminal value at the end of that period. The terminal value was calculated using different methodologies over time. The current approach — applied to the most recent acquisitions — calculates terminal value based on the estimated growth for years six through ten and a weighted-average cost of capital. The earlier acquisitions instead relied on a multiple of enterprise value to EBITDA at year five. The levered internal rate of return was calculated on a similar basis, but also included the impact of hypothetical acquisition financing. We raise debt and equity at the level of Bending Spoons as a whole, so allocating financing to a particular acquisition requires making assumptions. In particular, acquisition financing assumed debt equal to the lower of 85% of the enterprise value of the acquisition, and the maximum amount of debt that the acquired business’s projected free cash flow could fully repay within five years of closing. The assumed cost of such debt was in line with the terms available to us at the time of the acquisition.
Reimagining acquired businesses
Applying those return hurdles wouldn’t have been achievable with merely superficial post-acquisition interventions. We typically reimagine an acquired business from scratch, aiming to maximize its performance with a long-term view. The ensuing transformations demand great effort from the people in our Platform — the Spooners [2] — and from those who join us through acquisitions. They also rely on our proprietary technologies and the insights derived from our proprietary data.
[2] We define “Spooners” as team members who have successfully completed the rigorous and selective application process to join our core team. Spooners are allocated flexibly across the organization and may be transferred between businesses on short notice. They are held to particularly demanding performance standards.
At Remini, we rewrote the codebase in full, developed dedicated tooling, redesigned user experience and monetization, and delivered powerful new features. At Evernote, we rearchitected the organization, modernized the technology, accelerated product development, and rethought marketing and monetization. At StreamYard, we transitioned to a leaner organization, upgraded audio and video quality, introduced advanced functionality, and enhanced marketing and monetization. Across these businesses, our transformations resulted in significant revenue growth, cost reduction, and earnings expansion. There are numerous other such examples.
We continue to optimize Remini, Evernote, StreamYard, and the other businesses that have been part of our portfolio for years. Additionally, much of our current focus is on transforming those more recently acquired, including AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo.
AI before it was cool
Back in 2010, we used AI to underpin Evertale’s key product features. Our conviction in AI’s potential didn’t move the needle for that startup, but it has proven valuable at Bending Spoons.
From the outset, this conviction motivated us to create the conditions needed to capitalize on AI’s advances: We’ve constructed our team of Spooners with an obsession for exceptional talent density, technological excellence, and a deeply rooted culture of high performance. In 2025, we received approximately 800,000 job applications and hired 286 individuals, strengthening a team already comprising hundreds of selectively recruited and highly motivated software engineers, data scientists, and AI research engineers.
Supported by these foundations, we’ve used AI for several years to enhance products, optimize marketing and monetization, and improve productivity, including by embedding it in our proprietary technologies. The share of pull requests [3] authored or coauthored by AI at Bending Spoons grew from less than 10% in Q1 2025 to more than 90% by the end of Q1 2026, with around 70% authored by AI alone. In part helped by progress in AI, revenue per full-time equivalent Spooner [4] increased from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, and was $0.97 million in Q1 2026.
[3] A “pull request” is a formal proposal to add, modify, or remove code in a shared software repository. It allows other contributors to review, discuss, and approve the proposed changes before they are merged into the repository.
[4] “Revenue per full-time equivalent Spooner” for a given quarter is defined as the revenue for that quarter divided by the number of full-time equivalent Spooners at the end of the quarter. “Revenue per full-time equivalent Spooner” for a given twelve-month period is defined as the revenue for that period divided by the average number of full-time equivalent Spooners at the end of each quarter within that period.
Given its recent acceleration, AI could soon redefine what an optimally run business looks like. We believe we’re well positioned to be at the forefront of that transition, thanks to the foundations we’ve laid. As many businesses struggle to adapt, our ability to expand the earnings of an acquired business may improve. And as AI enables us to accomplish more with fewer people, the scalability of our acquisition and transformation model should improve as well. Finally, an environment of greater uncertainty could provide opportunities for us to acquire businesses at more favorable valuations.
Unusually great
As a public company, we hope to enjoy the support of investors who share our vision and embrace our approach, just as we did as a private company. We’ve written this letter with that goal in mind.
At Bending Spoons, we implement many practices that are unusual, and we expect to adopt new ones where beneficial. The following are a few examples of practices we consider important to our success, and that not every investor will embrace:
Prioritizing talent over experience. We’ve consistently hired high-potential students and new graduates, and swiftly placed them in positions of major responsibility. Today, nearly all of our businesses and functions are led by people in their twenties or thirties, most of whom had little or no work experience prior to joining Bending Spoons. This practice requires patience and investment in coaching, but we believe it leads to higher performance in the long run.
Favoring returns over organic revenue growth. An acquisition target’s projected organic growth is embedded in our assumptions and influences the price we’re willing to pay. But we ultimately make investment decisions based on expected returns, regardless of the organic growth profile and assuming we’ll never sell the acquired business. We believe our returns-centric approach is the optimal way to compound capital.
Bringing established businesses back to startup mode. When we acquire a business, we typically restructure it significantly, often transitioning to a much smaller, more talent-dense organization. We also eliminate as many rules and processes as is feasible, while promoting greater individual responsibility and accountability. The goal is to accelerate the pace of innovation while achieving outstanding cost efficiency.
Outlook and resolution
When we started Bending Spoons, we had around $40,000 in seed capital and paid $10,000 for our first acquisition. Thirteen years later, we’re pursuing acquisitions in the billions of dollars. In March 2026, our businesses served over 500 million monthly active users [5] and more than 9 million monthly paying customers [6]. Revenue grew from $387 million in 2023 to $1.31 billion in 2025, implying a CAGR of 84% over the period.
[5] “Monthly active users” represents the users who interacted with our products during a given calendar month. Interaction is measured based on activity observed through our internal systems and may include opening an application, visiting a website, or otherwise engaging with the product’s features. We calculate the number of monthly active users for each product in our portfolio based on product-level data and then aggregate these figures across our portfolio. Because the same user may interact with multiple products, with each product associating interactions to a separate user identifier, or may interact with the same product through multiple user identifiers, and because we do not have a reliable method of de-duplication, the aggregated monthly active user figure may count the same user more than once. As such, our reported number of monthly active users is intended to provide an indication of the scale of our portfolio rather than a precise count of distinct users.
[6] “Monthly paying customers” represents the customers that generated revenue during a given calendar month, whether through a one-time transaction or by having an active subscription during that month. We calculate the number of monthly paying customers for each product in our portfolio based on product-level data and then aggregate these figures across our portfolio. Because the same customer may purchase across multiple products, with each product associating transactions to a separate customer identifier, or may transact within the same product through multiple customer identifiers, and because we do not have a reliable method of de-duplication, the aggregated monthly paying customer figure may count the same customer more than once. As such, our reported number of monthly paying customers is intended to provide an indication of the scale of our portfolio rather than a precise count of distinct customers.
As we transform AOL, Eventbrite, and Vimeo, and continue to optimize our other businesses, 2026 is shaping up to be strong. However, our focus remains on maximizing our prospects not for next quarter or even next year, but for the long run.
We see a vast opportunity ahead. We’ve identified more than 1,000 digital businesses (both private and public) that could be attractive acquisition targets in the future, representing nearly $400 billion in aggregate estimated annual revenue in 2025. With AI as a potentially powerful tailwind, we believe we’re well positioned to grow for years to come.
We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished since 2013, and are grateful for the opportunity to do so alongside such remarkable colleagues. We’re committed to developing Bending Spoons into an all-time great company, and we appreciate every investor who chooses to join us along the way.
Letter done, back to building.
On behalf of the Bending Spoons team: Luca Ferrari, co-founder and chief executive officer.
Summary, Full Bios, and Related Resources below paywall
