85% of Komoot staff being let go after being sold to Bending Spoons

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/05/komoot-team-goodbye.html

by sorenjan • 1 year ago

5 4 1 year ago

k310• 1 year ago

Holy Cow. Bending Spoons acquired Evernote and fired 100% of its U.S. staff.

As is the case with virtually all Bending Spoons acquisitions, they promptly fire almost all (if not all) the staff within a few weeks. That happened here as well, with roughly 85% of the staff being let go within the first two weeks, upwards of about 150 people. Generally speaking, the operation profile of Bending Spoons post-acquisition is to raise prices with minimal feature updates, focusing more on the long-term gravy train.

I suppose that some people think of software as something you can basically freeze and sell as a cash cow. So sad to see small companies go away. Lacking details, SOMEONE cashed in, and a lot of people are cut loose. The hope is that they find decent work for decent companies that aren't just flipped.

sorenjan• 1 year ago

They claimed that the sale was because they wanted to scale it "to the next level" and "go from strength to strength for many years to come". I guess the best way of doing that is to fire the people building it.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/03/komoot-acquired-history-...

BLKNSLVR• 1 year ago

I would hope that, in cases like this, a number of employees that have access to the source code bring it with them to allow the setup of a competitor.

I'm aware this probably crosses various copyright and other boundaries in law, but these kinds of acquisitions need to have something that pushes back against them. I believe they're a net negative for society and society is meant to be setup to have disincentives for behaviour that results in net negatives.

Ultimately, what appears to be Bending Spoons' strategy should be disallowed by law. At least some time frame like a vesting schedule whereby at least x% of employees must be retained for y amount of time.

Might seriously slow down acquisitions, but that won't cause me any sleepless nights.

b3ing• 1 year ago

They own meet up, doubled the price and added features that do nothing to help groups like paying to see who attends a group, who cares, it was free to know before. Yet finding groups isn’t easy, they focus on events and hide the group info. But it’s all about the group not the event, people need to know what the group is about otherwise it’s just a damn calendar

85% of Komoot staff being let go after being sold to Bending Spoons

Related Stories