Airtable’s Exit and Bending Spoons: What Liquidation Preferences Really Cost

Startup Insider – Investments & Exits · August 13, 2026

Source: Startup Insider – Original Episode (episode in German)

Airtable was valued at $11.7 billion in 2021—at 75 times its recurring revenue, right at the peak of SaaS valuations. Last week, the company was acquired for $1.28 billion in an all-cash deal by Milan-based serial acquirer Bending Spoons, even though revenue has tripled since then and the company is in better operational shape than ever before: a 90 percent gross margin, with 80 percent of the Fortune 100 as customers. Björn Rieckhoff and Jan Thomas use the deal as a case study to illustrate the mechanics behind it: liquidation preferences that pay back the latest investors their $735 million first, while employee stock options expire worthless at the price of the last funding round. Also covered: DPI as the only fund metric that really matters, the limits of “raise when you can”—and why a company that did almost everything right in its AI pivot is now worth only a tenth of what it was. In the end, there’s a European twist: This time, Milan is shopping in San Francisco, not the other way around.

Key themes in this episode

  • From 11.7 billion to 1.28: The Anatomy of the Deal — a 735-million funding round at the end of 2021 at a 75× ARR multiple, three funding rounds in one year, a massive unspent cash position (about half of the round), and an all-cash acquisition by Bending Spoons. Of the $187 share price, 18 to 25 remain.
  • DPI — the only metric that matters: Distributions to Paid-in Capital measures what actually ends up in investors’ accounts—not what’s on paper. With typical fund lifespans of 10 to 15 years, the German VC scene can only now be evaluated by this metric; book values serve as a provisional measure until then.
  • Liquidation Preferences Explained: The standard for growth capital—the last investor gets their money back first, and in distress cases, at 1.5× to 3×. For Airtable, this means: 735 million flows back to XN, Silver Lake, and Salesforce Ventures—five years, zero return, and a loss after inflation. The remainder is distributed among just 25 percent of the remaining shares.
  • Did Everything Right—and Still Saw Its Valuation Cut by 90 Percent: Airtable wasn’t a sluggish SaaS company: it underwent a refounding in the middle of last year, brought on the former head of engineering for ChatGPT’s business products as CTO, launched Superagent—its first new product in 13 years—and included AI in every pricing plan. The takeaway: AI in the product defends the company’s competitive position—it no longer boosts its valuation.
  • “Raise when you can” has its limits: If, years later, there’s still cash on hand in an amount that would justify its own funding round, the round was too large. The lesson for founders: Before pursuing a mega-round, think through to whom and at what price the company could realistically be sold.
  • Winners and Losers at the Cap Table: Early investors realize returns of 6× to 55× (the initial investor came on board through an internship with the founder), the founders walk away with around 50 million—but employees with stock options priced at the last round’s valuation come away empty-handed. The takeaway: Don’t miss out on secondaries along the way; book values are misleading.
  • The European Twist: Bending Spoons is following the classic PE playbook (including price increases for Evernote & Co.)—but this time, a Milan-based company, listed on the Nasdaq since July, is acquiring a San Francisco-based company. A nod in an unusual direction.
  • Update: One point that should have been included in the discussion—as Mathias Ockenfels analyzed afterward—is that Airtable’s AI business was spun off from the company prior to the transaction. Bending Spoons thus acquired the core SaaS business without the AI component: a detail that further explains the valuation gap. The analysis is linked below.

Transcript

This transcript has been edited for readability. The content and statements have not been changed. The original conversation was in German; this is an English translation.

Jan Thomas: Björn, hi, nice to meet you!

Björn Rieckhoff: Hi Jan, nice to meet you too.

Jan Thomas: Cool that we’re talking. By the way, I made a note: Last time, you casually mentioned the term DPI in passing. And I came across a post by Marius Meiners from Peec AI—he published an interesting LinkedIn post, which we’re happy to link to. In it, he said: “DPI is the only VC fund metric that is real.” He actually wrote that in the context of today’s topic. Maybe you could briefly explain: What exactly is DPI?

Björn Rieckhoff: DPI stands for Distributions to Paid-in Capital—in other words, it refers to the distributions made relative to the paid-in capital. It’s a ratio, if you will—a KPI—that’s used in both private equity and venture capital and essentially measures how much actual cash has been paid out to investors relative to the paid-in capital. And the distinction Marius was probably getting at is the one regarding book values. A fund can have a highly valued balance sheet that looks very, very good on paper—but, to be honest, that doesn’t actually put any money in investors’ bank accounts. They want to see actual distributions, and that’s ultimately how the fund manager is evaluated. For anyone looking at how long a fund like this actually runs: It’s typically structured for ten years, with options to extend it by one year at a time—many funds aren’t actually liquidated until after 15 years or so. If you look back now: It’s 2026—where was the German VC scene 15 years ago? There’s a manageable number of investors who were already around back then and can, in fact, be measured against DPI. Against this backdrop, book values are often a proxy that allows managers in an active fund to measure their performance in some way.

Jan Thomas: And I’d say we were pretty straightforward in the last episode—and I think we’ll stay that way today, too. But even so, today’s topic is one that invites us even more to question whether only the right decisions were made in the past.

Björn Rieckhoff: That’s right. There’s always a lot of hope tied up in the past—which is something that often unites founders and investors and is also, in a way, a good incentive. But unfortunately, that went a bit awry here. That’s why I think today’s episode is so great—because it not only illustrates typical investor dynamics but also serves as a wake-up call for founders: that they should be mindful of the obligations that come with high valuations — and what your own incentives and opportunities are for turning those shares in your own company into cash down the road. Let me back up a bit: Airtable—you could basically sum it up with the headline “from 11.7 billion to 2.25.” Airtable was actually valued at $11.7 billion in 2021 and was sold last week for $1.28 billion. And now comes the part that hurts: Revenue has tripled in the meantime, and the company is probably better in every respect today than it was back then. But unfortunately, it’s now worth only a fraction of what it was—one-tenth.

Jan Thomas: Just a quick question—since you just mentioned two different figures, 2.25 and 1.28—if I understand correctly, this has to do with the fact that there’s still a huge cash position.

Björn Rieckhoff: Exactly. In 2021, the company raised an extremely large funding round of $11.7 billion—and, as far as I know, has only invested half of that so far. So there’s still a great, great deal left, and it’s basically being distributed to the investors now.

Jan Thomas: Exactly. And that was so intense—I looked it up again on Crunchbase, that 2020/2021 period: Airtable completed three funding rounds within a single year. That’s pretty wild.

Björn Rieckhoff: Exactly. Back then, you had recurring revenue of about $150 million. December 2021 really was the peak for SaaS valuations, with a multiple of 75×. That’s just unbelievable—in fact, comparable to AI businesses today, you have to say. And that might also be a good sign to keep in mind for the future when it comes to how I structure the future funding rounds for my AI company. Back then, you had a price of—if you break that down to the shares, I read a blog post about it—$187. And now investors are getting back roughly $18 to $25. You’ve essentially gone from a multiple of 75× down to 2.7×. This hits investors particularly hard, especially those who don’t have liquidation preference—more on that in a moment; it’s a dynamic I want to explain to listeners again, a curse and a blessing at the same time. Here’s what happened: Bending Spoons—a Milan-based serial acquirer in northern Italy that has also bought WeTransfer, Evernote, and Eventbrite, and has been listed on the Nasdaq since early July—acquired the company in an all-cash deal. And they’re not facing a turnaround situation here, but rather a company with recurring annual revenue that has tripled since 2021 and is in better operational shape than ever before: a 90 percent gross margin—which is excellent, even for a SaaS business—and 80 percent of the Fortune 100 as customers. However, they’re no longer growing at a truly dynamic pace. That’s the interesting point: This 75× multiple naturally goes hand in hand with recurring revenue growing very dynamically—and that growth has simply slowed down in recent quarters. Most recently, I believe, they were still able to grow their business by 20 percent. And I assume you use Airtable, too?

Jan Thomas: It’s not just the S&P 500 companies—Startup Insider is also a heavy user.

Björn Rieckhoff: Yeah, you probably already have some little Airtable tombstones sitting on your desk.

Jan Thomas: I actually got really nervous when I saw the news. We’ve seen this with komoot and others—where, on the one hand, people get kicked out, and then prices go up. I’m also an Evernote user—it feels like I get a pop-up every day asking if I want to upgrade. First, they double the prices, and then they ask you to upgrade again. I think they’re very aggressive, and I kind of see that happening with Airtable now, too.

Björn Rieckhoff: Yeah, that’ll probably be the classic PE playbook that comes into play. What I found interesting while observing the whole deal was this: It’s not as if Airtable was some laid-back SaaS company that didn’t invest in innovation. They tried the AI pivot—or rather, they did it right. In the middle of last year, they announced a so-called “refounding” of the company; the founder stepped back in and worked more intensively on the product. They even brought in the former head of engineering for ChatGPT’s business products as CTO. Then came Superagent, Airtable’s first standalone new product in 13 years, and AI was bundled into every pricing plan, including the free version. So they made a lot of changes on the product side to prepare for the future—and still couldn’t sustain their growth. When you look at this, it’s actually an interesting lesson for other SaaS businesses: implementing AI into the product—even this heavy prioritization of AI—no longer leads to a higher business valuation or necessarily strong growth. Rather, it’s about defending the competitive position you’ve been able to build in the past. We talked about this in another episode—how SaaS businesses will fare in the future—and the takeaway was this: Many come from a very solidly run business but will have to figure out how to defend it going forward. They have no choice but to rethink the entire company—to rethink it in an AI-native way—in order to remain relevant in the future at all. But that doesn’t mean they can maintain their valuation—especially the one from the past. They’ll likely still face investors applying a discount to the whole thing.

Jan Thomas: How do you actually see this: If someone approaches a company like Airtable or another mature scale-up and says, “I’ll give you a high valuation—a valuation you’ll have to grow into first.” Is that something you’d recommend to the founder? Of course, it’s good for headlines and for signaling to the market—we’re all looking for the best employees, so a higher valuation and a larger funding round are always helpful. At the same time—as we’ve discussed here a few times already—that also brings a lot of problems with it. What would you recommend: several smaller funding rounds, or the actually inflated valuation, just for the headline?

Björn Rieckhoff: The classic startup adage has always been—and still is—"raise when you can"—because there will always be situations where either the startup isn’t developing the way you envisioned, or it is developing as planned but the market conditions aren’t cooperating. The moment both of these factors align and are positive, you’re typically in a position to secure a good funding round. But I do believe there are limits to this. When I look at how much money Airtable has left over from its 2021 round and is now returning to investors—I think it’s fair to argue: You simply raised too much money. Of course, there was the SaaS downturn and similar factors, along with a certain degree of investment caution on the part of management—the situation has changed, so let’s not blow through everything right away and invest inefficiently. That’s probably how it was. But even so, there’s cash on hand in an amount that would actually trigger separate funding rounds of its own. So yes: I would definitely say that in the past, they simply raised too much money and played this situation too aggressively.

Jan Thomas: I think it also depends a bit on—the VC that led the last round here is XN. I didn’t even know who they were. I took a quick look at their portfolio, and I have to say, they’ve really made some major missteps. Probably a few really good ones too—Anthropic is in there and stuff like that. But there’s Impossible Foods in there. There’s Hopin—I don’t know if you remember, that event platform that was hyped up endlessly and then sold for 40 million, I think. And the only one who really cashed in was the founder with his secondary sales—pretty legendary. Then there’s Figma, before the IPO—if you look at the stock price, you can imagine that the valuation back then was significantly higher than it is today. I’d just say: If someone like that comes along—someone you can tell is throwing money around, is relatively inexperienced as an investor, and after whom you always see the stock price plummet—then I think I’d stay away from it.

Björn Rieckhoff: I also think it’s great that you kicked off the episode by saying, “We’ll hold back on the schadenfreude”—and now this warning shot from XN. I’m assuming they aren’t listening.

Jan Thomas: I’m assuming they’re not listening—but we also want to examine this a bit from a founder’s perspective.

Björn Rieckhoff: I do agree with you there. But that’s also an interesting point—I mentioned it earlier but didn’t really get to the heart of it, sorry about that: what exactly constitutes a liquidation preference. In this latest funding round—and this is standard practice for growth capital—you have the last investor to come on board, who secures a liquidation preference for themselves. This means that in the event of a sale, they’ll get their money back first, before any other investors are paid out.

Jan Thomas: Exactly. Last in, first out, right?

Björn Rieckhoff: It can also be structured differently. In distress cases, you often have a liquidation preference higher than 1×—then you get one and a half, two, or three times your money back before anyone else sees anything, to price in the risk. Let’s assume there’s a simple liquidation preference here: Back then, 735 million went in, and now that money is coming back out. Five years, zero return—after adjusting for inflation, that’s actually a loss for those involved. So not just XN, but also Silver Lake and Salesforce Ventures. And now it gets interesting: The rest goes to the holders of the remaining shares—that is, to just 25 percent of the shares. But that also includes Silver Lake and Salesforce Ventures, which I just mentioned—and they didn’t even participate in the bidding. They’re essentially already on the company’s cap table, and even though they led the last round, they’re now saying, given the adjusted multiple reality: “Thanks, I’ll be happy just to get my money back.” And we’re talking about a company like Airtable, which has already established a certain brand presence. That really illustrates the current situation in the market: A great many investors are finding it incredibly difficult to underwrite and finance SaaS businesses because they’re struggling to assess the market dynamics and predict future trends.

Jan Thomas: And you could also read: the founders—each, at most, 50 million. If, as a founder, you ever think… here in Berlin, we used to have this term, “MOPs”—“Millionaires on Paper.” Back in 2020–21, every one of them probably thought, “We’re going to walk away from this as billionaires.”

Björn Rieckhoff: Hmm.

Jan Thomas: Yeah, that’s a bummer.

Björn Rieckhoff: Exactly. That’s always a point for me, too—I’m not personally active in Series F and later funding rounds, as is the case here at Airtable, but rather in angel funding, seed funding, the classics. When I talk to founding teams, the discussion often goes like this: So many people are just jumping in—let’s raise funds at such-and-such a valuation. That feels really, really good at first. But ultimately, as a founder, you have to think through one thing above all else: Who can I actually sell this to, and at what price can I realistically sell it? Sure, at some point everything might fall into place and you’ll grow endlessly. But even if you raise a Series F funding round at 11 billion, that doesn’t mean you’ll become super-wealthy from it. Certainly, it’s a life-changing event for the founders. But looking back from 2021, you’d think: I should have done a secondary sale back then—I could have cashed out a fraction of my shares for what I’m getting today for all of them. And that’s the crux of the funding world: With every new funding round, you’re taking that gamble all over again and have to ask yourself that question time and time again. Looking at book values is actually very misleading.

Jan Thomas: Harry Stebbings did the math again in a blog post: Among the early investors, there are a few who, at least I think, made a 6× or a 21× return—and the first investor, Freestyle, made, I believe, a 55× return. That’s pretty cool, of course—a far cry from where things used to be—but at least it rewards that perseverance or early belief. I even understood it this way: Freestyle only got involved because the Airtable founder had once done an internship there and they knew each other. Maybe that’s also a case for having good interns at investment funds. All I’m saying is: For a few, it paid off. It might feel a bit underwhelming when you, as a founder, cash out “only”—in quotes—“50 million”—but at the same time, you have to actually make that much first. That’s an achievement in itself.

Björn Rieckhoff: Of course. And at the end of the day, I still believe that you’ll come out of this situation much better off as a founder—just consider the reputation alone: I built this company; I went through all the phases. I’m not saying that’s worth more than the 50 million, but go through a list of entrepreneurs who’ve actually managed to successfully build _and_ sell a billion-dollar business. Building it is one thing—selling it and then actually stepping away and detaching yourself from day-to-day operations is something else entirely. That’s where the numbers get extremely thin; you’re on a whole different level, also in terms of your experience. And I’d guess that the founding team went through quite a few secondary sales on the way to Series F. What I find a bit unfortunate in some cases: Take a look at the employees. You likely received stock options at the price of the last funding round—and now you’re getting nothing in return. You may have negotiated a large portion of your compensation package with stock options, hoping that Airtable would grow even more, and five years later, you can basically throw that away. That’s also a significant part of a career like this.

Jan Thomas: As I said, that was exactly the case with Hopin: The founder cashed out, and all the employees came up empty-handed. Still, maybe just to wrap things up—because I’m still not entirely clear on the deal—do you think there was any alternative? As we know, Bending Spoons doesn’t pay the best prices—they’ve logically established themselves as an exit channel. That said, I’m a bit surprised by the B2B—or semi-B2B—aspect here, since they’re actually more active in the B2C space. Would you have waited—for the IPO, or for another buyer who wouldn’t fire 80 percent of the staff right off the bat?

Björn Rieckhoff: I actually believe that the moment a buyer like Bending Spoons gets involved, you already have a very structured process underway, including retained advisors. That’s essentially the clarification of the market situation. This wasn’t just an isolated offer—there must have been a structured process involving an M&A boutique. And that’s simply the reality. I said it before: Salesforce Ventures is involved, Silver Lake is involved—they would have been potential acquirers as well. If no one can be found among the shareholders, then that’s just the situation. Sure, you could say there would have been room to maneuver—in terms of cash, the company could have continued to grow, and the founding team could have driven that forward. But so many factors come into play, including among existing investors, that you simply can’t properly assess them from the outside. It could be, as you said earlier, that fund terms are coming to an end, and major investors are under pressure to sell. Perhaps there’s also a situation within the founding team where, at some point, they say: “This just isn’t the business we wanted to build anymore”—motivation drops, and performance suffers accordingly. All sorts of things could be at play here. But of course—knowing full well that Bending Spoons has handled all its portfolio companies in a relatively similar way—the hope is that they’ll retain their employees, keep things as they are, and refrain from raising prices—a vague hope with no basis in fact. Hmm. Too bad.

Jan Thomas: Yeah, it’s a shame about the ending, too, because I thought we’d end on a positive note—but now it’s turned into a bit of a downer. I hope the outcome turns out differently than it did with komoot. It would be a shame if, as an employee, you’d helped build the company for ten years and then suddenly found yourself out on the street overnight. But I think they’re offering good compensation packages—at least that’s what I’ve heard.

Björn Rieckhoff: Yeah, that’s often negotiated separately. One way to look at it positively is this: We often complain that good European companies end up in American hands. Now we have a company from San Francisco here that’s being acquired by a Milan-based firm. That’s exciting, too, isn’t it? Although they’re now listed on the Nasdaq as well. But maybe—waving the European flag—it’s a nice sign of things to come.

Jan Thomas: Totally. We can definitely link to that again: I once talked to Julia Hubo about Bending Spoons, before their IPO. They’re pretty amazing, you have to say—especially when it comes to their whole work culture. They’re consistently named Employer of the Year in Italy because they go above and beyond for their employees. I think anyone who stays there has it pretty good. Julia also said she’d switch over there in a heartbeat. One perk, for example: If you want, you can get laser eye surgery at the company’s expense. That’s pretty unusual.

Björn Rieckhoff: Yeah—that’s definitely a major perk.

Jan Thomas: Absolutely. That really ties it all together. Cool—that was fun!

Björn Rieckhoff: Yeah, me too.

Jan Thomas: See you next time—thanks. Bye for now!

About Björn Rieckhoff

Björn Rieckhoff is an independent advisor and business angel with nearly ten years of experience in early-stage venture capital. He helped build Cavalry Ventures as its first employee and later became a partner of the fund. Today he supports founders more directly with fundraising — sharpening their story, stress-testing business models, and setting up lean financing processes. With over 80 transactions and board seats from seed to Series B, he brings this perspective as a sparring partner for entrepreneurs.

About Startup Insider

Startup Insider is the industry portal for the startup scene in the DACH region. It covers news from all regions and industries, along with an overview of key players and events in the German-speaking startup world.

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