{"id":45819,"date":"2026-11-09T11:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T10:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/strtgy.design\/articles\/series-5-6-bending-spoons-enablers-how-to-unlock-scalability\/"},"modified":"2026-11-09T12:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T11:59:10","slug":"series-5-6-bending-spoons-enablers-how-to-unlock-scalability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strtgy.design\/en\/strtgy-notes-en\/series-5-6-bending-spoons-enablers-how-to-unlock-scalability\/","title":{"rendered":"[Series 5\/6] Bending Spoons\u2019 enablers: how to unlock scalability"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cWe can do more with the same resources.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Luca Ferrari<\/strong>, CEO of Bending Spoons, interview with Sequoia Capital<\/a><\/p>\n\n

\u25cf\u2191<\/p>\n\n

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Imagine managing 100 clients with 10 colleagues. If you grew the team to 100 people, could you manage 1,000 clients?<\/p>\n\n

Not necessarily. As you grow, layers of control and coordination can grow too: managers overseeing other managers, checking their work, and reporting back to leadership. An increasing share of resources gets absorbed by administrative busywork.<\/p>\n\n

People who should be serving clients or working on their projects end up spending more time coordinating, requesting approvals, and preparing updates for decision-makers. That\u2019s why you can multiply your investment and get progressively smaller results.<\/p>\n\n

You can respond by asking the team to work harder. But before you do, it\u2019s worth understanding what kind of work is growing along with your client base, and what you could simplify, automate, or eliminate.<\/p>\n\n

Scalability begins when you can improve the ratio between results and resources.<\/strong> The famous hockey stick describes a growth curve that steepens at a certain point. What matters here is that results grow faster than the resources needed to produce them.<\/p>\n\n

To get there, you need to invest in something that reduces that complexity and continues to create value over time. A tool, a knowledge base, a system the team can also use on the next project, without starting from scratch each time.<\/p>\n\n

That\u2019s the role of MAKE PROGRESS\u00ae<\/strong> enablers: assets you build or acquire that continue to support the work even after a project ends.<\/p>\n\n

What do I need to build to grow results without increasing investment and workload in the same proportion?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Consider that in 2025, about half of the team dedicated to Evernote was moved to Harvest, another app in the group. According to the group, the people who remained continued developing the product, releasing updates in 2025 at a pace similar to 2024. They could rely on the technologies, reorganized software, and knowledge built up over previous years. Bending Spoons describes this experience in its prospectus<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

In this article, I\u2019ll reconstruct the operational choices and strategic principle behind them, so you can understand how to apply them to your company.<\/p>\n\n

I\u2019ll guide you through identifying areas of your company where investing can unlock business scalability. At the end, I\u2019ll suggest connecting a result you want to grow, the work that currently limits it, and the asset that could simplify that work.<\/p>\n\n

Where you are in the series<\/h2>\n\n

This is episode 5 of 6 in the series where I reconstruct Bending Spoons\u2019 strategy using MAKE PROGRESS\u00ae tools. In each episode, I complete one section of the Strategy Focus Onepager, the page where you capture the essential choices behind your strategy.<\/p>\n\n

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  1. The operating model<\/a>: what kind of company you\u2019re building.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Values, Vision, and Mission<\/a>: how to guide the team.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. The North Star Metric<\/a>: how to measure progress.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. The Growth Machine<\/a>: which effects make growth repeatable.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. The enablers: how to unlock scalability. \u2190 You are here.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. The priorities: what to focus the work on.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n

    When adding more work is no longer enough<\/h2>\n\n

    In the fourth episode, I described the Growth Machine as a cycle of mutually reinforcing effects. But moving from one result to the next takes work: people making decisions, tools, information, and tasks to complete.<\/p>\n\n

    That work can reach a plateau<\/strong>. The team knows what to do, but the way it does it starts to limit its results. Adding resources leads to increasingly smaller improvements, because a growing share of the effort goes toward managing delays, checks, and exceptions.<\/p>\n\n

    Here\u2019s an example involving a subscription product. A customer uses it and wants to renew, but the payment fails. Someone on the team has to notice, figure out what happened, and step in. The customer wants to keep using the product, and the company wants to collect the renewal payment, but both are waiting for someone to resolve the issue.<\/p>\n\n

    When there are only a few cases, that person can handle them. As the number of customers grows, so does the number of payments to check. The person handling collections has to decide which cases to address first; the rest have to wait. If every case requires the same manual intervention, you\u2019ll need to dedicate more and more people to collections to keep up with growth.<\/p>\n\n

    The product can improve while the work needed to manage it absorbs an increasing share of the benefit. The difficulty lies in the process connecting the value the customer receives to the company\u2019s financial results.<\/p>\n\n

    A system that manages renewals, retries charges, and routes only exceptions to people changes that process. Once you\u2019ve built and integrated it, you can use it for many more cases without multiplying manual tasks in the same proportion.<\/p>\n\n

    What is an enabler?<\/h2>\n\n

    In my MAKE PROGRESS\u00ae<\/a> method, I define an enabler as an asset that, once developed or acquired, continues to generate value over time and makes scalability possible<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

    The system in the example is one such asset: something that remains available to the company and can be used in future work. An organized collection of data, methods, skills, and relationships can be one too. Capability is what people can do thanks to those assets. When I ask you to invest in a capability, I\u2019m asking you to build what makes it possible and available over time.<\/p>\n\n

    Getting there may take several projects and investment decisions. In the case of payments, you need to choose the tools, develop integrations, migrate data, and decide how to handle exceptions. Projects end; the system you\u2019ve built becomes part of day-to-day work and continues to be used, maintained, and improved.<\/p>\n\n

    In the Growth Machine, I place enablers near the links they act on. Their position makes it clear which process they need to simplify.<\/p>\n\n

    The initial investment can be substantial. Its value emerges over time, as the work already done supports a growing number of results. You also need to consider what it will take to keep the asset useful.<\/p>\n\n

    This is what decoupling results from investment means: results can grow faster than the additional resources needed to achieve them. If, instead, the new system sits alongside old procedures without simplifying them, you may find yourself with one more thing to manage.<\/p>\n\n

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    A non-exhaustive list of proprietary technologies developed by Bending Spoons<\/h2>\n\n

    I gathered this information from the prospectus<\/a>, the official website<\/a>, and interviews with Ferrari<\/a>. These are just some of the tools available to the teams.<\/p>\n\n

    Pico<\/strong> collects large volumes of data and powers the shared infrastructure teams use to analyze products.<\/p>\n\n

    Lumen<\/strong> transforms the collected data, preparing it for further processing.<\/p>\n\n

    Abacus<\/strong> calculates standardized metrics and makes them available to teams, so they can work with consistent measures.<\/p>\n\n

    Janus and Orion<\/strong> let teams run product experiments, select the user groups involved, and manage multiple tests at once.<\/p>\n\n

    Matrix<\/strong> lets teams reuse validated user experience solutions, adapting existing work for another product.<\/p>\n\n

    Juno<\/strong> manages payments and subscriptions, from checkout to renewals, including promotions, billing, and retries after a failed charge.<\/p>\n\n

    Minerva<\/strong> uses AI to estimate the economic value of customers over time. Its predictions help guide marketing and monetization.<\/p>\n\n

    Xina<\/strong> supports the attribution of results to marketing activities, helping teams understand which initiatives contribute to generating them.<\/p>\n\n

    Galf<\/strong> securely manages access to different systems and assets.<\/p>\n\n

    Role Model<\/strong> helps the Talent team select people, using candidate assessments and models based on data from previous hiring processes.<\/p>\n\n

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    The enablers in Bending Spoons\u2019 Growth Machine<\/h2>\n\n

    Here\u2019s a brief recap of how the Growth Machine I reconstructed for Bending Spoons works, along with its main metrics:<\/p>\n\n

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    Bending Spoons\u2019 Growth Machine and its link metrics<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

    Teams use the available capabilities to improve products. The benefit to customers has to translate into financial results that leave resources to invest. Those investments, in turn, need to strengthen the capabilities used to tackle the next cycle.<\/p>\n\n

    This map and the enabler categories are my reconstruction based on public sources. NRR is a metric published by the group; the other indicators on the links are ones I propose for understanding how it works.<\/p>\n\n

    If any of these steps requires you to rebuild tools, information, and procedures every time, growth brings the same work along with it. Enablers address those constraints.<\/p>\n\n

    You can show the metrics that help you monitor the links in black, and the enablers to invest in to overcome their constraints in light blue.<\/p>\n\n

    Bending Spoons has developed proprietary technologies<\/strong> that can be used across multiple products and at different points in the cycle. Ferrari mentions more than 50 tools in the September 2026 interview with David Senra<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

    I\u2019ve grouped the enablers into four categories to make them easier to understand. The categories describe the work to be supported across the four links; enablers are the assets that make that work possible. The same technology can contribute to multiple steps.<\/p>\n\n

    1. Product acceleration<\/h3>\n\n
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    From superior operating capabilities to better-performing products.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

    How can you continuously improve any product? The enabler that lets teams test their ideas is the product experimentation toolkit<\/strong>, alongside the other proprietary technologies.<\/p>\n\n

    Janus and Orion: experimenting with the product.<\/strong> In 2025, teams ran more than 3,000 experiments<\/strong> using these tools, according to the prospectus, page 115<\/a>. The shared infrastructure lets them focus on the hypothesis, the results, and the decision, without building a way to run every test from scratch.<\/p>\n\n

    Matrix: reusing validated UX solutions.<\/strong> A team can reuse validated user experience solutions and adapt them to its product. That\u2019s the function described on the official website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

    Imagine how much work would be repeated if every team had to build its own system for setting up an experiment and interpreting the results. Shared infrastructure means they can start with that part already solved. The team still needs to formulate a good hypothesis and make a decision, but it can devote a greater share of its work to those activities.<\/p>\n\n

    This enabler is closely linked to the metric of new tests started per week, which measures the pace of experimentation. To understand its contribution to scalability, I connect it to the resources used and the improvements the team can make to the product.<\/p>\n\n

    2. Monetization and retention<\/h3>\n\n
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    From better-performing products to higher operating profit.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

    Juno: managing payments and subscriptions.<\/strong> Teams use a shared system for collecting payments, processing renewals, and retrying failed payments. You may recognize the problem from the opening example: the customer has a reason to keep paying, but a payment obstacle interrupts the process. Investing in a shared system makes it possible to address the same problem across multiple products, instead of asking each team to build its own solution from scratch.<\/p>\n\n

    Minerva: estimating customer value.<\/strong> If you need to evaluate a promotion or a change to your offer, immediate revenue tells only part of the story of what a customer may generate. An estimate of their value over time helps you compare the options. Data and tools that are already available reduce the analysis work that has to be repeated before every decision. Prospectus, pp. 114\u2013115<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

    The tools support work on payments and the offer; the reason to keep using the app lies in the customer experience.<\/p>\n\n

    This enabler improves NRR<\/strong>, or Net Revenue Retention. To recap, this metric compares subscription revenue from the existing customer base with revenue from the corresponding period of the previous year. It reflects revenue retention, not the percentage of people who continue to use the product. The fourth episode<\/a> explains how it\u2019s calculated. I look at it alongside costs, because retaining more revenue should leave the company with more profit, even after accounting for the work needed to serve those customers.<\/p>\n\n

    For Remini<\/strong>, the prospectus reports higher usage retention after the redesign; for Evernote<\/strong>, a faster editor and a lower share of infrastructure costs. Product cases, pp. 121\u2013124<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

    Returning to an app more often, retaining more revenue, and spending less to provide the service are distinct outcomes. The prospectus describes the interventions as a whole, without isolating the effect of Juno or Minerva.<\/p>\n\n

    3. Treasury and financing<\/h3>\n\n
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    From higher operating profit to strategic investments.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

    This enabler makes it possible to manage and allocate the financial resources the company needs to grow.<\/p>\n\n

    Generating a profit and having money available for a new investment are two different things. You may have recorded revenue you haven\u2019t collected yet, have a payment due, or have already committed your cash to other projects.<\/p>\n\n

    Anyone making an investment decision needs to know how much money they can commit and on what terms. They need up-to-date tools, expertise, and relationships with potential sources of financing to monitor cash, structure debt, and raise capital.<\/p>\n\n

    If every investment requires you to reconstruct available funds, due dates, and terms, an increase in transactions also multiplies the financial workload. A shared planning and control system makes it possible to compare opportunities on a consistent basis.<\/p>\n\n

    The prospectus<\/a> distinguishes operating cash, debt, and capital contributions. Debt and shareholder capital bring in resources from outside; they are not cash generated by profit.<\/p>\n\n

    Financing can support growth even when every result still requires the same amount of resources. It gives you the ability to invest, but to change that ratio, you need to use the money to transform how you work. And interest and repayments become commitments to consider in future decisions.<\/p>\n\n

    This enabler improves and accelerates the cash available for new investments.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

    4. Development and integration<\/h3>\n\n
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    From strategic investments to superior operating capabilities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

    Here, the enabler is the acquisition and technology development system<\/strong>: finding companies and technologies, deciding what to buy or build, and making it operational.<\/p>\n\n

    Scouting\u2014that is, searching for opportunities to investigate\u2014sets up the decision. Once it\u2019s made, someone has to transform and integrate what you\u2019ve bought or developed. The people working on the product need to be able to use it: that\u2019s when the investment starts to change their work.<\/p>\n\n

    Acquiring a company adds products, people, and systems to manage. If you have to build everything from scratch to make them work together, the portfolio grows along with the complexity. Shared assets make it possible to start with problems that have already been solved and focus the team on the differences that matter.<\/p>\n\n

    Subsequent decisions can also benefit from previous work. On page 117 of the prospectus<\/a>, the acquisitions team describes its systematic comparison of results with initial assumptions.<\/p>\n\n

    Investing in this enabler improves the percentage of products fully operational on the shared stack<\/strong>, the set of shared tools and infrastructure. What matters is that teams use them in their day-to-day work: the investment starts to have an effect when people can rely on the new capabilities quickly, across every area of the company.<\/p>\n\n

    How enablers changed the work on Evernote<\/h2>\n\n
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    The complete Growth Machine and its Enablers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

    The Evernote case shows how these investments have a real impact on the work of a team within Bending Spoons.<\/p>\n\n

    The product, acquired in 2023, was weighed down by technology that was difficult to update. The team integrated the group\u2019s proprietary technologies and reorganized the software into components that were easier to modify. A system analyzed support requests to help identify which problems to solve.<\/p>\n\n

    To improve monetization, the team used proprietary technologies and data to run experiments on features, pricing, and user entry points into the product.<\/p>\n\n

    When about half the team was moved to Harvest in 2025, those tools and that work were still available. According to the group, the people who remained continued developing Evernote. Overall, the product received more than 150 updates in 2025, at a pace similar to 2024. Prospectus, pp. 123\u2013125<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

    The people who moved to Harvest brought with them the experience they had gained transforming Evernote. The remaining team could continue using the tools and software it had already invested in. This is the principle I apply when analyzing the strategy: previous work had built assets that remained useful beyond the project and the original team structure.<\/p>\n\n

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    What\u2019s happened since<\/h2>\n\n

    During October 2026, new developments emerged involving products, acquisitions, and financing. Here\u2019s how they connect to the strategy I\u2019m reconstructing using MAKE PROGRESS\u00ae tools.<\/p>\n\n

    On October 12<\/a>, the Bending Spoons team at Airtable announced:<\/p>\n\n