Over the last 48 hours, there have been several rumours circulating online about Bending Spoons’ possible listing on the stock exchange, after Corriere della Sera broke the news. The strategy implemented so far by the Italian player would consist of being a multi-product and multi-market software house, having acquired giants in completely different sectors such as Evernote, WeTransfer, Meetup, Vimeo and StreamYard.
The economic fundamentals appear to be holding steady until the first half of 2025: revenues have doubled to €524 million, with adjusted EBITDA of 50.4%.
The rumours would be confirmed by the debt incurred through M&A (between venture capital and loans, the company has raised nearly $5 billion to date) and pressure from investors expecting a return on their investment. This is why an IPO would be the perfect solution for the Italian company.
If these rumours were to become reality sooner or later, the potential valuation, which is said to be between $10 billion and $30 billion, would allow it to enter Wall Street’s S&P 500 index. For everyone, this would mean that it would no longer be the pride of Italy, but of America.
The reaction on the web obviously continues to be polarising between the usual apocalyptic and integrated camps, i.e. between those who still question its business model because it lacks a clear ethical vision – citing the number of staff redundancies and those possible for each company acquired so far (around 1,300 already and, according to news reports a few hours ago, 100% of Vimeo) – and those who defend the authority and seniority of five young men, the founders, who ultimately succeeded and finally managed to realise the dream of the first Silicon Valley wannabes: indeed, in the polarisation, some argue that Bending Spoons is the new entrepreneurial model that many young Italians can be inspired by and follow the same dream and path, so as to create new Italian tech companies capable of finally scaling European and international markets.
Until now, many players in the Italian tech scene have wondered what an Italian model might look like, or whether there even is one, similar or different from the American model, to promote in a country that seems to be more of an economy struggling to keep up than a G7 nation. A few years ago, in his essay ‘Eppur si innova’ (And yet we innovate), Luca De Biase also attempted to outline a context: on the historical, cultural, political and economic mosaic of our country, he stated that ‘for those seeking the reasons for Italian innovation, it is important to note that where Italians manage to create a system’, citing certain regions, ‘there is a sort of transmission of knowledge acquired by the most virtuous companies and their ability to give back to their territories’. This pattern could counterbalance all those who share the same vision as the CEO of Klarna, who some time ago praised his artificial intelligence, stating: ‘It can replace 700 people’, which is the same number of employees he laid off. Do these tech companies really only care about business, because they are justified by being private companies in a capitalist market, finding it difficult to do business in countries or continents that are too regulated and taxed? Or is it simply an abandonment of the social implications of the concept of enterprise, so well represented by Adriano Olivetti in Italian history, in order to focus solely on financial returns?
Today, there is a pan-European grassroots initiative, Eu Inc, which aims to break down these political and bureaucratic barriers in order to innovate and compete more quickly and freely. Just a few hours ago, European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen proposed a ’28th regime’ at the World Economic Forum in Davos to boost European competitiveness.
But ultimately, why draw inspiration from American models when they are proving to be flawed? To date, there is not a single big tech company that has not been involved in a scandal or legal proceedings. The latest involves Elon Musk’s xAI Grok, which is alleged to have contributed to child abuse. In this regard, it was reported a few hours ago that the European Commission is considering banning AI apps that allow users to ‘undress’ people without their knowledge, thereby violating their privacy and security.
Today, Bending Spoons represents precisely that unique strong point, beyond any hypocrisy. So all the media hype about the pros and cons of ‘champions’ and ‘role models’ would concern the existence of a parallel mosaic shattered by an ‘ethical breakdown’ (quoting Paolo Benanti), continuously remodelled by the ‘figital’ (De Biase), and driven by a constant fear of the ‘ghosts’ that always lurk around new discoveries and revolutions (Stefano Moriggi and Mario Pireddu – Artificial Intelligence and its Ghosts), as opposed to the excessive importance we are giving to new technologies, which have now entered our homes (Massimo Sideri and Andrea Principe – ‘ The Cybernetic Viscount’)?
Perché abbiamo paura dei campioni?
We wanted to ask one of the key players on the Italian scene, who is very active in the capital, at conferences and online in promoting and explaining tech entrepreneurship and venture capital: Gianmarco Carnovale.
Is there an Italian model, or is it better to talk about Italian models?
In my opinion, we should never talk about local or national models, especially in tech and digital entrepreneurship, but only about competitive advantages and evidence, operating in line with what international investor networks expect. We must play by the rules, within a framework of known, codified and, above all, widely shared rules, otherwise we will not be able to compete with big finance and will remain small. To play by the rules, we must start by learning the rules, the objectives of the game, by studying.
Should we still draw inspiration from one or more models, or is it time to rethink our ideas and develop a method for creating start-ups and innovation?
First of all, we need to understand what sport we are talking about: if we are talking about innovative, scalable businesses with global potential, we are playing within the global network of start-up ecosystems, and in that league, there is only one model: international startup and venture capital practices. These, mind you, are not a religion set in stone, nor are they laws: they are simply a pragmatic application, a continuous Darwinian adaptation, an evolutionary reshaping of behaviours around what works best in combining human capital and financial capital, around opportunities to redefine sectors and consumption models made possible by technological advances, generating new wealth. This adaptation has been refined in the US for almost sixty years and in the UK and Nordic countries for almost thirty. We are the children in the room: we started looking at innovative companies fifteen years ago and taking them seriously five years ago, and we still have a lot to learn and acquire many concepts that diverge radically from the doctrine of traditional entrepreneurship and finance. The difficulty in Italy stems from the conviction that any new business should be called a ‘start-up’, any growing business a ‘scale-up’, and any player that appropriates the term because it reaches a billion in value or even just announces it, as if this were a point of arrival, a ‘unicorn’. Above all, it is profoundly wrong to try to lower the ambition of venture business, which is an investment model based on very clear and scientific risk/return ratios, making it too similar to small-scale private equity simply because it falls within the comfort zone of investors who come from traditional finance and reject the principles on which venture capital bases its success. Children in the room, who do not study and are also presumptuous and assertive.
What do you think about this likely IPO of Bending Spoons and the debate that has arisen, especially regarding the staff cuts that have been made public so far?
The first thing I am certain of, looking back at their steps and putting them in order, is that Bending Spoons has been following a path towards an IPO for years: everything they have done, starting with the visibility strategy they pursued during the pandemic when they created the Immuni app for the government free of charge, was part of a plan based on acquisitions and optimisations of old tech with high-sounding names but now lacking in growth, and on brand awareness based on official press releases, leaks and clearly deliberate press rumours, and on the construction of an inspirational image. I find it all very well executed, textbook and flawless, with only one sour note: they try to characterise themselves as a tech company using the rhetoric of start-ups, scale-ups, and unicorns, because it generates more buzz and better multiples on the stock market. But the reality is that Bending Spoons is neither a scaleup nor a unicorn, and I don’t think it has ever been a start-up in the sense understood by our industry: they started out as a multi-product digital agency, releasing multiple apps that they were good at monetising, and as such never had the characteristics of a start-up. Then they grew with financing that was mainly debt, used for acquisitions, and a portion of private capital that came from family offices, hedge funds, and private equity, but not from venture capital. The type of financing they channelled says everything about the fact that they are not a unicorn, a definition that applies exclusively to companies that reach a billion in valuation with venture capital investments, and says a lot about what they really are: a large private equity vehicle specialising in digital business, which makes acquisitions, restructures and optimises costs to increase the profitability of acquisitions. They are very good at this, which is why they are attracting increasing amounts of funding, and an IPO is the natural destination for their journey. I don’t see anything strange in doing so, and since the NYSE is the best market to list on in order to generate maximum profit for their investors, it is quite obvious that they will ‘flip’, as they say in jargon, into a US company. I don’t think this will have any negative impact on Italy: they already have a headquarters here that is essentially their main business unit employing project managers, developers and marketers (pictured is the Bending Spoons headquarters in Milan), and a flip in the US will create an overarching legal entity to be listed that will have US compliance, market reporting and taxation of any dividends. But from an operational point of view, I think little will change; they will continue to operate from Italy and hire in Italy. If you ask me whether Bending Spoons is a ‘model’ for Italy to follow, I would say that it can be in the private equity sector, where there are numerous opportunities for turnaround and consolidation of medium-sized companies. But it is certainly not a model for Italian venture business and tech, where the aim must be to create new companies that develop and grow successful innovative solutions, among which we will hopefully find the industrial champions and major employers of the coming decades.
What awaits us in 2026?
In 2026, we will not see many changes in terms of start-ups and venture capital: there will be slow qualitative and quantitative growth in investments, thanks to the better definition of the start-up register implemented with last year’s Scaleup Act and the push for pension savings to enter the sector. However, the results will come mainly thanks to the cultural growth brought about by new founders and investors, who have studied and often returned from working abroad, and who are spreading the correct approach to innovative entrepreneurship and fundraising on the one hand, and the right ways to evaluate opportunities in the pre-seed, seed, and early stages on the investment side. We are facing a phase of maturation that lays a more solid foundation for growth, which will be important to nurture for years to come, reaching the exits produced by the first investments of recent years, without worrying too much about the stock of bad investments that were made in the immature stages of the sector. In Italy, we should see some regulatory refinements that should eliminate bottlenecks, and then by the end of the year, I believe we will have the implementation of the 28th European company regime, which will be the real game changer: the standardisation of company law in the European Union, if accompanied by a continental technology stock exchange, could lead in a few years to a serious alternative to IPOs in the United States.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©