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Ferrari: Bending Spoons Attempted to Acquire Grindr in 2019 but Was Outbid

Luca Ferrari · The Playbook on Buying and Running Companies Forever · Invest Like The Best · Nov 4, 2025 · at 49:11

Luca Ferrari is the co-founder and CEO of Bending Spoons. He shares lessons from failed past acquisition bids.

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“We actually went after a grinder The LGBTQ plus dating app in 2019. So the app was owned by a Chinese firm and Sifuse was forcing it to sell. It was a big bite for us at the time. We're much smaller. It would have quadrupled the company. We didn't have an equally substantial track record as we do today. So we went above and beyond to raise the capital. Almost won the deal. Ultimately, we lost it because someone else offered a bit more, and we would have offered more still, but we just had capped out on available sources of funds.”

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