

Evernote Gets $50 Million in Funding - sahillavingia
http://blog.evernote.com/2011/07/13/evernote-gets-50-million-in-funding-with-faq/

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hnsmurf
The exit section is a little silly. When you take $50m you don't just get to
not exit later. You're just saying you're going to do it via an IPO or an IPO-
sized acquisition.

If you really don't want to exit, don't take money at all. The minute you take
a VC's funds you're agreeing to exit.

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tlrobinson
From the context it seems they're specifically talking about acquisitions. IPO
seems in line with their goals, including "making a hundred year company".

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notatoad
"What are you going to spend it on? Some of the money will go to long-term
investors and shareholders. "

does this sound kind of pyramid-schemey to anybody else? they are taking new
investments in order to pay off investors?

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jsherry
You're defining a pyramid scheme too narrowly. This is one piece of a
pyramid/ponzi scheme, but in those schemes, the underlying asset has no net
worth. Here, Evernote clearly has worth, and plenty of it (regardless of
whether the exact figure is debatable).

This happens quite often in Series B+ rounds, where previous investors take
some or all money off the table. The reason is that early stage investors
don't always have the tolerance/portfolio to sustain a long-term investment.
Let's use DoCoMo Capital in this example since they were an investor in
Evernote's Series A/B rounds. It appears that they didn't invest during this
round, so it very well may be the case that they took some of all of their
money off the table. It could very well be the case that DoCoMo Capital (who
is the venture arm of NTT DoCoMo) made their initial investment in Evernote as
a strategic one. Perhaps they no longer see strategic value in the company and
need to cash out so they can make different investments that are a better
strategic fit for their company. I don't know this to be the case at all -
just showing the point.

Alternatively, let's say an angel investor with a very small portfolio had
invested in Evernote in their very early stages. It could very well be the
case today that 95%+ of that angel's net worth is tied up in the company, and
so he/she might want to take some money off the table today to reduce his/her
risk.

On the other hand, perhaps Sequoia has the tolerance to wait this out until
IPO or a mega-acquisition. So they get in now at a higher price, cash some of
the older investors out to reduce some dilution to current shareholders, and
then the rest of the cash gets pumped back into the company.

Hopefully this is helpful.

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joshklein
I love Evernote with a passion, but only after I studied some in-depth how-to
articles from other users, and built my own mental model of how to apply it to
my way of working. I think Evernote needs to come with some pre-built
paradigms or tutorials if it is going to get more mainstream traction.

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edanm
I've tried and failed to get the point of Evernote a few times.

Do you mind pointing to the article/articles you used to get you up to speed?

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stcredzero
What makes OneNote so much better than Evernote?

EDIT: This is not an editorial comment or rhetorical. I've heard much about
this, and would like to know why many consider OneNote on early 2000's pen
computers so awesome and Evernote only so-so.

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rdl
Being crossplatform and multi-device/cloud is a huge advantage for Evernote
over OneNote. I'd never even heard of OneNote since it only ran on Windows.

The main difference with Onenote seems to be a slightly better way of rapidly
accessing multiple notes than Evernote. This might work better in a classroom
type environment.

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scottkduncan
> Well, we don’t think a billion dollars is all that cool either.

Apparently some of the investors who are cashing out think a valuation south
of a billion dollars is pretty cool.

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tlrobinson
I use Evernote, mostly for the automatic OCRing of scanned documents, but I'd
rather just be storing the documents locally and/or in Dropbox.

Is there a good way to do this?

Ideally I'd also have a completely standalone document scanner that could sync
my documents to Dropbox or something. Has anyone tried this one?
<http://www.ionaudio.com/products/details/docuscan-worldwide> Any other
suggestions?

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nicksergeant
Absolutely. I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner[1], along with the software that
comes with it. Automatically OCRs both sides and then stores it on disk. I
don't even have to name files as they are full-text-searchable in Finder on
OSX. Check out Ryan Waggoner's post[2] on this (where I got the idea from).

[1]
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001XWCQO2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001XWCQO2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nicksergeant-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=B001XWCQO2)

[2] [http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/11/how-i-filled-two-
dumpsters-a...](http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/11/how-i-filled-two-dumpsters-
and-went-paperless-with-the-fujitsu-scansnap-s1500/)

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foobarbazetc
The Fujitsu ScanSnap is the greatest piece of hardware ever.

If you use OS X, you can also get DEVONthink (not free).

Way better than Evernote. Combine it with DropBox, and away you go.

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veidr
Another opinion (mine) is that DEVONthink is a legacy single-user clunker that
is inferior to Evernote in every way that matters--stability, speed, and ease
of use. And woah, it can sync across machines!

Putting a DEVONThink DB on Dropbox does not work[1]. It corrupts the DB
contents.

(Totally agree about the ScanSnap, though.)

[1]: <http://www.devontechnologies.com/support/faqs.php?cat=7>

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spoiledtechie
Two Gripes about Evernote.

Its soo difficult to suggest new features. I have looked a few times and still
haven't found a way to do it.

Feature Request: I want to be able to mark a spot on a map for later. Like a
way point and add information to it. Example: I found an awesome lake and I
doubt Ill remember it 5 years down the road, but want to move there someday.
Nothing in evernote allows me to just that. I want to take a note about a
specific location.

~~~
edawerd
Your wish is my command. I'm gonna integrate my Android app, Car Locator, with
Evernote using their API. Check back with me in a couple days.

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grandalf
Wow. Evernote is the kind of software that I wish I used, but for me it has a
lot more friction than just using a text file in each project (which I can
view on my phone and other computers via dropbox).

Any die-hard users want to share some info about the way you've benefitted
from it compared to the sort of system I described above?

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ry0ohki
I feel the same way, I initially really liked Evernote on Desktop, but it's
much more clunky then just using Notepad on my iPhone. Plus the notes don't
work (well?) when you are without Internet or the Internet is bad like at
SXSW.

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thecabinet
If what you want to use Evernote for can be done in Notepad, then you might
not be the right audience. Or you might not be thinking big enough. I've been
using Evernote since very early, and it took me awhile to get it, too.

I have a few differet use cases:

1\. Keeping a copy of almost everything I read online. The search feature
makes it easy to find stuff, and having a screenshot-like copy means I can
tell when people try to disappear stuff. In my opinion, 95% of people using
Pinboard and Delicious are doing it wrong; if you want to record where to
_find_ (highly dynamic) information then those are the right tools, but if
it's information itself you want, why not just have a copy?

2\. More general recordkeeping. The automated OCR means I can take a picture
of a receipt and both (a) have it and (b) find it later when I need to be
reimbursed. My family also moves far and frequently for work, and Evernote
provides an extra place to store the kids' shot records, tax returns, etc.
(You can make encrypted notes, or upload pre-encrypted files.)

And despite the fact that everything is in the cloud, a backup copy of your
account is kept on your computer, so even if Evernote goes bust or loses your
stuff, you've got a backup copy.

They also have great customer service. When my credit card number changed and
my premium membership didn't get renewed, they just ave me a couple of months
free while I got it sorted out. And it's $50/year ($4/mo) for a premium
account! It's worth $4/mo just to be able to scan my records and then throw
away te paper copies.

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edvinasbartkus
They took money that they actually don't need? So it's like selling yourself?

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jackowayed
They don't need it now. But money is cheap right now, even cheaper if you
don't need money (your company is doing great, plus you have leverage). This
should help them avoid having to raise money when they desperately need it,
which is a bad situation to be in

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natural219
I think this is great news. Evernote is a fantastic company, and I think they
have a really good shot at changing the way normal people keep track of stuff
in their head.

They definitely have a lot of areas to expand. I'd be happy if they used this
money to focus on hardware; there are a zillion things you can do to bridge
the awesomeness of digital recordkeeping with the constraints of our physical
world. Have you seen the Sixth Sense that MIT Media Lab has been working on?
(<http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/>). Yeah -- I want that for
Evernote.

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avstraliitski
So you essentially Web2.0 a TODO text file, making s/CRLF/<arbitrary new
record type>/ and let some other people view it, maybe ... add timestamping or
version control or some other cruft, maybe a couple of mobile platform
specific interfaces and/or an API (whole thing <1 weekend coding, add 2 weeks
for UI/UX) ... somehow con fools in to using it, then someone gives you 50
million USD. This is why the US economy is going down the drain. Unbelievable.

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sahillavingia
Are you serious? Please try and replicate Evernote in 3 weeks.

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avstraliitski
Firstly, you originally posted this article so I can see that you are biased
against cynical dismissal of the company. (I tend to feel that in openness you
should have declared that in refuting my skeptical take on Evernote, but now
I've done it for you.)

Secondly, it seems from your background that you are 18 and your self-identity
is closely linked to programming 'apps' and the whole money-for-
dotbubbleapp2.0 thang. I am happy for your (apparent?) success thus far, as
you yourself spin it. However, I would suggest that you consider that perhaps
you do not have enough perspective yet to understand that this whole thing is
just a game... a very stupid game... and ultimately not necessarily producing
anything at all that is meaningful or useful to humanity, the economy, the
country, or your dog: despite big scary amounts of money being thrown around.

In answer to your question: I am serious. It appears to me that it is not
untrue to say that nothing Evernote has done has actually been new or unique.
All they've done is drawn a cloud around some stuff that existed before (I can
_hear_ the squeak of the whiteboard marker right now...), put some marketing
dollars down and made some sexed-up UI's for a few device types. That's it.

Then got a bunch of money.

Of course, they probably wasted a lot more money doing it less efficiently ...
and used a lot of stupid Silly-valley oldboy networks to get the cash ... and
burned a lot of time. And maybe actually did produce something new along the
way. But basically... nothing new. Skepticism is king.

TL;DR? That's sad because I can't them recommend that you try _The Art of UNIX
Programming_ or any tome on code generation. But I hope you do. Also, take a
tip and don't aim for fame "One day I hope you won't need to look me up to
find out who I am" (puh-lease!) ... we were all 18 once.

~~~
sahillavingia
I will give you $20,000 if you can create a viable competitor to Evernote in 3
weeks.

PS: there are some things called aspirations. I'm sorry I'm not jaded enough
yet.

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nivertech
“A billion dollars isn’t cool, you know what’s cool? A bazillion dollars.” --
Evernote

