Bending Spoons buying Miro for $1.355B

https://investors.bendingspoons.com/newsroom/bending-spoons-agrees-to-acquire-miro

27•andygcook•45m ago

Comments

tencentshill•38m ago

Is that financed by all the other companies they extract from?

tehlike•24m ago

Partially, but why is that a problem?

zipy124•17m ago

They are heavily debt financed I believe, almost $5 billion worth last I checked.

denverllc•6m ago

So they really are like the Private Equity of the software world.

DidntUseIt•23m ago

Tried Miro once.

Wasn’t a whiteboard replacement.

Wasn’t design software.

Wasn’t a PM tool.

Even when the Miro power users would bust it out in meetings, it was always so painful to watch.

I don’t know what the point of Miro really was. There was a time Figma was doing something similar (FigJam), so maybe there was a trend for a sec.

No idea why or how it’s worth over a billion dollars.

Anyone reading this going “Noooo not Miro!!!” ?

ricardobeat•19m ago

It was a great whiteboarding tool for teams. Planning, research, meetings, standups etc. IMO they tried to cater to too many use cases at once, missed the AI train, and focused too hard on enterprise, which hurt the product a lot.

saberience•18m ago

I personally loved Miro, probably one of the best design tools I've ever used.

My old company used it across the board for basically, everything. Engineering flow diagrams, UI prototyping, team retrospectives.

I personally often used it for creating diagrams that I would later insert into slide decks.

It was basically a swiss-army knife type tool which could be applied in so many situations.

Deeply saddened that it's going to Bendingspoons, where companies go to die.

tomwphillips•18m ago

Yeah, me. I've used it every day for years. With a hybrid/remote team it is a fantastic alternative to a physical whiteboard. Whole team uses it.

I don't care for or use any of the AI features.

I hope the price doesn't go up dramatically.

senko•18m ago

> Wasn’t a whiteboard replacement.

> Wasn’t a PM tool.

I know a lot of people who used it for one or both of these. Also for architecture/system design (ie. not UI - although I guess some used it for user journey or wireframing).

0xbadcafebee•16m ago

There are a whole lot of people out there who use Miro for all of their documentation, planning, troubleshooting, etc, in multiple roles. It's a primary tool for many people, like a word processor/sheets/slides on steroids. And the moat they have makes it nearly impossible to take your data elsewhere. It is very entrenched.

Never underestimate what other people find useful that you do not.

senko•17m ago

Bending Spoons is on a buying spree!

Miro acquired my startup back in '21[0], so this is bittersweet as our users will be (eventually) affected by this. Founders and employees at Miro definitely deserve to cash out for their hard work and it's unclear (ie. not publicly known) if they will since this is a 10x down round.

Also weird that they had to sell - they were one of the most established (visual) collaboration platforms out there. I'd be keen on learning about the inside story if it ever gets public.

BS is known for aggressive management of companies they acquire, optimizing for cash flow and revenue, firing most/all of the original team, etc. Their acquisitions before Miro include Airtable, Eventbrite, AOL, Vimeo, Meetup, Evernote ... for at least a few of those, my direct experience with the product afterwards or in chats with their users, the platforms does get enshittified.

Hope that's not a deal here.

[0] https://blog.senko.net/the-story-of-a-web-whiteboard

camillomiller•17m ago

Another dead tool whose users will be sucked dry. Vampire equity at is best

tnolet•15m ago

Overheard: "The Italian exit"

adamas•12m ago

As a Miro user (by force): why?

VladVladikoff•8m ago

>by force

Seems like you answered your own question. Obviously there are customers and a revenue stream (I don’t even know what micro is).

0gs•9m ago

is the $100K ARR quote a typo?

deadbunny•9m ago

Can they just buy Atlassian.

pjm331•7m ago

miro is my go-to for putting together diagrams for slide decks, but after having tried using it to actually work on things a few times, i've just come to the conclusion that actually virtual whiteboards are a bad UX for most things, inevitably you spend more time organizing the board than actually getting work done

elAhmo•5m ago

BS is slowly but steadily growing their userbase. Knowhing how did it go for their other purchases, of which I was using many (Komoot, Eventbrite, Meetup), not a single one has avoided constant nags of prompting for upgrades and dark patterns, so this will most likely end up in a similar way.

As many share, I used Miro and found it quite nice.