Bending Spoons, which can barely even support paying Evernote customers right now, just announced another major acquisition

[arose10 47]

Here's the news...

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/italys-bending-spoons-acquires-mosaic-groups-digital-assets-iac-2024-01-10/

Of note is the fact that they're laying off all 330 employees at the acquired company, which means Bending Spoons will now be even more distracted and resource constrained at a time when they haven't even yet shown they can properly support paying Evernote customers.

What a mess.

[gazumped 12,066]

Hi.  Maybe search the forums before you post?  

And with an odd 100 million to spend I'd think they plan on moving the operations to Italy and recruiting even more people to help run it.  They already employ more folks than Evernote ever did - the current issues are training related,  not the headcount.

[WilliamL 666]

6 hours ago, arose10 said:

Here's the news...

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/italys-bending-spoons-acquires-mosaic-groups-digital-assets-iac-2024-01-10/

Of note is the fact that they're laying off all 330 employees at the acquired company, which means Bending Spoons will now be even more distracted and resource constrained at a time when they haven't even yet shown they can properly support paying Evernote customers.

What a mess.

What a bizarre interpretation. I encourage you to take a step back and get some reality based context! 

A mess? They have bought a company with apparently 1 billion downloads, that was a fast 500 company in 2021 with a portfolio of apps ripe for ai development and your interpretation is that’s a mess? If mess is having 100 to spend, can my life be your kind of mess please??

[arose10 47]

Listen, I've worked in private equity, venture capital, and investment banking.  I've also worked in tech companies.  I know how this ***** works.  They didn't simply "have $100 million to spend," as if they're a company like Apple or Microsoft that has billions of dollars in cash stockpiled that they generated organically from operations.  (And that $100 million is now gone...into the pockets of IAC...all the restructuring and hiring will require additional outlays of capital on top of this acquisition price.)

No, they raised $340 million from private equity investors, money that they're now under tremendous pressure to return back to those investors many times over.  (And that return of capital will likely require the company to be sold once again, to who know whichever buyer steps in next, at some point later this decade.)  This creates a lot of risk and uncertainty, and bolting on additional acquisitions only heightens that risk and uncertainty.

I see folks in these forums who basically come across as shills for Evernote, people who have been making the same excuses that "it's just a headcount issue" or "it's just a training issue" or "they're just getting up-to-speed on the product" in the now full year since the acquisition was announced.

Don't insult our intelligence.  A lot of us have been Evernote users and paying customers for one to two decades.  We know that product reliability has fallen off in the year since the acquisition.  We know the customer support has gone to *****.  And we know that all this has happened while prices have nearly doubled for many of us.  So, yes, it's a mess, and acquisitions like this only lessen the likelihood of this mess ever being resolved.  A company that's clearly struggling to integrate existing acquisitions going out and making additional acquisitions is rarely a good sign for customers, or for the long-term stability of the business.

[PinkElephant 8,808]

With less words: They want to grow their business. They assure the financing. Now they are looking for assets they can add to their product line (external  growth). They acquire, restructure (trim cost, sort out non performing segments) and try to find synergies (do more with less resources and people).

It‘s all in that book. If it succeeds depends more on the execution than the brilliant mastermind.

For me it’s not important. For me what counts is whether the service offered covers my use cases with acceptable cost. 

[arose10 47]

Exactly.  I'm not sure why you guys are hailing the move, as if you're investors in Bending Spoons.  Who cares?  It doesn't mean we should excuse the dismal job they've done integrating their Evernote acquisition so far, or that we should not be nervous if not outright skeptical about the potential implications for Evernote going forward.

It's been one year now.  Benefit of the doubt time is over.

[PinkElephant 8,808]

You can always discuss progress - in hindsight you only have people who always knew better.

To me it seems a lot of technical debt was tackled: RTE syncing in May (already prepared by the old team, but then implemented) and changes to the servers and backend in autumn.

Next will be an UI change. Wait and see.

[jginter 28]

I love this discussion. But personally I think Evernote's improved dramatically in the past year - finally. Switching to a new solution would be difficult after using Evernote so long. But I've been half-heartedly looking for alternatives for a few years on & off since it's just seemed Evernote would never be able to get on top of things. And after recent updates, I stopped looking abruptly. I love the updates & have renewed confidence in the future. Though there are a _couple_ things (like the fact this _couple_ will probably not come out italicized when I post) I still wish fit me better, I'm overall really very happy and hope for even better to come.

[AdamJ 25]

@jginter it's possible... Just try Obsidian. I did and finally broke my dirty Evernote habit. I've been trying to move away from Evernote for years since the aweful client rewrites were forced upon us and at last I've done it. I'm over the moon to have lightning fast quick note taking again. 

Don't you see how slow Evernote is? It's horribly slow even on fast hardware. I keep see people on these forums making excuses for them... seriously jump ship. Imo they don't deserve our custom after everything that's been thrown at their user base. 

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,808]

You say yourself you don't use EN, so refrain from posting nonsense here. You are lying, I just need to take your claim it would be slow even on fast hardware. No, it's fast even on slow hardware.

Nobody here needs your unfounded opinion, nobody asked for it. Who wants to find alternatives should be able to enter something into the search engine he trusts.

You can contribute to a reasonable discussion, but spreading fake news combined with hollow promises is not acceptable.

Reported.

[buddhahacker 1]

All I can say is that in the past six months they have fixed issues that have been lingering for years.  I like the current direction.