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Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

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Re: Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

#81

Post by benguild »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #80

I wish them well. I was a paying customer for many years but a few years ago I backed up all of my notes and cancelled. I noticed that I spent much more time creating and curating notes than ever using them. Now I use org-mode and occasionally Apple Notes and Keep. I re-evaluated the utility of long term curation of notes and working material.

Same here. I stopped paying since the only premium feature I used was the PDF indexing.

Personally, I’ve seen more people using Bear recently than Evernote... which is starting to feel a bit ancient. Its biggest strength is that it has Windows and Android clients, where as Bear doesn’t.

Re: Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

#82

Post by dstaley »

If Evernote hasn't found a set of features people would be willing to pay for in their ten years of existing, I doubt another round of funding is really the solution. I'd much rather see them reduce their staff to an amount they can afford given their MRR, and focus on fleshing out the features that people are actually willing to pay for.

Re: Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

#83

Post by nashashmi »

I fondly remember Evernote talking about being a company that lives around for a hundred years. It had really great leadership, smart staff, a desire to be as independent as possible, keep data as belonging to the user as much as possible, and away from subpoena, and then a vision to help people become more productive.

Sometime later the vision floundered and staff became bored. Lots of people left for something more exciting. And the product went through its dark period.

Now the flaws are too many to mention and too well known too repeat but my question remains the same: what is there to do as a company that it makes sense to last a hundred years independently?

No. More than that. How can a company become so important just by collecting thoughts and memories?

FB survived because they had complete open access to how users were using the product. And they pivoted from their earlier promises.

Evernote stayed loyal. They suffered.

Re: Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

#84

Post by siruncledrew »

nodamage wrote: post #29

> “In the past three months (June, July, August), Evernote has been downloaded 2.5 million times worldwide,” a spokesperson for analytics firm Apptopia said. “After store fees, the app has brought in revenues of $2.9 million through in-app purchases.” That seems like... not a lot... for a company that has raised $300 million in funding.

Evernote U-turned pretty quickly from the commitment they made just last year to not taking VC money: https://venturebeat.com/2017/02/13/never-say-never-evernote-...

Re: Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

#85

Post by ardy42 »

I mostly use Evernote to save/tag interesting articles for later reference (it sure beats trying to re-find stuff via google). Any good cross-platform replacements for this use case? Especially ones that run as a desktop app and/or are self hosted? I want a solution I can stick with.

Re: Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

#86

Post by tomrod »

killjoywashere wrote: post #66
coldcode wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1 per download isn't enough to pay the bills. That's not much more than a 99¢ game. It means people don't actually value the product enough to pay for it.

I spent my last two years of residency taking my notes in Evernote, but they really fall short in the transition between hand-written notes and that shift to research where you need to make high-quality handwritten notes over a PDF, like Notability, and then move those PDFs to the bibliography phase of databasing. Now that I'm out of training and doing my own work, that like of integration with my future self really…

Geez, that's disturbing. To think Xournal does it more or less for gratis & libre!

Re: Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

#87

Post by doomrobo »

ardy42 wrote: post #85

I mostly use Evernote to save/tag interesting articles for later reference (it sure beats trying to re-find stuff via google). Any good cross-platform replacements for this use case? Especially ones that run as a desktop app and/or are self hosted? I want a solution I can stick with.

I use Zotero for the same purpose and it's been great so far: https://www.zotero.org/

Re: Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

#88

Post by fouc »

I always thought Evernote was just a more updated version of Treepad.

Treepad was a way of making all these labeled leafs of notes and organize it hierarchically. But it ended up being really annoying to manage. It was easy to add notes but easier to never look at them again, rendering them useless. Search or typical tag-based approaches wouldn't solve these problems. I always thought it would require something innovative, perhaps a more atomic line-based input that self organizes as a large list.

I'm not sure Evernote ever really came up with a more innovative solution than an upgraded treepad + cloud + search + tags ?

Re: Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

#89

Post by paulcole »

sxg wrote: post #68
bradleyjg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix did something sort of like that when they split off shipping dvds into a completely different unit.

They announced it (Qwikster, I believe), and then they immediately canceled that plan after massive backlash.

It’s back. DVD.com is Netflix’s DVD by mail business.

Re: Evernote lost its CTO, CFO, CPO and HR head as it eyes another fundraise

#90

Post by ardy42 »

doomrobo wrote: post #87
ardy42 wrote: post #85

I mostly use Evernote to save/tag interesting articles for later reference (it sure beats trying to re-find stuff via google). Any good cross-platform replacements for this use case? Especially ones that run as a desktop app and/or are self hosted? I want a solution I can stick with.

I use Zotero for the same purpose and it's been great so far: https://www.zotero.org/

Open source and developed by a non-profit! I'll have to take a look, thanks!
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