The co-founders of Bending Spoons, the Italian company quietly buying beloved, ailing Internet brands, learned big lessons from their own startup's failure.

Buying busted apps made Bending Spoons’s four cofounders billionaires. Now their stakes have collectively jumped to $8.9 billion after the Milan-based startup scrap yard listed on…

Its portfolio includes Eventbrite, Evernote, Vimeo, AOL, WeTransfer and Meetup.

Bending Spoons is set to debut on the US Nasdaq market today (1 July), after raising $1.68bn in its public listing.