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Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

nytimes.com

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Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#61

Post by JumpCrisscross »

duxup wrote: post #21
dalbasal wrote: post #12

Failure, in this context could either mean product or company failure, and the "fail fast" adage is usually applied to product, not company. At least as this article presents the story (executive churn, etc), it sounds like company failure is the main part of it. The issue with "unicorn" failures is that a product can be really successful in objective terms (users, revenue, profit..) but still an investment failure,…

I often think of the story of the guy who posted here about how his startup "failed" but in reality it just didn't bring in the massive cash flow that was hoped for. IIRC he bought it from the investors for cheap (so they could get it off their books) and then just ran it as one guy (maybe a few more added part time later)... and it does just fine in that conext, and who knows what might happen from there. Kinda make…

> Unicorn style world domination or nothing, result in some business opportunities being lost

Most business activity in America is far from the Bay Area. It concerns itself with the sorts of quotidian businesses opportunities you speak of.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#62

Post by duxup »

rutierut wrote: post #34
duxup wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often think of the story of the guy who posted here about how his startup "failed" but in reality it just didn't bring in the massive cash flow that was hoped for. IIRC he bought it from the investors for cheap (so they could get it off their books) and then just ran it as one guy (maybe a few more added part time later)... and it does just fine in that conext, and who knows what might happen from there. Kinda make…

You're thinking of Sahil Lavingia, CEO of Gumroad.

Yes, thank you!

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#63

Post by _JasonE »

My wife and I tried using Evernote for keeping a running shopping list. Our options were: You can copy the shared note, but only that most recent version. Or, you can keep it as is but always have to navigate to the "work chat" and click on the note there (no way to add a shared note to your notes without copying it).

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#66

Post by maxxxxx »

jerf wrote: post #53
maxxxxx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Kinda makes me think that a lot of Unicorn style world domination or nothing, result in some business orotundities being lost if those are the only two options." I think a lot of companies are doomed because of that attitude. Companies with high valuations like Slack, Github and others can't just keep a nice business going but they have to expand like crazy to justify their valuation. And most of them end up convert…

If you want to be bold, start your Slack replacement now. Do whatever you can to make it easy to transition to your product (API compatibility, integration compatibility, etc.). Be ready to pick up the people who will be disgruntled by Slack in two or three years. You may never be as big as Slack but there's probably a business there.

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.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#67

Post by duxup »

bluGill wrote: post #28
duxup wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL I had no idea OneNote even existed until well after Evernote, and I worked at a lot of places using Microsoft products.... strange.

OneNote still feels like Microsoft's best kept secret. It is a simple solution to the common problem of taking notes. I'm convinced one of my previous bosses got several promotions just because he used OneNote to keep track of notes.

In a technical support department where documentation is largely controlled / poorly controlled by a small group... I know of folks who have a lot of 'secret' one note documents that are quite popular inside the company ;)

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#68

Post by barking »

linuxftw wrote: post #42

I remember when someone first showed me evernote with a bunch of hype. And I was like "This is pointless, I can't believe it's a company." I think we can refer to that as the age of 'cloud madness' where anything and everything cloud-related was the new hotness. I think we've forgotten just how strong the buzz-wordiness was around cloud, it was prolific.

I get you but if you go on to the discussion forums for evernote either on their site or reddit you'll find people who have their entire lives at their fingertips thanks to this app and for whom it's vital to their work. They use its IFTTT functionality to an insane degree such that every document they get it's one click on the phone and it's filed.

Re: Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

#70

Post by notheruser »

levythe wrote: post #16
duxup wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did fill a serious need though. Other people followed including Microsoft making their own product as well.

Microsoft OneNote was released in 2003, while Evernote was founded in 2007. There were changes Microsoft made to allow OneNote to better compete with Evernote, but they did not make the product itself in response to Evernote.

Evernote (the original offline app) was released in 2004:

http://web.archive.org/web/20041114033908/http://www.evernot...

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