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

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#151

Post by asdfman123 » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:03 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…

I can't read the article due to paywall, but why does a note-taking app need to be a unicorn in the first place? It just seems so excessive.

Like couldn't 80% of the value of Evernote be written as a simple, intuitive piece of software that a middle-aged programmer in Boise could maintain in his free time?

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#152

Post by ghaff » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

muro wrote: post #124

achillesheels wrote: post #91

SaaS subscriptions are magical when they work; they provide much needed regularity to cash flow forecasting which assuages investor timidity. However, creating a subscription model doesn’t necessarily mean there is a service that warrants it.

Subscription is great for the company "selling", might be fine for other companies paying it, but I absolutely despise it as an end-user/private customer and will do everything I can to find an alternative (e.g. with a single-purchase license).

I don't have anything against a subscription if:

- I use it regularly. (Which means I'll probably be upgrading to new versions anyway.)

- The price is reasonable for the value

- I can export my data in a form that's still useful/accessible once I cancel my subscription.

The problem is that all those conditions are frequently not met.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#153

Post by magashna » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #21

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 make…

Investors want another Google, some people are perfectly happy with niche boutique product, and when all that investor money comes in it obscures what made that original product great. It's a shame that some great products only failed because of inflated expectations. If they had just stayed the course, they would've been fine.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#154

Post by mkr-hn » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

daybreak wrote: post #148

I used to love Evernote. The thing that killed my enthusiasm for them was the constant upselling, even for paid accounts. I paid for a Plus monthly subscription (a lower tier) and there were constant advertisements within the app to upgrade to Premium. Upgrade buttons that would reappear even when I remove them, notices on the bottom of the note UI, etc. I could understand the constant advertising for free accounts,…

I see no ads/upsells on my free account. Maybe that was one of the things they got rid of after the CEO (new?) announced the new direction.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#155

Post by asdfman123 » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

slantaclaus wrote: post #14

Apple's "Notes" application is a well known unreliable piece of shit. Evernote's core functionality is extremely reliable and valuable to a lot of people, including myself. Maybe Apple should buy Evernote.

Why would you want to pay billions for a note-taking app when you can have a programmer, a PM and a UX guy make one for less than a rounding error in your budget?

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#156

Post by thaeli » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #143

CPLX wrote: post #118

It used to be fantastic. The killer app for me was that it was actually impressively good at searching text in images which at the time felt like magic. Like you could take a picture of a whiteboard or your handwritten notes from a meeting or slide on a screen at a conference and then do a free text search of the keywords in it a few months later and find it. It was also really good at clipping web pages and helping…

They transitioned that to a paid feature because they had to keep the lights on. Small groups of engineers can do amazing things but in most companies amazing things worth doing run out and staff keeps growing. Salaries need to be paid and diminishing returns start. I have been thinking about the economics of being done with a piece of commercial software. Shut down feature additions, lower the price in regular incre…

That's a much more customer-friendly version of a common late stage strategy in enterprise software: shut down feature additions, keep the price high, milk support contracts and if all that's not enough, sue your customers!

I like your sunset strategy better as a customer, but it sounds like something you could only really do if you don't have investors.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#157

Post by cameronbrown » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #140

muro wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription is great for the company "selling", might be fine for other companies paying it, but I absolutely despise it as an end-user/private customer and will do everything I can to find an alternative (e.g. with a single-purchase license).

Single purchase licenses are way better but a company with a cloud component can not be sustainable on that model. One option is to provide a way to offload the cloud storage to another company (such as Dropbox syncing).

Depends how much data users use. I have a feeling you could store and transfer a lot of data for a £40 fee.

A couple of alternatives:

1. Decouple the cloud syncing component and sell that as subscription, with a sync-less version for a fee. PWAs mean you don't even need to give up the web platform to do this nowadays.

2. (My personal favourite) is sell a perpetual license but charge for feature upgrades. Retro, I know.

3. Sell a subscription licence which includes a perpetual license for the latest copy of the software. If you stop paying, you stop getting updates. JetBeains works like this with their products.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#158

Post by magashna » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #53

maxxxxx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Kinda makes me think that a lot of Unicorn style world domination or nothing, result in some business orotundities being lost if those are the only two options." I think a lot of companies are doomed because of that attitude. Companies with high valuations like Slack, Github and others can't just keep a nice business going but they have to expand like crazy to justify their valuation. And most of them end up convert…

If you want to be bold, start your Slack replacement now. Do whatever you can to make it easy to transition to your product (API compatibility, integration compatibility, etc.). Be ready to pick up the people who will be disgruntled by Slack in two or three years. You may never be as big as Slack but there's probably a business there.

Build fast, sell out faster.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#159

Post by magashna » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

tru3_power wrote: post #77

maxxxxx wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There probably is but it’s really hard to compete with a company with deep pockets. That’s what I find pretty worrying about these unicorns. They kill a lot of potentially good smaller businesses just by being able to burn a lot of money.

How do they “kill” the competition exactly? I understand they have a lot of money, but what do they do with it that makes it impossible to compete? (Honest question)

Why would you enter a market where one company publicly has 1B+ valuation? It's Goliath crushing David based on reputation alone.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#160

Post by hedora » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

greesil wrote: post #134

acd wrote: post #127

It is time to tell the Pegasus from the Unicorns. Unicorn is a magical creature horse with no wings. A Pegasus i a magical horse with wings. The macro economic policy that feeded Unicorns was ZIRP zero interest rate policy where magical unicorns pops up from central banks printing new money. Macro economic it could be that trade barriers read import taxes will feed inflation that will force central banks to raise int…

Does it bother you that this mythical animal metaphor is being extended to yet another creature? But since we are here, I would consider Falkor the Luckdragon to be a better choice instead of a Pegasus.

When it comes to pony based economic plans, Vermin Supreme is clearly the best choice.

However, I will have to read up on Falkor.