Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks less like it though, as there's definitely a postmortem being given about the ebb and flow of freemium/revenue models: http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2014/05/28/five-lessons-for-co... This begs the question: figure it out later once you have a lot of users or figure it out with a small number of users and then try to get a lot of users? Obviously not that simple, but curious.
I dunno... that article you linked has this part in it: "Springpad co-founder Jeff Chow, who previously worked with Janer at Third Screen Media (acquired by AOL), is joining Google in Kendall Square, along with Springpad’s top four engineers:" Sounds exactly like an acqhire that somehow instead became a poach. And a pretty rip-the-heart-out poach too. I can't think of any start-ups that could survive that kind of tal…
Re: Springpad is shutting down
#21Do they still count as a startup if they're ~5 years old and have >5m users? I switched from Evernote to Springpad back in 2010 after Evernote rewrote their desktop app between versions 2.2 and 3.0 and dropped Linux support (using it via Wine was horrendous). Evernote 3.0 basically because a desktop presentation of the .Net web app, which was not great, and Springpad's web clipper at the time was mnuch better. That said, Springpad just didn't really have any killer features and Evernote had a lot more traction and a hugely better marketing initiative. I am not a fan of Evernote, and never became particularly enamored with Springpad, either. If the Springpad engineers join the Google Keep team, though, I'd be really happy. Keep just totally sucks right now. :)