Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

Post by distances » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #151

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?

Post by bobthepanda » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 6:38 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…

Post by nsxwolf » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 6:42 PM UTC

Post by distances » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

woofie11 wrote: post #131

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.

I think they idea was to pick up the pieces when Slack implodes. Most of these businesses, looking for 10x growth, do so at some point. gitlab and bitbucket ain't github, but as github started burning, they started picking up steam. github sold for $7.5 billion. If they can get 1% of that value, that's still $75 million. If they can do so on the cheap, maintaining control, that's not a bad return. I doubt something l…

Post by briandear » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #203

colechristensen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The real problem is that everything is focused on becoming a thousands-strong workforce and a valuation of billions. IMO lot of software could be small or medium sized businesses making a small but steady profit. But the whole VC/startup culture has made this fundamentally unsexy.