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Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

nytimes.com

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Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#21

Post by duxup »

dalbasal wrote: post #12

Failure, in this context could either mean product or company failure, and the "fail fast" adage is usually applied to product, not company. At least as this article presents the story (executive churn, etc), it sounds like company failure is the main part of it. The issue with "unicorn" failures is that a product can be really successful in objective terms (users, revenue, profit..) but still an investment failure,…

I often think of the story of the guy who posted here about how his startup "failed" but in reality it just didn't bring in the massive cash flow that was hoped for.

IIRC he bought it from the investors for cheap (so they could get it off their books) and then just ran it as one guy (maybe a few more added part time later)... and it does just fine in that conext, and who knows what might happen from there.

Kinda makes me think that a lot of Unicorn style world domination or nothing, result in some business opportunities being lost if those are the only two options.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#22

Post by duxup »

mattferderer wrote: post #17
duxup wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did fill a serious need though. Other people followed including Microsoft making their own product as well.

Evernote came a decade or so after Microsoft's OneNote. Evernote did make Microsoft improve their product though. It seemed as Microsoft was improving OneNote, Evernote started to go backwards.

TIL

I had no idea OneNote even existed until well after Evernote, and I worked at a lot of places using Microsoft products.... strange.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#23

Post by tempodox »

dalbasal wrote: post #12

Failure, in this context could either mean product or company failure, and the "fail fast" adage is usually applied to product, not company. At least as this article presents the story (executive churn, etc), it sounds like company failure is the main part of it. The issue with "unicorn" failures is that a product can be really successful in objective terms (users, revenue, profit..) but still an investment failure,…

> ...if it fails to live up to valuations.

Or it was the failure of the investors to gauge the potential properly and start out with too high expectations. Why should that count as company failure?

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#24

Post by FailMore »

A bit of a nuts idea for Evernote: you pay a (decent $$$) monthly fee and you get your own boss. They help you manage your life and make sure you are doing all the things you plan to and enable you to calibrate your time management / ability to do things when you say you will.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#26

Post by opencl »

FailMore wrote: post #24

A bit of a nuts idea for Evernote: you pay a (decent $$$) monthly fee and you get your own boss. They help you manage your life and make sure you are doing all the things you plan to and enable you to calibrate your time management / ability to do things when you say you will.

There's already another company offering this.

https://bossasaservice.life/

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#27

Post by hkmurakami »

dalbasal wrote: post #12

Failure, in this context could either mean product or company failure, and the "fail fast" adage is usually applied to product, not company. At least as this article presents the story (executive churn, etc), it sounds like company failure is the main part of it. The issue with "unicorn" failures is that a product can be really successful in objective terms (users, revenue, profit..) but still an investment failure,…

There's the question of whether such companies would have reached the point of a solid business without the help of a massive cash infusion though.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#28

Post by bluGill »

duxup wrote: post #22
mattferderer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evernote came a decade or so after Microsoft's OneNote. Evernote did make Microsoft improve their product though. It seemed as Microsoft was improving OneNote, Evernote started to go backwards.

TIL I had no idea OneNote even existed until well after Evernote, and I worked at a lot of places using Microsoft products.... strange.

OneNote still feels like Microsoft's best kept secret. It is a simple solution to the common problem of taking notes. I'm convinced one of my previous bosses got several promotions just because he used OneNote to keep track of notes.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#29

Post by barking »

levythe wrote: post #16
duxup wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did fill a serious need though. Other people followed including Microsoft making their own product as well.

Microsoft OneNote was released in 2003, while Evernote was founded in 2007. There were changes Microsoft made to allow OneNote to better compete with Evernote, but they did not make the product itself in response to Evernote.

I moved from evernote to onenote earlier this year. It was easy to move all my stuff (i was never a heavy user) using the tool onenote provides for the purpose. I have no complaints. I moved because I felt guilty/insecure being a free user of evernote. Onenote doesn't give you the guilt trip and it's got that Microsoft permanence about it.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#30

Post by adamnemecek »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #9

Basing a business on a notepad app seems unwise...

It wasn't the business that was the problem, it was the product. Eventually, Evernote became insane cluttered, to the point where it was preventing me from doing things. I wished they had markdown support in like 2009, they still don't have it.
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