Bending Spoons buys Miro

Bending Spoons, the Italian SaaS roll-up specialist, is officially acquiring Miro for $1.355 billion in cash.

Miro is best known as the virtual whiteboarding tool that blew up during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. As TechCrunch reports, Miro went from 5 million users in 2020 to 30 million in 2022. At its peak, Miro held a private market valuation of $17.5 billion.

The buzz may have worn off of Miro, but it’s remained a key part of the workflow for millions of remote and hybrid workers: Today, Miro says that it has 4 million paying users and 100 million total users, with the vast majority coming from the enterprise. Over the years, Miro reinvented itself around AI, bringing context from sources like Slack or Jira to help people work together.

RWN’s Take

Miro’s continued success is a testament to the demand for better tools to support remote work. A simple concept – a virtual whiteboard that workers can use to collaborate with their colleagues – has grown into a product that people love and a sustainable business.

For its part, Bending Spoons has increased its investment in SaaS, as it’s snapped up enterprise-grade tools like Airtable and Vimeo. Miro will join a portfolio that also includes brands like AOL, Eventbrite, and Evernote.

At the same time, Miro customers should probably be a little wary about this deal: Bending Spoons has a reputation for dramatically cutting headcount at the companies it acquires, even as it raises prices tremendously. Longtime fans of note-taking app Evernote, for example, chafed at entry-level subscription prices rising by as much as 900% under Bending Spoons’ ownership, pushing power users to search for more affordable alternatives.

It’s a reminder that independence can be a significant virtue when selecting a vendor to help your remote workers collaborate and get more done.