From Immuni to Evernote: Here’s Why Bending Spoons Bought the Unicorn of Digital Notes
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An Italian company that buys an American company, moreover from Silicon Valley, always makes the news, let alone these days. Bending Spoons, the software house that made the headlines two years ago for having developed the Immuni application for tracking Covid in our country, an application subsequently entrusted (free of charge and under perpetual license) to the management of Sogei, accomplished the feat and PagoPA. The company acquired, for an amount that has not been disclosed (the agreement will be finalized at the beginning of 2023) is Evernote, a popular app for taking notes via smartphone which in 2012 (four years after the launch of the app and thanks upon entering the shareholding structure of the Sequoia, Meritech Capital and Nikkei funds) has been able to reach the status of unicorn, reaching a billion dollar capitalization value. The assets that pass under the Italian flag consist of approximately 100 million dollars of recurring revenues, millions of paying customers (out of the approximately 250 million total users) and something like 11 billion notes created using the tools of a platform which, in words of the CEO and co-founder of the Milanese startup, Luca Ferrari, “fits perfectly into the Bending Spoons portfolio”.
The missed leap forward of 2020
“While ownership is changing, our commitment to keeping your data safe and secure remains steadfast, the Evernote you know will continue to be there, and the decision to accept Bending Spoons’ offer represents the next strategic step in our journey to become an extension of your brain…. and allows us to take advantage of their proven app expertise and broad range of proprietary technologies.” With a post on the official blog, the CEO of the Sunnyvale company, Ian Small, tried for his part to reassure the community of users (as well as investors) on the goodness of the partnership with the Italian startup and sponge on the alleged loss of appeal of the app (available in free form and with a paid version) due to increasingly fierce competition. In short, the declared objective appears to be that of relaunching the platform, overcoming the impasse of an evidently lackluster cash situation (the massive redesign of the app which took place in 2020 and the collaboration started with Moleskine did not help to reverse the trend) and continue a path of technological development which has recently seen the release of several new features. Bending Spoons, according to insiders, will have the task of adding further features, starting with the one (recently released in beta) that allows multiple people to edit notes simultaneously (and a single person to edit the same note on different devices) for future support for Microsoft Office 365 calendars.
From trivia games to the 340 million round
It is considered today one of the most important players in the world of app development at European level, it has solutions such as the video editing suite Splice and the photo editing tool based on artificial intelligence Remini in its curriculum, but there is no doubt that Bending Spoons owes the its popularity among the general public at Immuni. In fact, it was April two years ago, in full lockdown, when the Italian government entrusted the Milanese company with the task of creating the contact tracing app to counter the spread of the Coronavirus. To go back to the foundation date of the startup, which took place in Copenhagen, it is instead necessary to go back seven years, to 2013, while the decision of the five founders (four Italians) to transfer the activities to Italy, to Milan, with the ambitious intent to bring revolutionary products to the market. Hence the birth of successful apps (especially for iOS) such as Live Quiz and 30 Day Fitness, quickly overcoming the barrier of 10 million monthly active users worldwide (today we are at 90 million, with about 500 million downloads of its applications) and become very attractive to investors. After the entry of H14 (family office already a shareholder of Fininvest), of the Asian fund NUO Capital and of StarTip, TIP Group, last September the closing of a 340 million dollar round subscribed by Intesa Sanpaolo, Banco Bpm, Cherry Bay Capital and other important operators in the Italian and international financial world. Now the new bet to win is called Evernote.
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