(Archived) To Dave Engberg - for a job well done.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Dave,

After reading many of your answers, I have reached the conclusion that you have the patience of Job, the negotiating skills of Solomon, and the humility of Gandhi. I hope Phil Libin appreciates what you accomplish every day.

There's nothing wrong with setting the bar high, but some of the requests coming from the free users (the ones who say "I might even pay for the service) are stretching the bounds of credulity.

Some of the recent requests on this forum have included:

* Full access to hundreds / thousands of photos on a Flickr account

* Storage of gigabytes of unread e-books

* Built-in photography editing tools to rival PhotoShop

* Voice-note recordings far exceeding the 10 minute limit

So, this post is meant to give you an "attaboy" thanks for your service.

Keep up the great work.

[engberg 89]

Aw, thanks!

Since this seems like a good place to post nice things about Evernote, check out the article in tomorrow's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/business/30ping.html

Things to note in this picture:

Phil's desk is never, ever, ever this neat. This picture is a lie.

Behind Phil you see me, Andrew, and Alex pretending to work.

Andrew's wearing one of the new t-shirts that we recently had made. (He's working on setting up a way to buy these online.)

I have no idea why he and Phil coordinated on a pink color scheme for the day. Maybe pink is the new green.

Phil Constantinou (head of Engineering) is way behind me, back turned, doing non-pretend work on the 3.5A Windows client with QA.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I agree, jbenson! I've supported computer software for over 30 years & no matter what you do, there's always someone new coming in saying how you should listen to your customers, you should let them do this that & the other & it's annoying as he$$ when you've already spent much time trying to add options that will make your customers' lives easier. THen there are some things you simply cannot implement b/c they are out of your control & yet you get dogged for not doing it. Or maybe it's something you can do & plan on doing but can't do by tomorrow b/c it will take longer than that. Can't tell you how many replies I've backspaced b/c I think I'll get reprimanded by the EN folks for being crabby. The EN people (and Dave especially) are always so polite.

So thank you EN for a great product & great support!!!

(And I will have to read this article later, when I have some extra time. As someone who's made her living for the past 32+ years by writing software, I'm still puzzled as to why someone would write good, solid, useful code & then give it away for free...!!! )

[Philip Constantinou 11]

After reading many of your answers, I have reached the conclusion that you have the patience of Job, the negotiating skills of Solomon, and the humility of Gandhi. I hope Phil Libin appreciates what you accomplish every day.

Jbenson,

"Appreciate"? Are you joking? If Dave ever figures out how much he's actually worth to the company, there won't be anything left for me. The stuff you see from Dave on the forum is maybe 0.8% of his daily workload. It's a pretty amazing team in general, but Dave's productivity frankly boggles the mind. Thanks for noticing!

Phil's desk is never, ever, ever this neat. This picture is a lie.

Dave,

You know perfectly well that my desk is exactly this clean right now. I just pushed all my stuff onto the floor and haven't picked it back up yet. Be careful where you step over the next few days while we establish the new entropic equilibrium.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Dave,

You know perfectly well that my desk is exactly this clean right now. I just pushed all my stuff onto the floor and haven't picked it back up yet. Be careful where you step over the next few days while we establish the new entropic equilibrium.

(BurgersNFries notices a slice of pizza on the floor...)

You going to eat that???

[shimra 14]

Aw, thanks!

"The variable cost for each active user was about 50 cents a month when the company started, but has been dropping along a curve to 9 cents a month. By January 2011, Mr. Libin projects, the company will break even."

.

Fascinating behind the scenes look at your company, thanks for sharing it! Really brings home to me how risky tech startups can be. I think you are in good shape now, but if Google, Microsoft or someone else had launched a similar service with their deep pockets a year ago, things could have gone differently. Then again, maybe they would have bought you out.

From a happy customer, here's to many years of profitability.