20VC: Inside Bending Spoons Acquisition Machine: Evernote, Eventbrite, Vimeo | How Evernote Evaluates Acquisitions and New Product Ideas | How Evernote Mastered Product Launches, User Retention and Monetisation with Federico Simionato
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
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Summary
Bending Spoons is the acquisition machine of the tech world. They have acquired the likes of Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Streamyard and more. However, they never open their gates to the secrets behind Evernote's product machine. Today that changes with Federico Simionato joining 20Product. Fede has been a Product Lead at Bending Spoons for 8 years where he has led product teams at Evernote, WeTransfer and more.
AGENDA:
03:02 From Dentist Games to $11BN Bending Spoons
04:54 Advice for Aspiring Product Managers
05:38 Building a Coveted Brand at Bending Spoons
07:43 Evaluating and Testing New Product Ideas
13:35 How Evernote has Mastered User Retention
25:24 The Impact of AI on Product Design and Prototyping
31:19 How Bending Spoons Does Product Launches and Lessons Learned
33:27 How Every Product Team Should Do Monthly Updates to Users
36:38 Recording and Transparency in Updates
38:06 Lessons from Failed Product Launches
45:14 Structuring Teams and Acquisitions
47:12 Monetization Strategies and Push Notifications
57:21 Quick Fire Round: Insights and Reflections
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is 20 Product with me, Harry Stebbings. Now 20 Product is the monthly show, where we sit down with the best product and design leaders of our time. |
| 0:08.0 | Today is a very special show. Bending Spoons is on an absolute tear. |
| 0:12.4 | Last month, they acquired Vimeo for a billion dollars. Just this week, they acquired Eventbrite for $500 million. |
| 0:18.7 | They are famed for buying the beloved Evernote previously. And today we're |
| 0:23.2 | joined by one of their product leads, Federico Simeonato. It was such a joy to have him in the studio. |
| 0:28.2 | And I think this is one of the best product episodes that we have ever done. But before we dive |
| 0:32.6 | into the show today, on this show, we care about velocity. Most teams lose it in code review, not in writing code. |
| 0:40.1 | Now, Code Rabbit fixes that. The second a PR opens, it leaves clear, line by line comments, |
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| 0:56.0 | such as cursor or clawed rules, and enforce them on every PR. Code Rabbit has so far reviewed |
| 1:02.2 | more than 13 million PRs and installed on 2 million repositories used by over 100,000 OSS projects. |
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| 1:28.3 | Code that is almost right, but you don't really understand? |
| 1:31.3 | Well, that's why Warp exists. |
| 1:33.3 | With Warp, the old lines between Terminal and IDE disappear. |
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| 1:51.9 | What tops the benchmarks, literally number one on terminal bench? |
| 1:56.0 | Top five on software engineering bench verified and is trusted by over 600,000 developers and used by 56% |
... |
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