
Evernote raises another $85M - frankphilips
http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/30/evernote-raises-another-85m-as-it-seeks-to-get-short-termers-out-well-before-an-ipo/
======
ry0ohki
I'm an Evernote user, but I feel like I'm just plain missing something about
Evernote. Why is it worth $1 billion? Am I using it wrong? I've never even
came close to needing to upgrade.

On another note the app seems to get heavier and heavier each update, it takes
as long to launch as MS Word on my Mac.

~~~
lukefreiler
I've tried to use it so many times, but I just can't work it into my own
productivity cycle consistently. I end up using it for a few days, and then
slowly forget about it. I know a few people with a similar story, but nobody
who has actually settled on it successfully.

That said, I did pay for it for the year hoping that it would encourage me to
use it (better organizing my work-life seems like a problem worth solving) -
it just didn't...

~~~
mishmax
I use evernote everyday. I put everything in there -- status reports I update
every week, my own git cheatsheet, business ideas, documents I use repeatedly
(e.g. instructions to ramp up new developers on my project), etc..

But what really got me using evernote is the combination of Fuji Scansnap +
Evernote. Now any important mail or receipts I need archived I just scan them
and they're in evernote forever.

And their iPhone app is a life saver, anything I need on the go, I retrieve
from evernote. Forgot my health card? No worries it's scanned and available on
my phone via evernote.

I love the product, but yeah it still boggles me why they need so much money
and how you can build a big company from such an inexpensive product.

------
portman
To all those asking what they are spending the money on: _secondary_ financing
means that the money is not going to Evernote. Instead, the new investors are
purchasing $85M of shares from existing investors. Evernote's bank account
does not grow by $85M.

------
justin_vanw
According to crunchbase they have raised $251m. What have they spent that on?
Evernote is a note taking application. If you developed 25 different native
apps (this is an overestimate), and spent $1M on each of them (to hire 4
developers full time per app for one year) it would cost $25m. Add another 3m
for infrastructure, and you have $28m and nothing left to spend money on other
than advertising and marketing.

Why isn't this considered absurd? What a joke!

~~~
achompas
Evernote has 8 main apps (some of which were purchased). They're listed on the
homepage. [0]

In addition, they have Evernote apps for almost every major platform [1] (Mac,
Windows, browser plugins for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, plus iPhone, iPad,
Android, Blackberry, WP7, and webOS). If you're not on any of those platforms,
or those apps aren't installed on the machine you're using, you can ALSO use
their web interface.

All of that is supported by a ridiculous server infrastructure. They jumped
from 4M to 10M users in 10 months [2, 3], and that was _2011_. They're now at
34M users. [4]

Evernote users aren't just tweeting back-and-forth, either. They're saving
PDFs, uploading scanned notes from class, searching through OCRed image
results, clipping web pages, etc. That all requires tons of storage, as well
as the infrastructure to retrieve and back up that storage as quickly and
reliably as possible.

Soooooo yeah they're a pretty big deal. 4 engineers for a native app is an
understatement--between product managers, designers, front-end work, back-end
work, and ops team, you're probably looking at a 12-18 person team per serious
app. Possibly more, if it's popular (like iOS or the web interface).

EDIT: estimated 20-30 person teams, but that's a bit much. Probably less than
that

[0] <http://evernote.com/>

[1] <http://evernote.com/evernote>

[2] [http://www.intomobile.com/2011/06/09/evernote-
hits-10-millio...](http://www.intomobile.com/2011/06/09/evernote-
hits-10-million-users/)

[3] [http://mashable.com/2010/08/17/evernote-
surpasses-4-million-...](http://mashable.com/2010/08/17/evernote-
surpasses-4-million-users/)

[4] [http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/19/evernote-by-the-
numbers-34m...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/19/evernote-by-the-
numbers-34m-users-1-4m-paying-and-how-different-platforms-pay/)

~~~
jimktrains2
No Linux client though:(

~~~
angryasian
ive used nixnote in the past but overall am not fond of evernote, and have
switched to a combination of a personal wiki and google docs.

~~~
jimktrains2
I've found nixnote to be bulky and awkward. I love it on my phone and the web
interface is good enough for use (though I'd still want a native linux
client).

------
laglad
It's pretty killer as a library. I use it to clip books (with its web clipper)
from my browsings around the web. With the tag feature, it's bloody simple to
build a highly organized library.

Its architecture applied to any data store (books, websites, articles,
thoughts, poems, art, jokes), with easy storage, easy tagging and easy
retrieval, makes for an excellent thinking tool.

I'm a fan.

------
goronbjorn
> The longer [people] use, the most likely they are to convert

That is why Evernote is worth so much. Few, if any, other products can make
that claim.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020475540457810...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204755404578101270204307986.html)

------
aero142
I've actually found Evernote to be pretty helpful in turning my random
internet readings into more long term knowledge. I read a lot of random
articles about tcpdump or economics and read them but don't apply anything
immediately. In my head that knowledge goes into a place where I sort of
remember things but not the details. With clipping plus the google search
integration, it's nice to search for a vague idea and see the actual article
and my notes about it. Helps a lot with completing ideas and turning things
into long term knowledge.

~~~
AVTizzle
"I've actually found Evernote to be pretty helpful in turning my random
internet readings into more long term knowledge."

Well said. My experience has been the same.

~~~
frabcus
Having never done this, I find it mystifying.

Would love to see a proper, long writeup of how this works in practice.

------
larsberg
I really, really hope this means they can implement 3-way merge on sync for
text-only notes. Any time one of my clients silently decides to stop syncing,
I'm then stuck doing a hand baseless merge on every device.

It wouldn't be an issue if it was infrequent, but this is a weekly problem
with multiple OSX and iOS clients (maybe not on Windows?).

------
cjensen
I noticed late this year that Evernote seems to be trying hard to increase the
number of paid users: 1\. I got a coupon for a year of Evernote included in
the MacHeist bundle 2\. Evernote sent an email a few days ago for "two years
for the price of one"

I never like to see a company change behavior like this right before an IPO.

~~~
fraserharris
CEO adamant there will be no IPO before 2015

------
moe
I don't get the hype around evernote. I find their app rather clunky, but more
importantly their security story is a disaster waiting to happen. Last I
checked encryption was only available selectively for individual notes, and
again the UI was so clunky that it's probably hardly being used.

Thus it takes only one disgruntled employee or motivated cracker to make many
people very, very unhappy.

------
ChuckMcM
That is refreshingly honest, Phil Libin sounds like someone I could get along
with. Too often people at that level of the company focus on the exit (theirs,
the companies, etc) and lose site of the product. Great companies don't do
that, they focus on the product even if it means they don't get to cash out
this year.

------
mtgentry
I love Evernote. I use it as a kind of 2nd brain. I have tabs for personal
development, book summaries, business notes..

And I just search for things when they're needed. It's like Google, but
instead of searching for information out there in the world, it finds
information related to my personal life.

~~~
reddit_clone
I use Emacs/Orgmode for that. Not fancy but works.

~~~
jimktrains2
Orgmode won't let you take a photo on your phone and search for the text in
the photo from your home computer though:)

~~~
reddit_clone
I will give you that.

But do you really want me to enumerate the list of things that OrgMode can do
and other guys don't ? :-)

(Esp. for me its ability to do integrated Calendaring, Task Management with
Time tracking is priceless. I haven't seen anything that even comes close to
that functionality. Commercial or Free.)

------
jonpaul
Am I alone in feeling what a person needs Evernote for? Sharing files? I use
Dropbox. Clippings? I just use bookmarks. I downloaded it a couple of years
ago, but what are the common use cases from the HN crowd? I visited their
website and was disappointed.

~~~
jejune06
Here's a recent piece on LifeHacker that helps outline several different use
cases:

[http://lifehacker.com/5964285/whats-all-the-fuss-about-
evern...](http://lifehacker.com/5964285/whats-all-the-fuss-about-evernote-why-
do-people-use-it)

Hope that helps.

------
jongold
What would be awesome: a way to sync my nvALT/Simplenote notes (in Markdown)
into Evernote _along with_ mixed-media content (scanned receipts, web
clippings etc) that I'd create in Evernote only

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benatkin
They could buy and destroy a lot of products with that money.

