Airtable's 80% off value crash: VCs explain why it's still a win | E2321

Bending Spoons, an Italian conglomerate, acquired Airtable at 2.7 times ARR, implying an enterprise value of approximately 1.2 billion dollars after accounting for roughly one billion dollars in cash on the balance sheet, against a peak valuation of 11.7 billion dollars. The current equity value on the deal is approximately 2.25 billion dollars. Airtable had raised 1.4 billion dollars in total and had approximately 400 million dollars in ARR growing at 20 percent annually at the time of the deal. Early-stage investors including South Park Commons had a decent outcome, later-stage investors roughly got their money back over five years, and many growth funds will actually lose money depending on entry price. Airtable's most recent 409A valuation came in roughly 80 percent below its peak venture valuation, which the hosts frame as an expected correction rather than evidence of company-specific collapse, since 2021 term sheets were issued within 24 hours at 50 to 70 times forward multiples.

Bending Spoons follows a playbook of cutting approximately 80 percent of staff, placing young people in charge of acquired products, raising prices 100 to 200 percent, and running the business AI-first for profitability. Bending Spoons is up approximately 40 percent from its IPO with a current market cap of roughly 30 billion dollars, making an Airtable acquisition approximately three to four percent of its market cap. Constellation Software has executed a similar software rollup model for close to 30 years as a Canadian public company, paying approximately one times revenue and cutting employees to generate high profitability. Rollup acquirers are willing to make cuts and implement AI in ways that VC board members typically would not, and Bending Spoons-style buyers provide real value for legacy portfolios holding slow-growth assets with no clear path forward. As part of the transaction, an AI-first product was spun out of Airtable before the acquisition closed.

The only metric that matters in venture capital according to Calacanis is growth rate, not profitability, cash flow, or survival. A company growing at 40 percent doubles every two years while one growing at 20 percent doubles every three and a half to four years, and many decacorn SaaS companies have become zombies consuming resources without viable paths forward. Private cap tables are only engineered to go up and to the right, making any downward repricing structurally difficult regardless of business fundamentals. People hired during high-growth optimistic periods are not the same people who can slow down, shrink, and optimize in a private equity style, and founders who took significant money off the table in 2020 to 2022 may be less motivated. Founder distraction from liquidity tends to begin when spending reaches approximately two million dollars per year, around the threshold of buying a plane outright.

On secondary sales, Bonastas said Verdikt considers selling five to ten percent of its position when founders are doing 20 to 50 million dollar secondary rounds, arguing this creates market demand and validates the company for the next fundraise. Calacanis said his firm pairs 10 to 20 percent of a position at 50 times and another 10 to 20 percent at 100 times, and cited clearing an 18 million dollar position in a SaaS company that hit a one billion dollar valuation but is now worth less than 100 million dollars, proceeding over founder objections by citing contractual rights and obligations to LPs. The number of public companies in America has declined by 20 percent over the last decade, companies like SpaceX may not go public for 20 or more years, and this forces venture funds with 10 to 15 year lifespans to become active sellers rather than passive holders.

Robinhood's prediction markets business has become its second largest revenue line, generating 156 million dollars in Q2 against 342 million dollars from options trading. Robinhood still relies on Kalshi for its underlying prediction market technology, and the space is expected to become highly competitive, drawing a parallel to sports betting five years ago with Fanatics, DraftKings, FanDuel, Polymarket, and Kalshi all competing. Robinhood Ventures Fund II is a publicly traded closed-end fund targeting non-accredited retail investors, with an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange on August 13th targeting 200 million dollars, already holding stakes in 80 private companies, charging a 2 percent annual management fee plus 20 percent of realized capital gains, and focusing on Y Combinator startups. Founders dislike closed-end fund structures because they feel they lose control of their cap table, and retail access raises governance concerns if investors are unhappy during missed revenue quarters.

South Park Commons has six or seven internal engineers building AI tools for the firm out of 30 total staff, its codebase grew from approximately 100 commits to 5000 commits in five months, application volume has grown 50 percent year over year while headcount has stayed flat, and the firm now gives personalized feedback to all rejected applicants using AI at a one percent acceptance rate. A two-person investing team can now cover ground that previously required eight to ten people. Startups in Calacanis's accelerator are reaching one million dollars in revenue with only three or four people on checks of 125,000 dollars. Bonastas predicted that founders who raise one round can now effectively skip to what would have been three rounds later in terms of progress, while warning against founders who believe Claude Code eliminates the need for a technical co-founder.