than pioneering technology startups. Italy is home to just two unicorns, private companies worth over $1bn, compared with 37 for Germany and 33 for France. At the end of the first day of trading, Bending Spoons’ market capitalisation surged to $26bn, making it Italy’s most valuable tech firm. As for many Silicon Valley startups, Bending Spoons’ path to success started with failure. In 2010 Mr Ferrari, Matteo Danieli and Francesco Patarnello, recent engineering graduates, decided to develop Evertale, an app designed to create a log of users’ activities. The digital diary was a dud, failing to attract users. But the trio tried again. With their last $40,000 they set up Bending Spoons along with Luca Querella, a fourth co-founder. The failure helped them settle on a business model. Bending Spoons buys and fixes ailing digital companies which already have a decent product and a loyal customer base. It operates as a hybrid of a private-equity (pe) investor and a tech firm. Like a pe firm it slashes cost aggressively with job cuts, in some cases firing a company’s entire staff and just holding on to the underlying technology. Another way it lowers costs is by sharing some expenses with other companies in its portfolio, such as research and development. It also switches talented “Spooners” from one firm to another. It aims for an ambitious annualised return on capital of 25%. As the firm has grown, it has bought bigger names. The largest acquisition came earlier this year when it snapped up AOL, an American internet pioneer, for $1.5bn. That follows its purchase of Eventbrite and Vimeo, a video-steaming platform, for $500m and $1.4bn respectively. It has become a tech conglomerate, encompassing 50 companies. Ten of them created 80% of the revenue (mainly through subscriptions), which grew from $387m in 2023 to $1.3bn last year. Will Bending Spoons become a darling of the public markets? One worry that critics have is its borrowing, which it has used to fuel acquisitions. Total debt stands at $4.4bn, over six times its annualised operating profits (before depreciation and amortisation) from the first quarter of 2026. This compares with an average of two for Nasdaq-listed firms. Another concern is that many tech firms it buys are under threat from generative AI. That fear has contributed to the share price of Constellation Software, a similar tech conglomerate based in Toronto, falling by nearly half over the past year.
Even so, investors seem undeterred. Plenty of big names, such as Eric Schmidt, a former boss of Google, have backed the firm. “It’s not only the strategy that is impressive, but the quality of execution,” says Peter Singlehurst of Baillie Gifford, a Scottish asset manager and another investor. Mr Ferrari will now have to convince a whole new set of investors of Bending Spoons’ magic. If not, his shake-up may end up looking more like a shake-out. ■ To track the trends shaping commerce, industry and technology, sign up to “The Bottom Line”, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter on global business. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//business/2026/07/01/can-bending-spoons-thrive-as-a- listed-company
Indonesia gives its best-known entrepreneur a decade in jail The technology giant he built is being yanked around by the state July 2nd 2026 When Nadiem Makarim joined Indonesia’s government in 2019 as minister for education and culture, the then 35-year-founder of Gojek, a ride-hailing app and Indonesia’s first unicorn, promised to move fast and break things. It has not ended well. On June 30th an Indonesian court sentenced Mr Nadiem to ten years in prison on corruption charges (he had pleaded not guilty). He must also pay 810bn rupiah ($45m) in restitution, or face more five years. Speaking outside the courtroom, Mr Nadiem said he did not have the sum, “and [the judges] know it”. In government, Mr Nadiem—a graduate of Harvard University and ex- McKinsey consultant—led a pandemic-era push to digitise schools, focusing
on poor, rural areas, to improve patchy textbook distribution. For this the education ministry bought some 3trn rupiah of Chromebooks, cheap laptops using Google software. It would prove to be his downfall. Prosecutors accused him of a quid pro quo with the search giant. Influenced by Google’s investments in Gojek, the court found that Mr Nadiem pushed his ministry to buy Chromebooks at inflated prices, resulting in 2.1trn rupiah in state losses, nearly half of which prosecutors accused him of siphoning off. The fact that the laptops need steady internet connections, a rarity in rural Indonesia, showed Mr Nadiem’s ulterior motives, they argued. He tried to make “Google the sole controller of the education ecosystem in Indonesia,” prosecutors said. (Google denies any such scheme.) The prosecutors’ case seems riddled with holes. The estimated 2.1trn rupiah loss was not calculated using the market price of Chromebooks. Instead, it relies on a dubious calculation that assumes suppliers marked up prices by 15%, based on a survey of private distributors. The slapdash prosecution reflects the range of enemies Mr Nadiem made overseeing education, a corrupt sector. Known for a hard-charging management style, Mr Nadiem now admits he paid too little attention to his political standing while in office. The shoddy trial will contribute to a deteriorating business environment in Indonesia. In an interview with The Economist during the trial, Mr Nadiem warned of a chilling effect for Indonesian entrepreneurs. The verdict comes as regulatory uncertainty is rising. Consider Gojek. Renamed GoTo after a 2021 merger with Tokopedia, an e-commerce site, the company is now subject to erratic policies. For instance, a plan to cap ride-hailing commissions at 8% (down from 20%) took effect on July 1st, just two months after its surprise announcement. But whether the new rules on two- wheelers apply to four-wheeled rides as well is still unclear. Once positioned as a rare national tech champion, GoTo’s stock now languishes at Indonesia’s legal stock-price floor of 50 rupiah. Soon, its founder will languish in jail. ■ To track the trends shaping commerce, industry and technology, sign up to “The Bottom Line”, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter on global
business. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//business/2026/07/02/indonesia-gives-its-best-known- entrepreneur-a-decade-in-jail
The Toddyssey You could read Homer. You could see the film. Or you could just go to the office July 2nd 2026 Speak, O Muse, of that resourceful man who had to find time in the meeting- filled calendars of several co-workers for a new council. This council was to happen on a fortnightly basis, ideally on a Monday morning, but that was a very common time for other councils to be held. Todd, for such was his name, had examined the meeting-filled calendars of his colleagues and realised that the only time when everyone was free was at rosy-fingered Dawn, but this wasn’t an option because some people had to get the kids ready for school. Todd dispatched swift-footed invitations to all the participants, explaining that his council was the most important council of all and that he would be
grateful if they made time for it in their meeting-filled calendars. He immediately got a swift-footed email back from the shiny-headed Harold, who declined his invitation and suggested another time that suited him better. Moira of the tattooed arms quickly rejected Harold’s alternative proposal, and suggested a time of her own. The studiously courteous Violet followed suit, as did several others. Each one of them put forward a slot that no one else could make. Several hours passed in this way. The resourceful Todd wondered if he could schedule his council on Tuesday instead but the calendars were meeting- filled on those days, too. Just then he received a message from many- windowed Microsoft, the god of interruptions, to say that his communications device was missing several critical security updates and would need to be “rebooted”. The crafty Todd attempted to ignore many- windowed Microsoft’s messages, but the god was insistent and shut down what he was working on without any warning. The cunning Todd attempted to work on another communications device he carried with him, but he found his way barred by Okta, a malevolent creature who lived in a cloud and asked everyone she encountered for a password. One of Okta’s most grotesque features was a single eye; when the devious Todd clicked on it, he found he could see what he was typing. But that didn’t help because he could not remember his password anyway, and the mean-spirited Okta told him that he had to go to the IT department to be humbled. The resourceful Todd descended into the earth to the IT department’s kingdom, where Rufus of the pallid complexion told him that he could not ask for help in person and had to send a request by email. The artful Todd said that he was locked out of his device and so he could not send an email, but Rufus of the pallid complexion just laughed. So the patient Todd returned to his paper-strewn desk and waited until his original communications device had been given its fine new boots. When he was able to work again, he found more swift-footed messages about his fortnightly council, all of them proposing new times that did not suit any other co-worker. But the resourceful Todd was not to be cowed, and