The startup reaper cometh #
Tuesday. Intel’s share sale wound up totaling $20 billion instead of the expected $15 billion due to strong demand, while Nvidia is working to line up half a trillion dollars in new funding for AI hardware, Anthropic could go public as soon as September while agreeing to a massive new compute deal (again!), and OpenAI is expanding its cybersecurity collective (think Sam’s version of Project Daybreak). Are we talking about any of that today? Nope! We’re going bargain hunting in the startup bin. To work! — Alex
📈 Trending Up #
Missing the mark…Singaporean GDP…public corruption…homegrown open-weight AI models…GPT-5.6 Luna…cashing out your staff early…Hungarian democracy…sanctions…North Korean arms exports…
[📉](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html) Trending Down
[📉](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html)
Neocloud revenue? …home sales…hopes for peace in the Middle East…shipping lanes…hiding your AI usage…following Southwest Airlines…small creators…
Manifesting liquidity #
Bending Spoons, an Italian software holding company that went public earlier this year, is in a hurry. It purchased businesses worth $194 million in 2023, $876 million in 2024, $1.92 billion in 2025, and has greatly outstripped that final figure thus far in 2026. What’s more, Bending Spoons doesn’t appear ready to slow down. As it noted in its IPO filing:
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.
Reading that paragraph during Bending Spoons’ IPO buildup was one thing; reading it again after the company purchased Airtable for a song (and an IP carveout) gives it new weight. Bending Spoons is not aiming small. And with a fresh $1.7 billion from its IPO alongside access to debt, the acquirer can stay busy.
Instead of merely retiring tired, legacy brands like AOL (a place I once worked!), Bending Spoons has larger aspirations. It wants to buy chunks of annual recurring revenue (ARR) generated by software-as-a-service companies on the cheap, slash costs, and then tactically invest to ensure winsome cash generation. It’s the private equity playbook, but inside a single company, and powered by its own capital instead of pooled LP funds.
The street is rewarding Bending Spoons, asDealroom points out: Bending Spoons is worth 10.89x its trailing revenues today. Therefore, when it buys a company for, say, 1-4x ARR, it converts low-value revenue into something far more precious simply by being the acquirer.
It doesn’t matter if its targets were once venture-backed unicorns. All zombie companies taste like chicken. And there are a lot of unicorns that raised in the 2020-2022 era that are struggling to find a path forward — growing too slowly for venture interest, and too slowly to render an IPO viable. Yes, it may be that a European company provides badly needed exits for American venture capitalists, admittedly at prices that I presume are hard-boiled.
Who will Bending Spoons eat next? Airtable had ARR of $480 million and a 20% growth rate. Vimeo was barely growing at all, and had fallen into negative net-income territory despite sitting atop more than $100 million in quarterly revenue. That deal cost $1.38 billion. The Italian snapper can therefore consume multiple businesses with nine-figure revenues in rapid succession, provided the target’s growth rate is low enough to allow Bending Spoons to pick up the asset at a discount.
*Note:*None of what follows is meant to be unkind. Building a business is hard. Generating an exit is a win, not a loss.
Thanks to the prodding of an intrepid reader (who asked to remain nameless), let’s explore a few ideas for startups that may be attractive targets for Bending Spoons, based on what we know about their valuation, growth, and revenue. We’re looking for big valuations set years ago, little capital raised since, and ~nine-figure revenues paired with modest growth rates. As we’re dealing with private companies, much data is occluded; if you have more recent data from any company listed below, hit reply and send it over!
Miro (visual collaboration) Peak valuation:$17.5 billion, set by a $400 million Series C in early 2022.Last known/reported revenue mark: Reportsof $300 million in 2021, and asmuch as $600 million by 2023-2024.Why it may be a fit: Greatly accelerated by the remote-work boom, Miro has grown to material scale, and, thanks to several rounds of layoffs (2023,2024), it has already trimmed costs. No new known funding since 2022 implies that the company’s growth rate has slowed to Spoons-friendly territory.
Aircall (business communication) Peak valuation:>$1 billion, set by a $120 million Series D in mid-2021Lastknown/reportedrevenue mark:$175 millionper the company, “accelerating growth to 25% while maintaining robust profitability” in April 2025.Why it may be a fit: If your growth accelerates to 25%, it was lower before. Nine-figure ARR at an acquisition-friendly growth rate sounds like something right up Bending Spoons’ alley. That said, Aircall hasleanedheavilyinto AI agents(messaging, calling) that could make it a more expensive takeover target than its known ARR implies.
Postman (API services) Peak valuation:$5.6 billion, set during a $225 million Series D in mid-2021** Lastknown/reportedrevenue mark:** Some indications ofmore than $300 million in 2024 revenue, but data is thin.Why it may be a fit: Potential mismatch between historical valuation and more recent revenue results. A dearth of revenue and growth data for a startup of this size is odd.Why it may not be a fit: Postman isshipping, includingnew AI-native API products,support for OpenAI models on Foundry, and both use of andintegration into Anthropic’s universe.
ClickUp (productivity software) Peak valuation:$4 billion, set during a $400 million Series C in late 2021Lastknown/reportedrevenue mark:$300 million inSeptember 2025, with the company also reporting “over 400% AI Sales growth already this year and accelerating” at the time.Why it may be a fit: ClickUp is going through the ‘become an AI-native company‘ shift that we’ve seen many software companies follow. That means steep personnel cuts, which could help profitability. But at current market-clearing prices for SaaS companies, ClickUp likely has work ahead of it to grow enough to raise more capital.
Webflow (website creation) Peak valuation:$4 billion, set during a $120 million Series C in early 2022Lastknown/reportedrevenue mark: After reaching $100 million ARR in 2022, data becomes scarce. Some reports peg 2024 revenue at a little more than $200 million. Since then? During itsCEO transition, the company cited “hundreds of millions in revenue,” which doesn’t help much.Why it may be a fit: Webflowexecuted an 8% layoff in October 2025, and another round of cuts this year thatmay have been deeper. The company retooled its internal operations at the same time. In short, the company is considered to have been disrupted by AI tools that allow anyone to build a website quickly and easily.Why it may not be a fit: Webflow has a solid brand and real scale; if it can stick the ‘what comes after you build a website‘ transition it is undertaking, growth could follow. And Webflow may not want to sell until it gives its new approach a real shot.
Culture Amp (HR tech) Peak valuation:$1.5 billion, set during a $100 million Series F in mid-2021Last reported revenue mark:$159.8 million in the twelve months ending June 30, 2024.Growth continues to slow, per filings.Why it may be a fit: As with Webflow, we’ve seen a foundermove upstairs. The company cut staff in2020(after growth halved),2023,2025(greater focus on AI), and2026. A good chunk of revenue and a falling cost base could make it an attractive target.
We don’t have enough room in this newsletter to give every possible name the full treatment. Here are some other names that come to mind: Front (unicorn valuation in 2022, reached $100M ARR in 2025), **ThoughtSpot **($4.2 billion valuation in 2021, $150M ARR after an acquisition in 2023, 40% growth in 2024), **Typeform **(near unicorn valuation set in a $135M Series C, $70M 2021 ARR, reports of $100 million and >$140 million in 2023 and 2024, respectively). ProductBoard? ActiveCampaign? Outreach? Hootsuite? BigID? You can come up with more names.
We could even add public companies to our list. After all, Bending Spoons bought Vimeo while the target company was public. So, why not Asana, PagerDuty, SproutSocial, SimilarWeb, or even Dropbox? Those companies are growing at 9.5%, 1%, 11%, 10%, and 1%, respectively, per their most recent earnings reports. And you could scoop them up cheap, with the companies sporting price/sales ratios of (Yahoo Finance data) 2.71x, 2.17x, 1.24x, 2.20x, and 3.36x!
I’ve long wondered what the eventual path for stranded unicorns would be: Lingering life in slow-growth mode? Reacceleration and IPOs? A string of failures? Instead, most unicorns minted during the COVID-era boom appear to be sticking it out. Enter Bending Spoons’ checkbook.