How Evernote Is Making A Comeback

An organization that never sleeps.

I am taking this opportunity to talk about Evernote from a different perspective.

I’ll talk about how Evernote has evolved into a powerful note-taking app, the challenges they’ve faced, and where Evernote is headed.

If any of my readers are interested in any of my Evernote tutorials, you may check this out on my youtube channel here.

Before I get into this, I want to acknowledge that I am a massive fan of Evernote and have been using it for the last 11 years and have 15000+ notes in it. I love and adore this platform.

Disclaimer: I am not associated with Evernote or have been remunerated to write this story on them.

An Introduction To Evernote.

Note-taking, organizing, task management, and archiving are all features available in Evernote. The Redwood City-based Evernote Corporation created it.

In addition to notes, text, drawings, photographs, and saved web content, the app allows users to save websites. In addition, notebooks have various features, including tags, annotations, editing, searching, attachments, and exporting.

Evernote Journey.

Let’s consider Evernote’s journey and see how this company has evolved over the last few years.

1. Evernote was founded in 2000 by Russian-American computer entrepreneur Stepan Pachikov as Evernote Corporation.
2. Under the new CEO, Phil Libin, the company shifted its focus to the web, smartphones, and the Apple Mac.
3. Beta was launched in 2008, and by 2011, Evernote had 11M users.
4. In July 2015, Libin stepped down as CEO and was replaced by former Google Glass executive Chris O’Neill but remained Executive Chairman.
5. In July 2015, Libin stepped down as CEO and was replaced by former Google Glass executive Chris O’Neill but remained Executive Chairman.
6. In October 2015, Evernote Corp. announced that it was laying off 18 percent of its workforce and closing three out of 10 global offices.
7. In September 2016, Libin stepped down as Executive Chairman to focus on other business ventures.
8. In August 2018, the Chief Technical Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Product Officer, and HR head left the company.
9. On October 29, 2018, Evernote announced that Ian Small, former CEO of TokBox, would replace O’Neill as CEO of Evernote.

That said, Ian Small had an enormous task to achieve and repair and build this company. Neither the task nor the outcome was easy for him.

Ian Small (Evernote CEO) Mandate.

Ian Small listed down his strategic initiatives to revamp this company.

One of the Evernote users suggested coming with the ‘Behind The Scenes’ video series to make millions of users abreast with the developments and enhancements they are making.

If you have missed the Behind The Scenes, check it out here.

In 2019, Ian Small listed down his three goals for Evernote.

He mentioned:

We wanted to create a more coherent, more consistent Evernote experience, an experience that fixes the essential features on which all of us depend.

We decided to change how we develop and deliver software to ship improvements and new features faster and with better quality.

We are committed to improving the core infrastructure that powers Evernote, so we can deliver a service with the speed, reliability, and scalability that all of us expect.

Challenges with Evernote Corporation — back in 2019–20.

Having a product-market fit was Evernote’s most significant problem.

As large as Evernote is, they lack a proper understanding of its clients’ requirements. As a result, although 225M clients have been procured through a solid freemium strategy, they aren’t taking full advantage of them.

Despite only 11 years old, their debt issues are significant, which does not bode well for a company in this space where so many new players have entered. By striving to please everyone, development stagnated, and unfocused features were added, making it more challenging to compete with new services emerging.

As such, Evernote was failing to deliver the value customers expect from a note-taking app.

Three Reasons Evernote Was Declining.

1. To make a difference, they must change their customer-centric thinking significantly.
2. As a result of stagnant product development, Evernote lost its engaged user base — By trying to please everyone, the company paradoxically made it more challenging to provide the kind of service many users wanted.
3. Since Evernote was one of the first note-taking apps on the market, it could dominate its competitors, but its early focus on niche apps failed and offered the rest of the market guidance on what not to do.

New players are not only competing fiercely, but they are also innovating incredibly. For example, since Evernote had lost ground and credibility recently, creative note-taking apps have understood, acquired, and adopted the user pulse.

Evernote vs. the competition & its Future.

As a grand-father of all note-taking apps, which isn’t a good place for Evernote, many new competitors are entering the market.

With the insurgence of note-taking apps like Roam Research, Bear, Craft, Mem, and many more, the journey is harrowing and exciting for Evernote.

Evernote has made some exciting improvements since the last year during the beta testing and is making a statement to the industry by bringing in Evernote home, calendar integration, and integrated tasks.

Final Thoughts.

I have tried and tested many other note-taking apps, and I like a few.

On the contrary, I have stuck with Evernote during its low phase, believed in Ian Small’s business mandates, and trusted the platform.

Is Evernote the best of the breed?

Maybe not!

But, do they have the potential to be amongst the top 5 platforms in the productivity space — absolutely yes. Let me know your thoughts on your experience with Evernote.

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