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Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

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Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#151

Post by bayindirh »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #142
bayindirh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, their experience is pretty pleasant and the product works very well after they have rebuilt their apps. They don’t need to be jealous. Their relative utilitarian take on the matter is what makes them so unique and powerful in the market. Yes, I love markdown, and Evernote just provides a slightly more powerful, WYSIWYG version of it. I neither want “everything and the kitchen sink” vision of Notion, and des…

A "Relative utilitarian take" is not how it would describe a product that tried to incorporate an entire chat app into it. They had a relatively good product around v5X series and I left because they just started to fragment and add more and more non-notetaking related things at the expense of the entire product stability and core functionality.

They tried to be “everything and the kitchen sink for the enterprise”, and failed, not because of the features they added, but feature disparity between platforms, and some reliability problems. I was doing my Ph.D. when they debuted chat, and it was useful.

Similarly, I miss their presentation mode for the notes. It was extremely useful, and the output was very pretty, too.

However, after the CEO change and rebuild, they really found themselves. I’m a pro subscriber, and the value they add into my life is immeasurable.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#152

Post by renewiltord »

oblio wrote: post #148
renewiltord wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does leverage mean here?

Debt.

Right, that's the usual meaning, but it's quite unusual for software companies to be debt financed, isn't it? SaaS companies usually go the venture route AFAIK.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#153

Post by notfried »

fairity wrote: post #110

Can someone educate me on the difficulties in raising money from your user base? It seems like businesses like this should give fair warning to their users before transactions like this occur to make sure they don't have a better option than shutting down or selling out. Evernote has tens of millions of paying users. It doesn't seem too far-fetched to believe that each user would fork over on average $50 (as an inves…

ICOs are technically a way, and scams aside which wouldn’t apply to Evernote if they would have used it, there is still a fair amount of legal ambiguity in doing it. There has been many voices pushing for creating a regulatory framework to allow doing what you are asking for.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#154

Post by d--b »

awill wrote: post #125

They must be incredibly jealous of all the successful note taking apps (Notion, Ulysses, Bear, Craft). Evernote were first, and blew it. No other way to describe it. I dumped Evernote when they restricted their free accounts to 2 devices. Ironically I'm now paying for Ulysses, money I might have give to Evernote had they not been so awful to early adopters.

Don't know... These guys already made a fortune. Maybe they just don't give a s** anymore.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#155

Post by lazyasciiart »

lucideer wrote: post #129
jef_leppard wrote: post #35

I learned three things watching EN snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: 1) There is almost never a case for a total ground up rewrite of your core product. Just don’t do it. 2) Don’t abandon the users who made you successful in the first place. They’re the ones who advocate for you and get your foot in the door. 3) real time google docs style collaborative editing is table stakes for this software category. Build…

> 1) There is almost never a case for a total ground up rewrite of your core product. Just don’t do it. I've espoused this before, but I've come around to moderating my take on this. "Almost never" is an exaggeration. I agree that they "almost never" work, but that's not the same as there being no case (there's a difference between "should not have done" and "should have done differently". After many years of seeing…

My moderated version: you are almost never going to do better at meeting the same goals with a full rewrite. Even when there is a good case for it, it is unlikely to work out.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#156

Post by tomjen3 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #85
jef_leppard wrote: post #35

I learned three things watching EN snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: 1) There is almost never a case for a total ground up rewrite of your core product. Just don’t do it. 2) Don’t abandon the users who made you successful in the first place. They’re the ones who advocate for you and get your foot in the door. 3) real time google docs style collaborative editing is table stakes for this software category. Build…

Regarding #1, this is now an often touted recommendation, even by folks like Joel Spolsky whom I greatly admire, but I'm not sure it's the right lesson. For example, I know that Google (at least in the 00s) rewrote huge, major pieces of their infrastructure multiple times and did so successfully. While I agree that broadcasting out a message of "We're going to stop the world and add no new features until we do a grou…

Spolskys point back then was that you couldn't stop the world, do nothing for two years and then come back with your rewritten product.

It was not that you couldn't rewrite part of the product here and there over time, and end up with something that is only the same as the original product in the way the greek ship was.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#157

Post by im_down_w_otp »

renewiltord wrote: post #145
boh wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to not "blow it" in the environment Evernote operated in. The default model for software startups was to leverage yourself to the hilt so can achieve some fantasy growth expectation VCs had for you. The growth requirements overextended the realities of a note taking app and so the product gets bloated in a desperate grasping for growth of any kind and the user gets pinched for every fee that can be fo…

What does leverage mean here?

I assume it means something more like burn rate and product roadmap "debt" leverage than the normal technical financial meaning.

It's easy to get yourself as a founder into a situation where you're trading fundamentals for next-round narrative, and a lot of times that's that can be the deathknell.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#158

Post by pqs »

oblio wrote: post #147
awill wrote: post #125

They must be incredibly jealous of all the successful note taking apps (Notion, Ulysses, Bear, Craft). Evernote were first, and blew it. No other way to describe it. I dumped Evernote when they restricted their free accounts to 2 devices. Ironically I'm now paying for Ulysses, money I might have give to Evernote had they not been so awful to early adopters.

> They must be incredibly jealous of all the successful note taking apps (Notion, Ulysses, Bear, Craft). One point of anecdata: I haven't heard of any of those. How do you define success? Keep in mind Evernote was created in 2000 and the web version was launched in 2008. I doubt any of the stuff in your list will be around in 14 years.

Will Evernote be around in 14 years?

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#160

Post by grammers »

awill wrote: post #125

They must be incredibly jealous of all the successful note taking apps (Notion, Ulysses, Bear, Craft). Evernote were first, and blew it. No other way to describe it. I dumped Evernote when they restricted their free accounts to 2 devices. Ironically I'm now paying for Ulysses, money I might have give to Evernote had they not been so awful to early adopters.

Ulysses is great, I'm glad I found them as well.
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