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Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

blog.evernote.com

101–110 of 459 posts

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#101
post #29

Evernote is a note taking app in 2015. While slack and hipchat are somewhat iconoclastic, they have network affects and boost productivity. Evernote is competing with apple notes, google docs, whatever microsoft has, every password keeping app, a notebook, a text editor and using a blog. This is something that will likely happen to dropbox and box. You provide storage. Simple math will provide you with the cost of st…

Microsoft has OneNote, which might be a good cautionary tale in this area. OneNote was once the king of note taking, like back in 2003, and it's still a great product. But Microsoft focused too much on the Business market, I think, dropping OneNote from the Office Home packages, and that kind of killed it outside of the corp world.

OneNote is now completely free and available on iOS as well (where it has a full 5-star rating). As much I love Evernote, it's going to be an uphill battle for them. (And not to mention the handwriting experience and integration with the Surface Pen - which are killer features for students)

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#102
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hoping they're dropping the idea of chat. Spending time on that really never made much sense me when their core product is so strong but badly needs some features to better align with modern tech trends such as improved plain text and markdown support.

> ... markdown support Yes, 1000 times yes! I so wish I could author in Evernote using markdown. Getting any sort of rich text done in a note is extremely cumbersome in Evernote, lists for instance.

Have you submitted it as a feature request to their support? I get the feeling they just don't have enough people asking for it.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#103
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also be a huge plus if it didn't take 5 seconds to load every time I opened the app. Not sure how a company with so many competitors can survive long-term with its product in such a state.

Agreed; Google Keep has become my preference for immediate note taking. I think a major factor in Evernote's long-term survival is the friction of switching to a competitor (in conjunction with getting a lot of early traction with power-users).

I'll use Keep for everything the moment they add attachments, rich text and a clipper. It's already pretty close to what I need..

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#104
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My prediction, the next dead unicorn: Dropbox They are similar in that they haven't made anything note worthy in a while and their main product is really just a feature of bigger companies apps and services.

File sync is a feature of the Google Suite, but Dropbox is much better than Google Drive. Dropbox gets a lot of subtle things right. Maybe in the long term you're right, but I'm not so sure. I think Dropbox Teams is too expensive but I'm paying it anyway because I think it's that much better. (I think that's a sign they set the prices exactly right)

Dropbox problem is that it was obviously better several years ago so its user acquisition was easy.

Nowadays dropbox needs to convince user of other services that it is better. On paper though, dropbox provides less for more money - that's going to be difficult. I share your opinion - they are better. The reason I know is because I have been a client for years and they never let me down even in weird syncing scenario. Syncing quality is #1 feature of a cloud storage, you need to be able to trust it fully.

However, how do I convince a MS user that 1 TB from dropbox for 7.99 GBP/month is a better deal than 1 TB (actually 5 TB since it is 1 TB per user) + Office 365 + 60 Skype Minutes for 7.99 GBP/month ?

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My prediction, the next dead unicorn: Dropbox They are similar in that they haven't made anything note worthy in a while and their main product is really just a feature of bigger companies apps and services.

My favourite question to ask of start-ups: "have you built a product or a feature?"

Building a feature is fine but that means you need to sell out then at some point or grow into new areas. Dropbox is not doing to good at moving into new areas and they are probably too big now to sell out easily.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#106
I was an Evernote Premium customer and enjoyed multi-device syncing and private notebooks. I had my own account, paid for out of my own pocket for a year. The company I worked for also decided to used Evernote and I could see our "Team" notebooks, right along with my stuff. When the company stopped using it, not only did I lose the "Team" notebooks, it took all of my personal data with it. I lost everything.

Support acknowledged it was a bug and told me that there was nothing they could do. They didn't even offer to let me have a few months free to catch back up and re-create my notebooks.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#108
I personally struggle with Evernote - not in the utilization aspect as I use it multiple times a week, but rather, on its lack of focus on addressing & fixing the features its users really need & want: i.e code formatting, inconsistencies between formats across mobile, web & app, and oddities when copying/pasting content into notes & it breaking the rest of the note are just some of the minor issues I personally struggle with. Features such as presentation mode and larger transfer size are fine and all, but neither of which I personally care for - I primarily take text notes and have some images embedded here and there, so I'm not necessarily asking for a major shift in features. I want to find reasons to pay for Evernote as I depend on it so much from a notebook aspect, but alas, I haven't been convinced that they necessarily care about addressing these pain points.

Re: Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

#109
post #62
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Groupon is the first dead Unicorn

Groupon is still worth a couple of billion despite the beating it's taken from investors. Its revenue and EBITDA have consistently climbed in each year since going public, and there is plenty of cash on hand without a single cent of debt. As usual, the Motley Fool's analysis is excellent: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/04/07/bull-vs-bea...

GRPN is down nearly 46% since that was written...
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