Max Mealing — Airtable's Bending Spoons acquisition as financial gravity in action

Max Mealing — former Airtable power user — traces the Airtable acquisition by Bending Spoons back to the December 2021 $735M round at an $11.6B valuation: once you're worth that, small teams and power users who loved the mission can't keep you there — only enterprises can, so the roadmap shifts from product-led to sales-led and the culture changes. Frames Bending Spoons as the undertaker, not the villain, and financial gravity as the force that made the death inevitable years earlier.

“That is what Ries keeps banging on about: a company loses itself slowly, through reasonable decisions that each trade a bit of what it was for what it needs to become. He calls the force behind it "financial gravity". Without the right governance designed in from the early days to resist it, that pull will always win.” — Max Mealing on LinkedIn