Private Equity, But for the App Economy

 

Private Equity, But for the App Economy

Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari, right, with Federico Simionato, Evernote’s product lead. Photographer: Alessandro Grassani for Bloomberg Businessweek Phil Libin, the co-founder of Evernote, was no longer managing the business by 2022, but he remained an attentive investor and still used the note-taking app every day. He knew that Evernote was stagnating and that its bosses were entertaining buyout interest. The acquirer, he learned, was a Milan-based company he’d never heard of called Bending Spoons SpA. “Frankly,” Libin says, “I didn’t have any expectations.” Several other entrepreneurs have gone through similar experiences since. Bending Spoons is like a new kind of private equity firm for the app store generation. Since buying Evernote last year, Bending Spoons has snapped up five other companies. That includes Dutch file-sharing service WeTransfer, which had shelved plans for an initial public offering that would have valued the company at €716 million ($800 million) just a couple of years before its sale, and the assets of Meetup, a bankrupt events-listing business that briefly belonged to WeWork Inc. Bending Spoons has been around for a little more than a decade, and for most of its life, the bulk of its financing came from Italian investors and loans from local banks. But in recent years it’s raised hundreds of millions of dollars from international tycoons and celebrities, including Ryan Reynolds, Andre Agassi and Abel Tesfaye, aka the Weeknd. Investors valued the company at $2.6 billion this year, making it one of Europe’s most valuable technology startups. As an acquirer, Bending Spoons has a type: distressed businesses with a steady cash flow that sell subscription software. Then it brings in twentysomething coders and data scientists in Italy who add features and sometimes push the limits of what subscribers will pay. To set these apps on a new path, the company often fires the employees it inherited. That’s pretty much what happened with Evernote, writes Mark Bergen. For more about that acquisition and Bending Spoons’ playbook, read: Private Equity Hipsters Are Coming for Your Favorite Apps

e-readers have buttons

 

10-20-2024TECH

Bye, Kindle: 3 companies whose e-readers have actual buttons

These Amazon Kindle alternatives have terrifically tactile physical buttons for turning pages.

[Photo: F. Zimmermann/Adobe Stock]

BY DOUG AAMOTH1 MINUTE READ

Boy, is my wife mad at Amazon for killing off the wonderful Oasis line of premium Kindle e-book readers. I, too, am upset—she’s due for an upgrade and the holidays are right around the corner.

She likes the Oasis’s buttons—the physical, tangible, clicky-clacky, tried-and-true buttons for turning pages. Amazon says they’re going all in on “touch-forward” devices—i.e. no more buttons.

Fortunately in today’s touchscreen-dominated world, a few brave e-reader manufacturers continue to champion the tactile experience of physical page-turn buttons.

Here are some of the unsung heroes keeping the tradition alive.

BARNES & NOBLE

Despite facing stiff competition in the e-reader market, Barnes & Noble has consistently included physical buttons in its Nook line of devices.

The latest offerings from the GlowLight series of e-readers start at $150 and incorporate modern features like adjustable color temperature and USB-C charging. And buttons, of course. 

Being a bookseller, Barnes & Noble offers a huge variety of downloadable content from its store. If you’re worried about missing out on the ease of downloading books to your Kindle, you’ll feel right at home here.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Doug Aamoth is a former writer and editor at TechCrunch and TIME Magazine, and has written for Fast Company, PCWorld, MONEY Magazine, and several other publications. With more than 20 years in consumer electronics, tech media, digital video, and software, his goal is to make technology approachable and useful for everyone, helping readers stay informed, productive, and secure in the digital age. More

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EXPLORE TOPICS

• AMAZON KINDLE
• BARNES AND NOBLE
• BOOX
• KOBO
• NOOK

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