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Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

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281–290 of 354 posts

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#281

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…

Notion still doesn't have (3) and I find it compelling enough to continue using.

(e.g. when simultaneously editing, text will randomly disappear from one or both writers)

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#282

This is going to be a disaster - Bending Spoons is not a good actor: “let’s talk about Bending Spoons’ business model. The basic concept is very simple: - Find a solid app that someone else built and buy it from them (see Splice (acquired from GoPro) and 30 Day Fitness) - Optimize the monetization of said app (by implementing from scratch or fine-tuning existing subscriptions), thereby driving higher lifetime value (…

sigh well it looks like I’ll be jumping ship to Joplin this weekend.

I’ve honestly lost hope in Evernote and just kept using it out of laziness to migrate, but I don’t like what the future holds.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#283
post #41

I loved Evernote and was a paying subscriber right up until they changed their TOS to let their employees read all my notes to work on ad targeting. They backpedaled after a while but trust was lost, I cancelled immediately. I have no sympathy for their failure.

That's horrible. It's the reason I'm still somewhat suspicious of a simplistic note taking app (Colornote) I use on my android. I oftentimes get the sneaky feeling it might be sending my (sometimes highly private) notes to a server somewhere in China, but the app is so simple to use that no matter how many time I decide to, I simply can't get myself to wipe and uninstall it

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#284
For anyone looking for an INCREDIBLE note-taking app, check out UpNote. https://getupnote.com/

- Sleek UX/UI. It does not overoptimize there either. Just the right amount of perfect for me.

- Importantly, cross-platform: as someone on Android and Mac, it works seamlessly

- $24.99 Lifetime pricing. No subscription BS.

- Developers pay close attention to user feedback but they're also not dumping features there left, right, and center. Most updates are targeted at making this faster than bigger. (It is already fast enough)

- No "Social/collaborative" BS. I want my notes to be mine.

- Export capability to PDF, HTML etc.

Disclaimer: No, I have no affiliation with the product. Just a super-happy user who'd like to recommend this to everyone. I have tried many note-taking apps out there but this one really hits it out of the park

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#285
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.

Evernote was still decent enough before the ditched the native app for a dreadful Electron webframe.

Agree. But you can still download the legacy native apps.

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Ins...

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#286
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.

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…

> Ulysses and Bear are Apple first systems, and while I use Apple mobile devices, my ecosystem is much more varied, and Evernote accommodates all, with feature parity.

I think you can add Craft to that list.

Too bad, they all look nice, but I've completely left the Apple ecosystem.

If they don't have Android and Linux desktop apps, they don't really compete for the same market

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really, really want to know what kind of person sees a pair of socks with a productivity app logo on them and thinks "I need these in my life."

I worked at a startup that gave “store credits” away as, try not to laugh, morale boosters so employees could buy company swag. It was pretty hilarious.

We get a certain amount of money a year to buy GitHub swag, but in fairness, I think our shirts and swag is pretty great and most employees appreciate it/use it.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#288

For anyone looking for an INCREDIBLE note-taking app, check out UpNote. https://getupnote.com/ - Sleek UX/UI. It does not overoptimize there either. Just the right amount of perfect for me. - Importantly, cross-platform: as someone on Android and Mac, it works seamlessly - $24.99 Lifetime pricing. No subscription BS. - Developers pay close attention to user feedback but they're also not dumping features there left, r…

Thanks for the recommendation! I'm going to try them out now.

EDIT: I was able to export my main "Evernote" notebook into a 1.8GB .enex file, and have started importing all the notes into UpNote. It works well so far! I really like the Markdown editor, that's already a lot more comfortable to use. I will probably switch to this.

It's just a bit strange that importing notes from Evernote is a premium feature, so you can't even try it out properly before paying. There should at least be a free trial.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#289

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…

A successful rewrite of a core product requires a mix of peers: Old blood, who know the wins and sins of the past, and new blood who'll bring a fresh perspective.

Re: Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leverage is probably the wrong choice of word, but VC's growth expectations make your average loan shark's interest rates look downright reasonable.

Leverage is a fine choice of words. In financial terms, debt and equity are not that different. Particularly VC equity, which can have some debt-like qualities to it (liquidation preferences, etc.). Also, many startup investments use debt instruments like convertible notes instead of direct equity purchases.

The definition of leverage is the ratio of a company's debt to its equity. Being pressured to grow too fast by your investors because their model is for every invetment to either go light speed or bust is just a different thing. That is the source of the confusion.
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