Adjacent developed a thesis around aggregating consumer subscription companies

Adjacent’s first fund and, to a large extent, its second focused on consumer subscription companies, drawing on the App Store’s subscription model and prior consumer investments. The thesis was that these businesses could reach tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue with fewer employees, lower operating expenses and lower distribution costs than SaaS companies, although they could face higher churn and growth ceilings.

That view evolved into a strategy of aggregating profitable subscription businesses to capture synergies. The investor says he spoke with Bending Spoons’ Luca in 2020, before ChatGPT, when the company was already pursuing the approach. He says AI later helped Bending Spoons build its synergies and transformation engine, while falling market capitalizations made acquisitions cheaper—at one point describing purchases at about 10% of peak market cap. The eventual outcome for Bending Spoons remained uncertain.