Evernote lays off most staff, relocating to Europe

[notetakeingguy 90]

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/evernote-layoffs-moving-to-europe-18190083.php

[Jun Hashimoto 38]

I love evernote.

[doctorkeo 25]

I used to LOVE Evernote - Moved to OneNote. So sad.

Doc

[bmcl26 521]

4 hours ago, doctorkeo said:

I used to LOVE Evernote - Moved to OneNote. So sad.

Doc

I would be sad, too, if  I moved to Onenote.

[notetakeingguy 90]

I use OneNote for work and where it is lacking is searching is not as easy/effective, it can't search inside documents, and tagging is really not intuitive. Tagging and searching are the two biggest things I do in Evernote, hence why it doesn't work for me.

 

Back to the original topic of this thread, I just looked at the Linkedin of the former CEO of Evernote, and this may have been the plan:

Quote

Brought in to reinvigorate and find an exit for a long-standing venture-backed notetaking business originally funded by Sequoia Capital, Morgenthaler, Meritech Capital Partners, and a host of other investors. Revitalized employee morale with a renewed mission and sense of purpose and transformed company culture to enable a multi-year journey to rebuild the product and the company. Replatformed the app, unifying product UX and modernizing tech stack to unlock innovation velocity. Repackaged customer SKUs and leveraged product-led growth strategies to lift ASP and increase conversion rates substantially while preserving world-class subscription renewal rates. Stabilized financials, generated cash flow and built cash reserves while transitioning Evernote out of the niche notetaking segment into the larger productivity market, driving customer satisfaction and increasing community engagement. Evernote was acquired by Bending Spoons S.p.A. in January 2023.

He likely got a nice golden parachute, but also, to his credit, given where Evernote was.

[doctorkeo 25]

I'm very sad, I invested 11 years in EN. I still have an outstanding support ticket (Search inside PDF's) from February, and every few weeks get a 'sorry' email from EN to say that the development team will look at the problem, when they have time.

I beg to differ with OneNote not searching inside docs - yes it does, and the OneNote OCR is far superior to EN, in the tests I ran. You are correct losing tagging is a huge pain. Although OneNote Batch did transfer the Tags over to OneNote with the data and using OneNote's search it's not difficult to locate the transferred note. A huge amount of my notes contains old genealogy typed records a JPG's. On my tests OneNote out preformed EN in OCR'ing these documents.

Doc

[Wanderling Reborn 186]

3 hours ago, notetakeingguy said:

I use OneNote for work and where it is lacking is searching is not as easy/effective, it can't search inside documents, and tagging is really not intuitive. Tagging and searching are the two biggest things I do in Evernote, hence why it doesn't work for me.

 

Back to the original topic of this thread, I just looked at the Linkedin of the former CEO of Evernote, and this may have been the plan:

He likely got a nice golden parachute, but also, to his credit, given where Evernote was.

It can search in documents if you insert them as a printout. But it's still not as useful as Evernote search.

And what OneNote calls "tagging" is not the same concept at all, which is why it feels so unintuitive for someone who is used to Evernote style tags. It's a very powerful feature but has nothing to do with finding individual notes, which is what the "traditional" tags are for.  I wish they used a different term to call it, would avoid lots of confusion.

The tags in a classic, Evernote anpproach are to classify notes individual notes ("Cars", "cats" etc). The "tags" in OneNote are to mark individual lines of text (paragraphs, phrases whatever) across the notes. I.e. Evernote tags let me find all notes related to cars. OneNote "tags" let me find todos (or  important bits of info, or things I want to check out later, or deadlines assigned in a meeting) across all my notes regardless of what category the notes belong to.

In my experience, Evernote is better when dealing with basically a large pile of random notes, that can be loosely categorized. Onenote is better for project management, when you have a fairly structured record organization and need to pinpoint specific kinds of information  scattered across your meeting minutes and emails. 

 

 

[notetakeingguy 90]

5 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

The tags in a classic, Evernote anpproach are to classify notes individual notes ("Cars", "cats" etc). The "tags" in OneNote are to mark individual lines of text (paragraphs, phrases whatever) across the notes. I.e. Evernote tags let me find all notes related to cars. OneNote "tags" let me find todos (or  important bits of info, or things I want to check out later, or deadlines assigned in a meeting) across all my notes regardless of what category the notes belong to.

 

 

 

Is there any equivalent to tags in OneNote? Namely, where one can assign multiple tags, which I use a lot.

 

And remember, Evernote isn't gone, just all the staff. I have never been fond of how Evernote interacted with customers; creating features that worked partially, never fixing things, and ignoring customer feedback. Perhaps that will get resolved?

[agsteele 2,975]

15 minutes ago, notetakeingguy said:

And remember, Evernote isn't gone, just all the staff

Actually, the staff is now based in Europe - presumably Italy. This is not a sacking of all staff but transferring the roles to head office.

[CalS 5,292]

If I was in CA and I got a severance package I might say I was sacked.  😉

[PinkElephant 8,279]

Tststs - you were not sacked. You are offered new professional perspectives …

If you don’t believe it, talk to your outplacement coach !

[RJLUK 308]

Actually I don't care if they were sacked.

What is needed now is for the Uri Geller team to FIX EN

or the mass exodus will continue.

Myself included in November if this muppetry continues.

[Wanderling Reborn 186]

4 hours ago, notetakeingguy said:

Is there any equivalent to tags in OneNote? Namely, where one can assign multiple tags, which I use a lot.

 

And remember, Evernote isn't gone, just all the staff. I have never been fond of how Evernote interacted with customers; creating features that worked partially, never fixing things, and ignoring customer feedback. Perhaps that will get resolved?

Not quite the same way - i.e. you won't get a tree of tags which you can pick from. 

Onenote "tags" can be used that way, but this would really take away from their intended use which is to tag lines of text, not entire notes.

What I am using to tag whole notes is plaintext tags - something like "tgRef", "tgABC" etc. Then I can search for this text and find what I need. If I use a combination of tags the top results are the notes that have all of the tags.

So, I can search for my plaintext tags and find notes that are tagged with them. Or I can search for Onenote tags and find lines of text across different notes that contain them. This feature works the best with Onenote for Windows, but it's also available in Mac (just not as full featured). 

That said, I still use Onenote for work notes (the integration with Outlook and Teams is very good), and my wife is using Evernote for her notes (which she expects me to maintain and organize). But, I am not using Onenote or Evernote for my personal notes anymore, a few years ago I moved all long term (permanent) notes to file system, and as of recently am using Apple Notes for short term ones. I can still easily find what I need by using Spotlight search on Mac or Windows indexing, and there's no more worries about exporting or backing up or moving systems. 

[notetakeingguy 90]

And that's what will make it hard for me to switch from Evernote. I have 15,000 notes, all tagged very well, and very easy to find. I don't have an easy way to recreate that somewhere else.

[Wanderling Reborn 186]

7 hours ago, notetakeingguy said:

And that's what will make it hard for me to switch from Evernote. I have 15,000 notes, all tagged very well, and very easy to find. I don't have an easy way to recreate that somewhere else.

And that’s why legacy users like you are going to ensure a steady revenue flow for years to come, even if the number of new paying users is drastically shrinking.

Realistically they could probably charge $50 per month and still retain the majority of deeply invested legacy customers. After all, many people spend more on Starbucks…

[Bill Myers 458]

On 7/8/2023 at 7:14 PM, CalS said:

If I was in CA and I got a severance package I might say I was sacked.  😉

Yeah, I don't know how anyone can read that article and not understand that the majority of Evernote's U.S. and Chile employees were simply fired. Unless that article got it wrong, Luca Ferrari was pretty explicit about that.

First, and most important, I feel bad for the poor souls who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. I hope they're able to find new jobs and not suffer much disruption in their lives. It's tough. I've been through it myself.

Second, I hope for the sake of us customers that the knowledge transfer prior to these mass firing was effective. I've seen plans to create strategic "efficiencies" go awry because things that look good on a balance sheet or accounting report don't reflect some things that are more difficult to quantify but are nevertheless real, such as the effect of the knowledge and experience that often goes out the door when workforces are "trimmed."

On 7/8/2023 at 8:29 AM, notetakeingguy said:

He likely got a nice golden parachute, but also, to his credit, given where Evernote was.

I'm a big believer in giving credit where credit is due. If @Ian Small's leadership was instrumental in achieving big things, I guess he deserves credit. Still, I doubt he was able to accomplish any of these things by himself. I think it's likely that many people at Evernote contributed not only hard work but also ideas without which these things would not have been possible. My fear is that Small was handsomely rewarded when investors cashed out, but that others whose contributions were vital but who were too "low" in the hierarchy were "rewarded" instead with the loss of their livelihoods as the result of this mass firing. It's a dominant pattern in capitalist economies right now, but that doesn't make it morally right or a sound business practice.

[Bill Myers 458]

On 7/9/2023 at 8:04 AM, Wanderling Reborn said:

Realistically they could probably charge $50 per month and still retain the majority of deeply invested legacy customers. After all, many people spend more on Starbucks…

You've said this in another thread as well. You're welcome to state your view, of course. I'll just say that I am a "deeply invested legacy customer" who would leave rather than pay anywhere near that much. Neither of us has enough data to know whether you're right; I'll just tell you that my gut says $50 a month would price Evernote way out of the market for both existing and new users.

Of course, I'm not sure how much value there is in this discussion. Bending Spoons isn't charging that much and hasn't indicated they will try. And only time will tell whether their current price structure will be successful in the marketplace or not.

[notetakeingguy 90]

Staff may not have done too bad according this article which gives a nice history of their rise and fall:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/evernote-the-memory-app-people-forgot-about-lays-off-entire-us-staff/

[Staffers typically received 16 weeks of salary, one year of health insurance, and a pro-rated performance bonus, along with assistance for those working on visas.]

I agree with you about credit and capitalism. The reason I think Ian Small was "fairly" compensated is that based on his LinkedIn profile, it seems this was he was hired to do. Get the ship in shape enough to sell out; not necessarily look out for legacy customers like ourselves. VCs wanted their money.

 

If Evernote charged $50 / month I'd be gone too. I'd probably just export all my notes to html on OneDrive or something like that. But more importantly, it would indicate more of the same - ignoring the customers, and we see where that has landed. I still wish they would return URLs when sending a copy of a note by email. And properly lasting a Word document with bullets into Evernote.

 

[Bill Myers 458]

11 minutes ago, notetakeingguy said:

Staffers typically received 16 weeks of salary, one year of health insurance, and a pro-rated performance bonus, along with assistance for those working on visas.

That may sound like a lot, but four months can go by pretty quickly when trying to find the right fit for a new job. Unemployment by design doesn't pay nearly as much as a good-paying job, and is time-limited. I had a job search a few years ago that took six months.

Being laid off can result in having to bleed savings and make other unfortunate sacrifices, no matter how "generous" the severance. Plus there's the emotional impact of being kicked to the curb and having to start over somewhere else.

15 minutes ago, notetakeingguy said:

The reason I think Ian Small was "fairly" compensated is that based on his LinkedIn profile, it seems this was he was hired to do.

I don't think any of us can know whether any of this was fair, because we don't know how well Small was compensated relative to the rest of the organization. That's why I said I "fear" that Small's rewards may have been outsized compared to others without whom his successful would not have been possible. We can't know for sure, but given what I know of other, similar situations, I have trouble shaking the feeling that the fired employees received a raw deal.

As for whether Small did what he was hired to do, I don't want to unjustifiably cast aspersions on him but we're all the heroes of our own stories, aren't we? If he did his job well then I wish him well. But I just wonder if CEOs are truly exposed to as much risk and uncertainty as those much lower in the organization. We're always told rewards should be commensurate with the risks taken, yet I don't always see that being the case. YMMV.

[agsteele 2,975]

17 hours ago, Bill Myers said:

Yeah, I don't know how anyone can read that article and not understand that the majority of Evernote's U.S. and Chile employees were simply fired. Unless that article got it wrong, Luca Ferrari was pretty explicit about that.

I was imprecise in my language. Sorry.

I should have said that the roles have been moved to Europe. I did not intend to suggest that the individuals involved had suffered anything other than the loss of a job.

[Bill Myers 458]

7 hours ago, agsteele said:

I was imprecise in my language. Sorry.

No, I'm the one who should apologize. The point had already been made. Sometimes I can be a bit... pedantic (there are other words I could use but I suspect the forum software wouldn't allow them).

Long story short, I'm just bummed for the people who have lost their jobs. And selfishly I hope the transition doesn't hurt the quality of service for Evernote. But like many things in life, it's all outside my control.

[Paul A. 649]

On 7/10/2023 at 3:51 PM, Bill Myers said:

Second, I hope for the sake of us customers that the knowledge transfer prior to these mass firing was effective. I've seen plans to create strategic "efficiencies" go awry because things that look good on a balance sheet or accounting report don't reflect some things that are more difficult to quantify but are nevertheless real, such as the effect of the knowledge and experience that often goes out the door when workforces are "trimmed."

Agreed. This is my biggest fear as well, though it will take time (months? half a year or more?) to know whether BS has made a mistake here or not. 

On 7/10/2023 at 3:51 PM, Bill Myers said:

My fear is that Small was handsomely rewarded when investors cashed out, but that others whose contributions were vital but who were too "low" in the hierarchy were "rewarded" instead with the loss of their livelihoods as the result of this mass firing. It's a dominant pattern in capitalist economies right now, but that doesn't make it morally right or a sound business practice.

I'm sympathetic to your view, though I would say that Ian Small probably was not rewarded as handsomely as he had expected (or at least had hoped) when he first took the role. Evernote was once valued at over $1b, and has raised almost $300m in funding over its life. Educated guesses are that BS bought Evernote for a fraction of that amount, and so many early investors probably lost a lot of money.

If Evernote had managed to regain a $1b+ valuation, all the original investors would have made at least some profit, and Ian Small would have been paid handsomely for doing so. Selling the company for essentially peanuts (compared to the amount of money invested and how long that money has been tied up) is probably unlikely to have made him enormously rich.

On 7/9/2023 at 5:04 AM, Wanderling Reborn said:

And that’s why legacy users like you are going to ensure a steady revenue flow for years to come, even if the number of new paying users is drastically shrinking.

Realistically they could probably charge $50 per month and still retain the majority of deeply invested legacy customers. After all, many people spend more on Starbucks…

On 7/10/2023 at 3:54 PM, Bill Myers said:

You've said this in another thread as well. You're welcome to state your view, of course. I'll just say that I am a "deeply invested legacy customer" who would leave rather than pay anywhere near that much. Neither of us has enough data to know whether you're right; I'll just tell you that my gut says $50 a month would price Evernote way out of the market for both existing and new users.

Even if there are people who will tolerate such high prices in the short term, it's enormously risky to the long-term future of BS's Evernote investment. Look at today's release of the (eagerly anticipated and years-in-development) Bear 2.0. It's not a full Evernote clone, but they've added many features that are popular on Evernote (and some popular feature requests on these forums that Evernote doesn't have yet.) Price: $30/year, and they have an Evernote importer.

Bottom line, the higher Evernote raises their prices, the more space there is for other companies to profitably launch competing products which are designed to appeal to and siphon off paying Evernote users.

[Twitchly 28]

3 hours ago, Paul A. said:

Look at today's release of the (eagerly anticipated and years-in-development) Bear 2.0. It's not a full Evernote clone, but they've added many features that are popular on Evernote (and some popular feature requests on these forums that Evernote doesn't have yet.) Price: $30/year, and they have an Evernote importer.

And — drum roll — they have a web clipper! Yesss!

I am downloading Bear as we speak. This may be the app that finally gets me off Evernote. Very curious to see how it handles EN imports.

I’m a big fan of EN, but not for $130/year. Holy tamole. That’s more than I pay for Photoshop. 

[eric99 1,022]

3 hours ago, Twitchly said:

 Very curious to see how it handles EN imports.

...and how it handles export!

[PinkElephant 8,279]

Maybe you should think as well about using Photoshop …

I spend much more time on EN than on my picture editor.

[ChristianJB 94]

3 hours ago, Twitchly said:

I’m a big fan of EN, but not for $130/year. Holy tamole. That’s more than I pay for Photoshop. 

Depends on your profession, but I use EN more often than PS ...

 

[Jean-Christophe 25]

To come back to the subject, it's always sad for the people who may lose their jobs. Just as relocating from the USA to Italy isn't for everyone.

But as a customer, I don't care whether the staff are in Italy, the USA or anywhere else. That's management's problem.
What matters to me is that there's someone who's there, answering questions, developing the product and managing it.

The rest is none of my business.

[notetakeingguy 90]

I looked at Bear but doesn't seem to be available for PC.

[ChuckHaas 4]

I took a brief look at Bear as well - not clear that they have an email capture/import pathway.  The more and more I look at Obsidian, the more fascinated I get by transclusion (no email capture either, but I figured out that since I have OmniFocus Pro, I can email to OF and the copy paste to Obsidian).  So an Obsidian Plan B is still a viable one for me.

[Twitchly 28]

6 hours ago, ChristianJB said:

Depends on your profession, but I use EN more often than PS ...

 

I pay half that. But I’ve used PS for years, often for work. It’s a far more complicated program than EN, to use, to build, and to maintain.

But I suppose something is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it, and it looks like EN’s new owners are testing those waters. 

[BASboy 43]

I am looking at Nimbus Notes as my new Evernote. It is like Evernote before it got super complicated and less expensive. PLUS you can do multiple folders within folders within folders if you wish… Unlike Evernote. 

[bmcl26 521]

14 hours ago, Twitchly said:

I’m a big fan of EN, but not for $130/year. Holy tamole. That’s more than I pay for Photoshop. 

That is less than 40c a day, I certainly get more value than that 

[Paul A. 649]

14 hours ago, Twitchly said:

And — drum roll — they have a web clipper! Yesss!

I am downloading Bear as we speak. This may be the app that finally gets me off Evernote. Very curious to see how it handles EN imports.

Would love to hear your results! No Android app which is an issue for me, but I like the look of it and if they release a web app as planned next year it might become viable.

8 hours ago, notetakeingguy said:

I looked at Bear but doesn't seem to be available for PC.

Yeah, Mac/iOS only for now but a web app is planned for next year and they are considering becoming fully cross-platform (though if they do do that that'll probably take years given how long it took to release bear 2).

[PinkElephant 8,279]

Apple ecosystem only - which is fine for everybody who has his virtual life there anyhow. From the list of features it is interwoven with functions that MacOS / iOS / iCloud provide. There will be no easy way to port it to Windows or Android.

Those on Apple devices only have several pretty solid options - for those on multi platform, the list is rapidly shrinking.

[Twitchly 28]

5 hours ago, Paul A. said:

Would love to hear your results!

So far, I’ve just played with it on my iPhone (which is where I mostly use EN). Very promising. I’m going to post over in another thread about alternatives to EN rather than clog up this one. See you there!

[WilliamL 658]

12 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Those on Apple devices only have several pretty solid options - for those on multi platform, the list is rapidly shrinking.

This is a real worry. I’m iPhone and iPad but also use windows at home and more importantly at work. So I need something multi platform and few do it. 

A lot of folks talk of Obsidian - need to pay for their sync to be multi platform - cost about the same as Evernote pro! 

So the list is small - and it’s costly which isn’t great for options for folks who want a bit of freedom in their platforms. 

[Bill Myers 458]

On 7/12/2023 at 5:05 AM, Jean-Christophe said:

But as a customer, I don't care whether the staff are in Italy, the USA or anywhere else. That's management's problem.
What matters to me is that there's someone who's there, answering questions, developing the product and managing it.

The rest is none of my business.

That's fair, and it doesn't pay to worry about things outside of our control. But the potential issue here for customers is not where the staff are located. My concern is that Bending Spoons pretty much fired all "legacy" Evernote employees for "efficiency's" sake. Bending Spoons top brass seems pretty confident they no longer need the knowledge and expertise of those employees. They may be right. But I've seen too many such transitions go awry to feel equally confident. 

I was actually trying to be optimistic about the acquisition, but Bending Spoons performance out of the starting gate hasn't inspired confidence. Creating bugs that caused some users to lose data doesn't inspire confidence in an application with a raison d'etre of not losing your data. That's very much our business.

But complaints and worry do us no good, so I'm creating an exit plan. Everyone has to decide their own risk tolerance, but I'd suggest that anyone else who like me has decided to stay might want to have a Plan B as well.

[Bill Myers 458]

On 7/11/2023 at 7:51 PM, Paul A. said:

I'm sympathetic to your view, though I would say that Ian Small probably was not rewarded as handsomely as he had expected (or at least had hoped) when he first took the role. Evernote was once valued at over $1b, and has raised almost $300m in funding over its life. Educated guesses are that BS bought Evernote for a fraction of that amount, and so many early investors probably lost a lot of money.

If Evernote had managed to regain a $1b+ valuation, all the original investors would have made at least some profit, and Ian Small would have been paid handsomely for doing so. Selling the company for essentially peanuts (compared to the amount of money invested and how long that money has been tied up) is probably unlikely to have made him enormously rich.

That's fair. We don't know who was paid what, and it's not actually any of our business. My fear is that Small got a much cushier landing than others on the much lower rungs, and there is precedent to support that fear. Feelings are not facts, though. Hopefully everyone who left -- whether voluntarily or not -- will find good fortune elsewhere.

[s2sailor 2,341]

18 minutes ago, Bill Myers said:

My fear is that Small got a much cushier landing than others on the much lower rungs

Isn’t that usually the case?  He was CEO, I would be shocked if he didn’t.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

The job of a CEO is to run the business to please the owners.

A CEO is not the Feelgood-Manager, even if occasionally he may come along as being it. If the owners decide to put lipstick on the elephant and cash in, it is his job to see the lipstick is nicely applied, and the elephant is looking good.

The compensation is part of that challenge. I would not be surprised if his contract had a "change of control" clause. At least I would have asked for it before taking over, giving the situation with a run down software base and more competition popping up.

[Bill Myers 458]

52 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

Isn’t that usually the case?  He was CEO, I would be shocked if he didn’t.

I don't want to get too deep into this conversation, because it's the "Evernote User Forum" and not the "Bill Myers Capitalism Critique Forum." I'll just say that in an economy like ours it's understandable that the higher up you are in an organization, the greater your compensation. But I think the majority pattern is one where the differential is just too great. I feel that the risk-reward formula has become one where the executives reap nearly all the rewards and the rank-and-file bear most of the risk.

But in fairness I let my feelings get the better of me. I have no idea how Small was compensated relative to anyone else. I'll just say, again, I feel bad for the people who lost their jobs. I realize the work world isn't playing bean-bag, and life is tough. But I feel like we could treat the rank-and-file less like cogs than we do, and still have a functioning capitalist society.

I'll let my rant rest there, because none of this adds to our understanding of how to use Evernote.

[notetakeingguy 90]

For me about how much it should cost based on its value to me, I'm not sure if that is fair. I benefit greatly from Evernote, Dropbox, LastPass (likely switching to 1Password soon), any.do, followupthen, feedly, Pocket, and others. If I had to pay each one for how much value I get, it would be not be affordable. Think of the value people get from Office (the money that's made from those Powerpoint slides). I think it needs to be  comparable to others.

I felt Evernote was not comparable because it changes too much, has too many unpredictable bugs, and had terrible customer service. And dealing with those causes me to lose productivity, often in unpredictable ways and times. 

 

About job loss and such, yes it is hard. I had a job not that long ago that gave me a choice - move 1000 miles away with a company relocation, or leave the company with severance. I had 2 months to make the decision, then 3 months to take action. I chose to relocate. My new management was hard to deal with, and regretted moving from my old location. I stuck it out 3 1/2 years, got accomplishment #1, got accomplishment #2, and got accomplishment #3, and then got out. To a new job, at much higher pay, where I am treated well. Though still in my same location, though my wife got excellent fertility care in this new location, we've had two more kids, and the oldest is doing well in the schools. I still wish I hadn't sold my house in my old location, but it was because the company offered me a relocation package.

 

My experience is that the executives have a lot on their plate. They have to make decisions that have significant impact. While the lower ranking people do work hard, they don't always know the "why", which is what the higher ups have to do. And we trust the higher ups to make those decisions.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

Somebody needs to pay for all the „Free“ products or services.

Either we pay with our data (and in the end attention, by viewing all these „helpful“ ads, popup sand nags), or we pay for the service itself. A third way is an illusion, driven by a combination of cheap money and the hope to outgrow the competitors before cashing in. Since the interest rate hike has dried the supply of fresh stupid money to burn, these seemingly levitating programs will become a temporary exception.

[Bill Myers 458]

7 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Either we pay with our data (and in the end attention, by viewing all these „helpful“ ads, popup sand nags), or we pay for the service itself.

One of the reasons I've preferred the Evernote way. I prefer to be the customer rather than the product.

[Bill Myers 458]

18 minutes ago, notetakeingguy said:

likely switching to 1Password soon

I would if I were you. If I may be permitted to stray way off-topic, the LastPass data breach was unforgivable and they are no longer worthy of trust.

[notetakeingguy 90]

56 minutes ago, Bill Myers said:

I would if I were you. If I may be permitted to stray way off-topic, the LastPass data breach was unforgivable and they are no longer worthy of trust.

I'm on the free trial right now. So far, I like the interface and the rapidness of help. However, I don't like having to re-enter the master password everytime I close my browser. And LastPass is still doing a little better filling in apps on my phone.

Meanwhile, my wife's LastPass subscription ended. They had a deal to renew, but something didn't go through. I contacted LastPass the day after, and they just closed the case with no comment or notice. Not happy with that kind of service.

It comes back to the same things as Evernote -- smooth convenience so you don't have to think about it. LastPass delivers that for me. 1Password, almost (and maybe I just need a little time), but Evernote, probably last 9 years, most of the time, but not all the time, those times were unpredictable.

[Twitchly 28]

I have worked at several software companies now that got bought out, all with assurances to customers and staff that “nothing will change.“ And of course everything changed. The software was either discontinued right away or left to decay without maintenance. Four of the five corporations that bought out the companies where I worked folded not long after. The only one still standing, a behemoth, quickly junked our software  after the buyout. I don’t have high hopes in situations like this. 

[PinkElephant 8,279]

Purely anecdotal. If I judge from my history with BS: I joined Splice (video editor) when it still belonged to GoPro. BS has acquired it, and it got professionalized since. One of the most active apps in terms of regular releases.

On the other hand "old" EN bought Penultimate, Scannable and Skitch just to let them rot away.

We may even be better off ...

[Paul A. 649]

3 hours ago, Twitchly said:

I have worked at several software companies now that got bought out, all with assurances to customers and staff that “nothing will change.“ And of course everything changed. The software was either discontinued right away or left to decay without maintenance. Four of the five corporations that bought out the companies where I worked folded not long after. The only one still standing, a behemoth, quickly junked our software  after the buyout. I don’t have high hopes in situations like this. 

It's a fair concern, but there are exceptions. Quicken was sold by Intuit to a private equity company in 2016, and sold again to another private equity company around 2021, but it has thrived. According to an interview with the CEO that I read a year+ ago, Quicken is strongly profitable and has significantly more paying customers than it ever did as part of Intuit. More importantly from this user's perspective, the software has seen a steady release schedule that has chipped away at the feature backlog of the Mac version, steadily polished and improved existing features, and overall software quality has increased.

I'd be happy if the same happens to Evernote.

[abdu 46]

On 7/9/2023 at 5:04 AM, Wanderling Reborn said:

And that’s why legacy users like you are going to ensure a steady revenue flow for years to come, even if the number of new paying users is drastically shrinking.

Realistically they could probably charge $50 per month and still retain the majority of deeply invested legacy customers. After all, many people spend more on Starbucks…

If I owned one of EverNote alternatives companies, I would have my developers create an import feature for evernote notes along with their tags. EN's tags feature is not rocket science and the alternatives can create a similar feature. It seems this alone with get a lot of users to migrate and it will create a big jump in increase in revenue.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

Tags will import - if the receiving app knows what to do about them, that’s the key issue.

In EN tags are the main, dominant organization feature. And this you don’t „add“ to an import routine between coffee break and lunch by having you 2 devs write a little code. You need to build it into the foundation of your app to make it work with similar outcome as it works in EN.

If you used tags in EN, and want/need to continue doing so in your „next“ app, you better try if and how it works with a test set of some exported notes. You will find a significantly smaller choice of apps to test.

[notetakeingguy 90]

11 hours ago, Paul A. said:

It's a fair concern, but there are exceptions. Quicken was sold by Intuit to a private equity company in 2016, and sold again to another private equity company around 2021, but it has thrived. According to an interview with the CEO that I read a year+ ago, Quicken is strongly profitable and has significantly more paying customers than it ever did as part of Intuit. More importantly from this user's perspective, the software has seen a steady release schedule that has chipped away at the feature backlog of the Mac version, steadily polished and improved existing features, and overall software quality has increased.

I'd be happy if the same happens to Evernote.

I'm a quicken user as well, and I've been so unhappy. There are bugs that still haven't been fixed, and yet they keep increasing the costs every year.

[Wanderling Reborn 186]

On 7/14/2023 at 8:10 AM, PinkElephant said:

The job of a CEO is to run the business to please the owners.

A CEO is not the Feelgood-Manager, even if occasionally he may come along as being it. If the owners decide to put lipstick on the elephant and cash in, it is his job to see the lipstick is nicely applied, and the elephant is looking good.

The compensation is part of that challenge. I would not be surprised if his contract had a "change of control" clause. At least I would have asked for it before taking over, giving the situation with a run down software base and more competition popping up.

The real main job of a CEO is to manage their career and personal wealth. There's a disproportionately high number of narcissistic sociopaths and bipolar people among the executives, which is just a process of natural selection. Same with politics.

[Twitchly 28]

12 hours ago, Paul A. said:

I'd be happy if the same happens to Evernote.

So would I.

[notetakeingguy 90]

7 minutes ago, Twitchly said:

So would I.

No, no, I am not happy with Quickens 1-step unreliability vs the significant price increases 

[Mark78 46]

Feel very sorry for these employees. However, I have little pity for Evernote Corporation owners and senior management. Over the last 10 years and PAINFUL rounds of  acquisitions, the previous one with CEO Ian Small disastrous as they wrecked Evernote, took away functionality that faithful, PAYING customers like me depended on. Awful. Downright mean.

I have come to the conclusion that Evernote is dinosaur technology that has been ineptly managed for at least 10 years. The current owner "Bending Spoons" are nothing but GREEDY CROOKS imposing a 50% price increase, orders of magnitude beyond inflation rates. I get the message:

EVERNOTE DOES NOT CARE AT ALL FOR ITS CUSTOMERS IN THE SLIGHTEST. ALL THEY CARE ABOUT IS POCKETING YOUR MONEY.

Well, they can subtract my money from their "revenue stream". I've been a PAYING customer since I started with Evernote 13 years ago. An EVERNOTE FOOL I will be no longer. Definitely bailing now to save my data and move on.

THANKS, Evernote for nothing. 

I've been using Notion since 2018, FINALLY got my key notes imported. Notion is very stable, in a very good financial position, very caring toward their customers and a FANTASTIC technology platform where the USER sets it all up the way THEY want. Three cheers, Notion!

One phenomenal result of the ongoing trainwreck known as Evernote: it has motivated a LOT of people to jump into the note application business with phenomenal innovation. 

Sadly, the current MASSIVE TRAINWRECK is likely to be fatal. Fellow customers, move on. Before it is too late.

 

[Mark78 46]

11 hours ago, abdu said:

If I owned one of EverNote alternatives companies, I would have my developers create an import feature for evernote notes along with their tags. EN's tags feature is not rocket science and the alternatives can create a similar feature. It seems this alone with get a lot of users to migrate and it will create a big jump in increase in revenue.

Totally agree! Notion is a key competitor, but their Evernote import stinks. They link accounts, then the import stalls... and fails. I told them don't do the "direct connect" route, rather import using Evernote ENEX files. Even told them how to do it.... Hopefully they will do it.

[notetakeingguy 90]

27 minutes ago, Mark78 said:

Totally agree! Notion is a key competitor, but their Evernote import stinks. They link accounts, then the import stalls... and fails. I told them don't do the "direct connect" route, rather import using Evernote ENEX files. Even told them how to do it.... Hopefully they will do it.

This is good to know.

 

Does Notion support PC? Have web clipper? Have tags? Good searching? Have send email both into and out of?

[PinkElephant 8,279]

AFAIK Notion requires an active internet connection.

And goooodbye ….

[Paul A. 649]

15 hours ago, notetakeingguy said:

I'm a quicken user as well, and I've been so unhappy. There are bugs that still haven't been fixed, and yet they keep increasing the costs every year.

 

13 hours ago, notetakeingguy said:

No, no, I am not happy with Quickens 1-step unreliability vs the significant price increases 

Sorry to hear that. Are you on Mac or Windows? They seem to be developed fairly independently of each other, so my experiences (on Mac) may not be reflected on Windows.

And to keep this somewhat on topic, the long time Quicken for Mac product manager actually used to work for Evernote! (Though he's no longer leading Quicken for Mac, he moved into a different role in the company.)

[notetakeingguy 90]

12 hours ago, Paul A. said:

 

Sorry to hear that. Are you on Mac or Windows? They seem to be developed fairly independently of each other, so my experiences (on Mac) may not be reflected on Windows.

And to keep this somewhat on topic, the long time Quicken for Mac product manager actually used to work for Evernote! (Though he's no longer leading Quicken for Mac, he moved into a different role in the company.)

I'm a Quicken Windows user. Since like 1994. Sometimes OneStep update doesn't work for certain credit cards, e.g. Discover, and you don't even get an error. Lots of discussions on those boards. And calculator doesn't work great. Other user interface things. And yet they keep hiking the prices.

[Ryq G 27]

Software and Internet services have started out as free. Some created software and websites with the interests and needs of the public. Some created them with financial gain as the purpose. finding a way to continue has been difficult and we’ve seen tons of sites and software and hybrid companies disappear.

When companies were faced with shutting down or becoming for profit, we are seeing a wide range of how the owners have done so. Some have communicated openly and been loyal to those who have been users for years.   
it’s an anonymously tough time for someone who has lived in breed something over the years, created it and have it crash down on them.   I’ve been there.

There are 1 million decisions to be made at that time. And we can get some insight into who the owners are when those decisions are made some of been upfront with their user base and kept them informed, and giving them away to salvage the data or years of time invested. Others just walked away and locked the door.

I don’t know all of the factors involved, but i’ve seen little to indicate that the owners and management of Evernote displayed any concerns for the people who have used and invested in this software for years. That’s very sad.

we shouldn’t be surprised to see what has happened. We have some responsibility and not reading the writing on the walls. Many of us are angry and have been hurt.

Much like passengers on a ship, we find that it is rapidly sinking, and the captain and crew are nowhere to be found, and if not told us anything.  The sum of already left in their lifeboats.  Some of them are still hanging around to point out ways that we can still survive and leave. The options are really not good for us and at this point the best we might expect is not drowning.

Find your piece of floating debris and get on it.  If you can grab some of your belongings consider yourself lucky.  The loudspeakers tell us about activities for today and tomorrow. 

in the words of Groucho, “Hello, I must be going.”

Nibbling some cheese and gathering what I can.  No time for anything else.  Those on lifeboats are either laughing at us and blaming us or are pointing out the one or two options to live.  Their choice is to be upfront and honest and say these are your options go do it. Others may be here to gloat. and blame us for not having the information in the skills that they did.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

The services were never free - they were just paid by somebody else.

Remember the „burn rate“ ? It was the speed by which startups were consuming their seed money while trying to achieve a dominant market share. A high burn rate was considered good ! Who did not burn fast enough didn’t succeed in building the user base.

This has changed, we currently have a shakeout of startups that never made it from building a user base to converting it into a cash flow. The interest rate hike means it is becoming more expensive to spread money around expecting one of the bets to hit the jackpot.

EN needs to generate a positive cash flow. It can only be run sustainably when it succeeds in generating enough money to operate and develop, plus some for the owners.

We will see how they achieve this. Just raising prices for existing users won’t do the job, that’s for sure.

[eric99 1,022]

20 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

We will see how they achieve this. Just raising prices for existing users won’t do the job, that’s for sure.

Yep, slimming down by relocating to Europe entirely is the only way to compete with indie developers of other popular note-taking apps, preventing further price escalation for existing users.

I still don't understand why it took hundreds of Evernote employees to create a note-taking app, when I compare it to Obsidian or Joplin developed by only a few developers.

[CalS 5,292]

On 7/14/2023 at 8:07 AM, notetakeingguy said:

LastPass (likely switching to 1Password soon)

Off topic.  1Password makes the conversion simple.  The time consuming part for me was going to my critical websites and changing those passwords.  Any financial institution or web site where I ever used a credit card.  YMMV.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

OT as well: Most important are email accounts - since they are often used to reset passwords. If somebody evil can take over an email account, the damage is often far bigger than by any other account type.

If possible every email account should be made very secure, and 2FA is a MUST HAVE.

[notetakeingguy 90]

I'm nearing the end of my 1password trial. I do see how some things seem smoother, but on Android, LastPass seems stronger. Or maybe I just need more practice.