Bending Spoons S1: How Italy's Software Acquirer Built a $20B Empire From the Discount Rack

About this episode

CJ Gustafson analyzes Bending Spoons' acquisition strategy and its impact on the software industry.

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ breaks down Bending Spoons’ F-1 filing and the acquisition machine behind AOL, Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, and more. He unpacks the company’s playbook: buy under-optimized digital businesses, transform operations, raise prices, reinvest earnings, and repeat — while asking the core question: how much was built, and how much was bought? — SPONSORS: RightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform that lets your product team ship new pricing without asking finance for permission, and your sales team close deals without creating downstream chaos. Check out their free tool at calculator.rightrev.com It scores your rev rec process, shows what's exposing you to risk, and tells you exactly where to focus before it bites you in the rear end. Check it out at https://calculator.rightrev.com Rillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the…

People in this episode

Host: CJ Gustafson

Topics covered

• software acquisition
• business transformation
• digital businesses
• financial strategy
• revenue recognition

Keywords

• Bending Spoons
• acquisition
• digital business
• financial strategy
• revenue recognition
• software industry
• business transformation

Sponsors

RightRev, Rillet

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bending Spoons, AOL, Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, EY

Products: RightRev, Rillet

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