In September, a company from Milan closed its purchase of Airtable and agreed to buy Miro. Both were stars of the last startup cycle, and both are changing hands for a fraction of their peak value. The useful question for a founder is what the buyer will change in its first months. My bet is that many of those changes were within reach of the people inside for years. They waited because each one had someone inside who would lose something.

In December 2021, Airtable raised US$735 million at a US$11 billion valuation. About three weeks later, Miro raised US$400 million at US$17.5 billion.

On September 4, 2026, Bending Spoons, a Milan-based company listed on Nasdaq since July, closed its purchase of Airtable. The deal valued Airtable at about US$1.3 billion in enterprise value, or roughly US$2.25 billion including its cash, according to press reports. Six days later, Bending Spoons agreed to buy Miro for about US$1.36 billion, or roughly US$1.8 billion including cash. Miro brings around US$600 million in annual recurring revenue, nearly 90% of it from business customers. That deal is expected to close before the end of the year.

A round valuation is not a sale price, and software valuations fell across the market after 2022. So the gap is not a measure of failure. These are real businesses with customers who pay every month.

Bending Spoons is open about its method, and its record is public. When it bought WeTransfer in 2024, its CEO confirmed plans to cut about three quarters of the staff. He described the method in simple terms. The company studies what it bought and decides what it should become. Then it closes the gap as fast as it can, often including the organization.

The pattern continued this year. In April 2026, weeks after buying Eventbrite, the company said it had let go a large part of the original team. Vimeo confirmed a new round of layoffs in January 2026.

For Airtable and Miro, the official line is different. Bending Spoons says it buys companies to own and run them for the long term. For Airtable, it says it will invest heavily in the product and in customer support. Nothing has been announced about jobs at either company, so I won't guess.

Past coverage adds one detail that matters more than the layoffs. Many of the companies Bending Spoons bought were not failing. They still had users and revenue.

I can't see inside Airtable or Miro, so this is a pattern and not a diagnosis. It shows up in almost any company that raised at the peak. The plan from that round keeps running long after the market has moved. Teams were hired for it, and leaders were promoted to run its pieces. So every line in that plan now has a person whose team or budget depends on it. When the numbers change, the hard calls don't go away. They sit on the table, waiting for someone willing to pay the cost of making them.

The board was sold a growth story, and a smaller company is hard to explain at the next meeting. Each executive protects what they built, because that is what their position rewards. Nobody is acting in bad faith, and that is exactly why the decision waits. Meanwhile, the old plan keeps running.

A buyer arrives with none of that history. It didn't approve the old plan, so it loses no face by dropping it, and it owes no promotion to anyone. You can like or dislike the method. But it can look at what customers actually pay for and act on it in weeks.

I've seen the same pattern in turnarounds across very different industries.

This is not an argument for running your company like Bending Spoons. Its model works because it plans to hold companies indefinitely and doesn't need to show venture-style growth to anyone. A venture-backed company that cuts like an acquirer can end up with lower costs and no story left to raise on. The cuts also have a real human cost, and nothing here makes that smaller.

The lesson is narrower. A buyer shows you which decisions were waiting for an owner. You don't need to be acquired to find out which of yours are.

Open the plan you presented at your last raise. Write down three decisions in it that you would not make today. Next to each one, write the name of the person who would lose something if you reversed it. The decisions are usually easy to list. The names are what explain why they are still there.

Then take one of them to your next board meeting. If one of the names is yours, take that one.

— Steve

Know a founder sitting on a decision like this one? Forward it to them.

If you want this judgment in the room, there are two ways:
In-house, in a role close to the CEO (Chief of Staff, COO or Head of Strategy & Operations): just conctact me at www.mendewicz.com
Or embedded for a defined mandate, through WeVang Alliances.