The Bending Spoons Playbook: What Happens When Operators Buy Software
An 18.4B IPO built on buying tired software, cutting hard and holding forever. What actually transfers to consumer brands — and what does not.
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Insights
Notes from the
operating floor.
Research and working theses on consumer brands, M&A, and AI-native operations — written by the people doing the work, not a content agency.
Rocket Internet: The Clone Factory That Predicted the Holdco Era
It industrialised company-building, listed at 6.7B euros, and quietly delisted six years later. The model was right. The wrapper was wrong.
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Two Theories of Ownership: Bending Spoons vs Rocket Internet
One buys finished software and holds forever. One built companies and listed them. The comparison explains what a holding company is actually for.
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We Rebuilt Our CRM in a Weekend. The Subscription Went to Zero.
We replaced a full CRM subscription with software we built ourselves. It does more, runs faster, and is shaped around how our rep actually earns.
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Software in Freefall: When Building Beats Buying
AI collapsed the cost of building. That does not kill SaaS — but it ends the era where every workflow rented a tool at fifty dollars a seat.
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Backwards: AI Went Usage-Based While Legacy Software Went Flat-Fee
AI priced itself on consumption exactly as incumbents fled to fixed fees. Watch which vendors want to stop counting — it tells you what they see.
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The Buy-vs-Build Line Moved. Here Is Where We Draw It Now.
Building was the expensive option, so buying was the default. That default is now wrong often enough to need a real test. This is ours.
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The Vendor Audit: Killing Your Software Stack Line by Line
Most operators have never listed every recurring software charge. The exercise takes an afternoon and usually pays for itself immediately.
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Software Margins Are Coming Home
Eighty percent gross margins were always someone else’s profit sitting inside your cost line. When you build the tool, that margin moves.
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We’ll Be at Commerce Roundtable San Diego — Come Find Us
September 21–22 at Port Pavilion on Broadway Pier. Both days, no booth. If you are weighing a sale or cutting your stack, let us buy the coffee.
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Q4 2026: The Operator’s Pre-Flight Checklist
Ten weeks left to fix anything that will matter in Q4. After that you are flying the plane you built. Here is what we check in August.
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The Acquisition Box, Updated: What We’re Buying Into 2027
Our criteria tightened in three places and loosened in one. If you are thinking about selling in the next eighteen months, read this first.
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Prime Day 2026: The AI-Agent Inflection
US online sales rose 9.3% to $26.4B. Under the headline: smaller baskets, record BNPL, and AI agents converting 40% better.
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The Lean-Team Era (and How We Replaced CS With AI)
Dude Wipes does ~$250M with ~40 people. We run Canvas & Ivy customer service on AI software we built ourselves.
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3PL vs In-House: Rent the Warehouse, Own the Brain
The real fulfillment decision framework with 2026 cost benchmarks — and why the lean brands rent the warehouse.
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Owned, Overseas, or Contract Manufacturing
The three sourcing models after the 2025-26 tariff shock and the Supreme Court striking down IEEPA tariffs.
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Q3 2026 DTC Outlook by Vertical
Where the macro helps and where it hurts — the tariff cliff, 3-year-high inflation, and the trade-down consumer.
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The State of Print on Demand 2026
AI oversaturation, platform crackdowns, and the death of de minimis are killing commodity PoD. The premium version thrives.
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The Second Domino: The EU Ends De Minimis
With both the US and EU closing the loophole within a year, cross-border is now about landed-cost competence, not arbitrage.
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Spending Up, Volume Flat: The Inflation Tax
PCE hit a 3-year high while consumers kept spending — but mostly on price. Why margin is now the only safe fuel.
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Saks to 'Exemplar': Acquisition Done Wrong
Saks Global exited Chapter 11 with debt cut 75% and equity wiped out. A clinic in how not to run a roll-up.
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The Largest IPO Ever Is a Consumer Subscription Business
SpaceX IPO'd at ~$1.75T. Strip away the rockets and Starlink is a razor-and-blades DTC engine.
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Reformation's IPO Proves Profitable DTC Growth Is Real
$507M revenue, profitable since 2018, 20 straight quarters of double-digit growth. The mechanics.
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Build, Don't Buy? Internal AI Tools and the SaaS Repricing
A third of enterprises already replaced a SaaS tool with a custom AI build. The operator's decision rule.
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When Software Became a Munition: The Fable 5 Precedent
The US suspended foreign access to a commercial AI model using weapons-export law. Why operators should care.
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Shein Bought Everlane's Trust
The 'Radical Transparency' brand sold to the least transparent company in fashion. What it says about ethical DTC.
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BarkBox Hits the Subscription Ceiling
Revenue fell to $395M and the CEO says it 'fought the wrong battles.' The subscription model's reckoning.
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The Brutal Physics of Furniture DTC
A frozen housing market, 25% tariffs, the worst reverse-logistics math in retail. Who thrives, who died.
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Tariff Refunds Are Already Flowing
The Supreme Court killed the IEEPA tariffs; CBP is paying refunds with interest. The status and the accounting.
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Anatomy of Portland Leather Goods
A Portland garage to ~$128M+ with no VC and no Amazon. Give bags away, own the relationship.
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The Lampwork Operating Standard (LOS)
Our answer to the Danaher Business System: six disciplines, one cadence, installed into every brand we build or buy.
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Inside Canvas & Ivy: The Proving Ground
What a made-to-order brand run by four people taught us — and which lessons scale across a portfolio.
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The Org Chart AI Eats First
Stanford payroll data, 180M postings, platform receipts — which ecommerce roles compress, transform, or appreciate.
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$5M Per Employee: The New Scoreboard
Native did $100M with 8 people. Jolie ran 8 figures with 3. Why revenue per head now prices brands and teams.
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The Roles That Survive
Accountability, taste, relationships, atoms — the four durability properties and the five seats we pay up for.
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Anatomy of Ridge
$266K Kickstarter to ~$200M, profitably, with no investors — the agency absorption, the platform pivot, the AI compression.
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Anatomy of Simple Modern
The quiet $250M Oklahoma machine that beat Yeti's price, outlasted Stanley's craze, and built a licensing moat.
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Anatomy of Frost Buddy
Comment-section R&D, the TikTok-to-Meta pipeline, and SMS muscle — small-town Illinois to eight figures.
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BREZ: A Rocket on Rented Ground
$0 to $28M in year two — then Congress closed the hemp loophole in a shutdown bill. The full arc.
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Gray-Zone Commerce
Hemp THC, pouches, peptides — how we underwrite categories where the biggest competitor is a legislative calendar.
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Founder Mode, Tested
Olipop, David, Outdoor Voices, Peloton — two years of evidence on what founder mode means in consumer.
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The Operating Cadence
Amazon's WBR, input metrics vs output echoes, and why a real scorecard is worth basis points on your multiple.
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Profit First, Scale Second: The Operating Thesis
Validate in the market, prove the margin, then scale incredibly fast — in that order, never reversed.
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The Operator Stack: Eight Disciplines, One P&L
Growth, development, AI, finance, consumer behavior, sales — why owning every P&L discipline in-house is the whole advantage.
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The Aggregator Era: A Complete History, 2018–2026
$15B raised, thousands of brands bought, one bankruptcy wave — the complete history and what survived.
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The De Minimis Reset: Temu, Shein, and the New Import Math
The $800 loophole closed in 2025. What actually changed, with the data — and who really won.
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The DTC IPO Class Report Card: 2021–2026
Allbirds fell 99%. Warby found profit. Hims passed $2B. Five years of public unit economics, graded.
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The Post-Mortem Library: Four DTC Collapses, Three Repeating Mistakes
Thrasio, Casper, SmileDirectClub, Zulily — different funerals, same three mistakes.
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What Your DTC Brand Is Actually Worth: The 2026 Multiples Guide
Real market multiples, what moves them, and a worked example with $400K of difference in it.
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The State of DTC in 2026: Profit Is the New Growth
Retention benchmarks, AI-led discovery, and why the channel stopped being the strategy.
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When the Chatbot Does the Shopping: Zero-Click Commerce
37% of Gen Z already shops through AI assistants. The answer-engine optimization playbook.
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The $62 Billion Tollbooth: Retail Media and the Real Cost of a Customer
Three tolls on every transaction — and the only demand the tollbooth can't tax.
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Subscription DTC After the Correction: The Churn Math That Separates Winners
At 10% monthly churn you have a treadmill. At 3% you have an asset. The benchmarks and the playbook.
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What the Aggregators Got Wrong
Thrasio raised billions and bought 200 brands. The lesson is not "do not buy brands."
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SDE vs. EBITDA: The Two Languages of Small-Business Valuation
The same P&L, two earnings numbers, a quarter-million-dollar spread. The translation guide.
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Inside Our Diligence: The 40-Point Checklist We Run Before Buying
Our actual working checklist — interactive, with progress saved in your browser.
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Retention Is the New Acquisition
Sixty percent of DTC revenue comes from returning customers. The math changed; most P&Ls have not.
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Amazon vs. Your Own Store: The Real Margin Math, Line by Line
The same $60 product nets $17 or $28 depending on the channel. The full teardown.
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Tariffs and the New Landed-Cost Math: An Operator's Playbook
Landed cost became the most volatile line on the P&L. Calculating it honestly and hedging it.
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Owned Audience Economics: Why Email and SMS Still Out-Earn Everything
$36-40 back per dollar, and the rent never goes up. The full economics of the audience you own.
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AI Is an Operating Model, Not a Feature
Adding a chatbot is not a strategy. Rebuilding the operating cost curve is.
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Aggregator, Studio, Permanent Capital: Holding Company Models Compared
Five buyer species, five different clocks. The field guide every selling founder needs.
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The First 90 Days After We Buy a Brand
Stabilize, instrument, then intervene — the deliberately boring playbook that protects value.
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Cash, Earn-Outs, and Rollover: Deal Structures Explained
What the structure of an offer actually means for what you take home — with worked numbers.
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Returns: The $890 Billion Problem Nobody Wants to Own
One in six items comes back, at 20-35% of price. The orphaned P&L line and how to own it.
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What the 2030 DTC Winner Looks Like: A Forward Thesis
Every trend line extended honestly — a concrete spec sheet for the brand that wins 2030.
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When to Sell Your Brand (and When to Wait)
An honest framework from people who sit on the buy side of the table.
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