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

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#161

Post by jwr » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:14 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…

Evernote was a great application, and paying for features was not a problem (at least not for the reasonable ones among us). The problem was the the application kept growing and getting slower, more bloated and ugly. In my case, it got replaced by lower-friction apps which were better designed.

Natural selection at work, I'd say.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#162

Post by welder » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

Funny that Evernote had an impact on me wanting to do a Freemium business model back in the day, but maybe I shouldn't have valued their public advice as much as I did. Their CEO gave a talk that I can't find right now with some nice graphs that showed freemium working for Evernote at the time. Anyone able to find that talk?

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#163

Post by jimmaswell » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

Tangentially, what I want in a note/todo app is that the first screen will be a list of categories, like "car" and "shower". Under "car" would be a note I made that says "bring new SD card for dash cam".

I'd look in "car" before heading out to the car, and see that note and remember to bring the SD card out to it. I'd habitually check all of these before doing anything, so I didn't keep forgetting things I needed to do like bringing an SD card with me when I head out instead of having to walk back into the house once I'm in the car and remember or bringing the new shampoo bottle into the shower before I get in it. Also useful would be repeatable checklists, for things like putting my xbox controller in my backback before heading out on a frequent long trip.

Is there anything like this?

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#164

Post by __jal » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

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.

What I hate about the rush to subscriptions is the addition of cloud elements where they are not needed.

A great example of this is a little addition I've been using to Mail.app, called MailTags[1]. I've been using it for years, religiously upgrading as I go, because email is my primary communications mode and I had a great workflow built around it.

Now it has gone subscription and is storing metadata related to mail on Someone Else's Computer. That's a hard-no for me, and really too bad, but it did make me figure out that I can replicate the workflow I built around that with Mutt and a few shell scripts.

I don't know how common that is, but their attempt to extract regular revenue meant they lost revenue from me. I do sincerely hope it works out for them - I love indie devs! - but more and more, I find subscriptions lead me to substitute open source for whatever it is.

[1] https://smallcubed.com/scs/

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#165

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

The main problem with Evernote seems to be that their total-available-market is way too small to justify their valuation and expenses. It's core success is as a note-taking app - how big is the market for that really? They are competing against free alternatives like Emacs-org-mode, Apple Notes, and Google Keep. Sure, they can carve out a niche for themselves as a premium multi-device cloud-based no-ads app. But a $1B valuation? I don't think so.

Evernote sounds like a company that tried too hard to be something it wasn't. "Smart covers for your feet"? Really?? The founders of Evernote could have built a very successful low-expenses high-margin lifestyle business that would have made them very rich. "Unicorn or bust" isn't always a winning strategy. I hope the other startup featured in NYTimes today - Superhuman - learns from Evernote's failings

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#166

Post by jlg23 » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

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.

Awesome for the company, but not so much for the customer.

As a customer who values his time I have to manage one more recurring payment, I have to interact with (up)sales-people disguised as customer service and I have to keep records of canceling the service n years (depending on jurisdiction) because I don't know yet who will buy the leftovers of a company once it's not profitable so they can massmail "due payment notices" to all former customers, making a profit from those who fail to object in time.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#167

Post by chipperyman573 » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #163

Tangentially, what I want in a note/todo app is that the first screen will be a list of categories, like "car" and "shower". Under "car" would be a note I made that says "bring new SD card for dash cam". I'd look in "car" before heading out to the car, and see that note and remember to bring the SD card out to it. I'd habitually check all of these before doing anything, so I didn't keep forgetting things I needed to…

Not sure if you need a formal workflow but you could probably use just about any note-taking app that has labels and just fiter to that labe.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#168

Post by Stratoscope » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

charlesdaniels wrote: post #144

Lots of people here mentioned they are looking for Evernote replacements. Here is my experience with this: Joplin[1] seems to be the best in my view. It's cross-platform, has decent sync capabilities, plus a web clipper. I've been using this for a while and have liked it a lot so far. I used Quiver[2] for a while when I used to run macOS, but moved away from it because it was macOS specific. It also had some features…

OneNote does have a web clipper:

https://www.onenote.com/clipper

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#169

Post by fortran77 » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:35 PM UTC

charlesdaniels wrote: post #144

Lots of people here mentioned they are looking for Evernote replacements. Here is my experience with this: Joplin[1] seems to be the best in my view. It's cross-platform, has decent sync capabilities, plus a web clipper. I've been using this for a while and have liked it a lot so far. I used Quiver[2] for a while when I used to run macOS, but moved away from it because it was macOS specific. It also had some features…

OneNote works great on every platform. Really!

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#170

Post by tomhoward » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

Also let’s not forget the founders of Skitch, who (in the absence of any better options at the time), accepted an all-stock acquisition deal by Evernote.

I mean, all’s fair in love and war, but wow that really turned out to be a bad outcome for the developers of a product that, at its peak, made a pretty huge impact.