Getting into Harvard is easier than getting hired at Bending Spoons.

The Milan-based technology company, which acquired AOL in January, revealed in regulatory filings tied to its July 1 Nasdaq debut that it hired just 286 people in 2025 from roughly 800,000 job applications—an acceptance rate of about 0.04%. That’s about one hire for every 2,800 applicants, making it one of the most selective employers in the technology industry.

The statistic quickly became one of the most talked-about disclosures from the company’s IPO. While most employers are trying to fill openings, Bending Spoons has built its business around hiring only a tiny number of people and using technology, acquisitions and artificial intelligence to multiply what each employee can accomplish.

Chief Executive Luca Ferrari, 41, co-founded the company in 2013 after an earlier startup, Evertale, failed, leaving him and his partners with about $40,000. Today, the company employs only about 620 people, known internally as “Spooners,” despite owning some of the internet’s best-known brands.

Getting hired is deliberately difficult. Applicants go through résumé screenings, timed problem-solving and behavioral assessments that the company says “might not even appear strictly related to the role,” followed by multiple interviews. Every final hiring decision is made by a committee rather than an individual manager, a process Bending Spoons says is designed to reduce bias and reward problem-solving ability over pedigree. Applicants who are turned down must wait a full year before applying again.

Ferrari describes the company as “the best of both worlds of Berkshire Hathaway and a technology company,” and elsewhere as roughly one-quarter private equity firm and three-quarters technology company. Its strategy is straightforward: acquire widely used subscription apps that have stalled, rebuild the underlying technology with a lean engineering team, reduce costs and often increase subscription prices.

That formula has reshaped several well-known brands. Evernote, acquired for $200 million in 2023, raised the price of its annual subscription from $100 to $249. Users of Vimeo and WeTransfer have seen similar increases. The company’s growing portfolio now includes AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Brightcove, Meetup, WeTransfer, Evernote and the AI-powered photo app Remini. Together, those platforms reach more than 500 million monthly users and approximately 9 million paying subscribers.

The hiring story looks very different for employees who join through acquisitions rather than applying directly. Bending Spoons said it inherited 1,830 full-time employees through its acquisitions of AOL, Eventbrite and Vimeo, but expects only a few hundred will remain once those companies are fully integrated later this year. The company recorded $78.6 million in reorganization costs during 2025 as part of those workforce reductions. The contrast is striking: extraordinarily difficult to join as a Spooner, yet many employees acquired through corporate deals ultimately don’t remain.

The strategy is paying off financially. Revenue generated per Spooner climbed from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025, a jump the company partly attributes to artificial intelligence. Overall revenue reached $1.31 billion in 2025, while the first quarter of 2026 produced $601 million in revenue and $27.5 million in net income, compared with a $112 million loss during the same period a year earlier.

Investors have largely embraced the story. Bending Spoons priced its IPO at $29 per share, above the expected $26-to-$28 range, raising approximately $1.68 billion and valuing the company at about $18.4 billion. Shares surged after the debut, briefly pushing its market value above $25 billion, before settling back. The stock has recently traded around $33 per share, giving the company a market value of roughly $20 billion, down from an intraday high near $44. The company’s acquisition spree has been financed heavily with debt, leaving about $6 billion on its balance sheet.

The four co-founders who continue to lead the company—Luca Ferrari, Matteo Danieli, Francesco Patarnello and Luca Querella—became paper billionaires through the IPO while retaining more than 80% of the company’s voting power.

Ferrari has never hidden his philosophy. “If someone wants to see nothing change, we’re not a good buyer,” he has said of companies Bending Spoons acquires. And the acquisition pipeline isn’t slowing down. The company reviewed more than 2,500 potential acquisition targets in 2025, closely evaluated about 200, completed six deals and says it has identified more than 1,000 additional companies that could eventually become acquisition candidates.

For today’s labor market, Bending Spoons offers a glimpse of where some executives believe technology is heading: a $20 billion company powered by only a few hundred carefully selected employees, using acquisitions and artificial intelligence to produce more with fewer people. Whether that model becomes the future of work remains to be seen, but one statistic already stands out—286 hires from 800,000 applicants.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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