Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel • Hacker News Board

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#101

Post by olivermarks » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

par wrote: post #92

olivermarks wrote: post #90

Instead of this 'long and winding road' wry style pr, the reality is EN spectacularly screwed up. They had the world at their feet but got in their own way. I still use it because incredibly there isn't anything better i'm aware of (I tried onenote but didn't like it) but for me EN is a case history of the incompetent side of valley hype

how did they spectacularly screw up? honestly asking.

Code quality of the service they were offering: It's improved a little recently but search is still bad, the shared document function was very buggy and made material disappear. General bugs and niggles in past.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#102

Post by stillworks » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

MasterScrat wrote: post #49

What alternatives would you recommend?

Depending on what the use case is, (for me it's note taking, bit of math/equations, code snippets)

- Joplin Editor is nice (due to KaTeX), "cloud" syncing can be made to work, iCloud not supported though

- Quiver https://happenapps.com/ , is paid, but math/equations are supported via MathJax, iCloud is supported

Currently, Joplin works for me but Quiver is overall better.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#103

Post by nvr219 » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

kauffj wrote: post #8

http://archive.is/yqb83 (Archive link for those who prefer non-broken web experiences)

Original link works perfectly on brave on ios

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#104

Post by djrogers » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #30

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.

"Too Many Features, plus it's missing My Feature"...

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#105

Post by bayareanative » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

Evernote stumbled and failed to execute so many times. The got hacked, had a clunky/yucky UI forever and lost people's notes. Plus, like a meal kit service or taxi app, they didn't have anything that was inherently defensible. That's why they failed.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#106

Post by syn0byte » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #79

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #9

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

What's unwise about $100 million in revenue?

The $1Bn+ valuation.

It's not that a note app can't be successful, but clearly not with SV style funding and expectations.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#107

Post by codesushi42 » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

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,…

The failure is that start up founders and investors fail to recognize that revenue is your KPI to optimize for in the long run, with a goal of making a profit in the not so distant future. Business is not a social network, and success isn't measured by how many friends/users/downloads you have. Money is the bottom line.

Of course if you give something away for free or sell it cheap enough at a loss, you'll get a lot of "customers". I could do the same by opening a free taco stand on the street. But it is in no way a sustainable business model.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#108

Post by dehrmann » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

etairaz wrote: post #78

Most people don't know this, but evernote was created maybe 15 years ago, as a desktop app ( https://lifehacker.com/download-of-the-day-evernote-2-0-wind... ). I used evernote before their version 3, which is the one everyone knows today. Evernote 2 was a brilliant note taking app, the first and best of its kind, and it cost a few dozen bucks, which I gladly paid... Then they shifted to the online version called Ever…

Around 2010, I was chatting with a colleague about them. Even then, he was talking about how its "current incarnation." It sounded like back in the day, it was a bunch of Russian handwriting recognition experts, and they built a company around that.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#109

Post by polskibus » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

I use Evernote to store mostly bookmarks, tag them, sometimes I take a note with it. I'm mostly reliant on the search by tag feature. I use Evernote on multiple devices that sync.

What would HN crowd recommend as an Evernote replacement?

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#110

Post by adamnemecek » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #104

adamnemecek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Too Many Features, plus it's missing My Feature"...

Ok, why has the product failed then?