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Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bit annoyed about this contemporary mentality that if an idea can't be explained in five seconds or doesn't fit in a tweet, there is something wrong with the idea. There are, and have been, lots of companies that have succeeded selling very complex products where people only use a subset of features (Oracle, Microsoft, Autodesk, MathWorks, Native Instruments, to name a few in the computing world). Of course the business model of do one simple thing and do it well can also succeed, we all know that, but it's not the One True Way as many people seem to think nowadays.

Evernote is doing badly because the product isn't that good, not due to this postmodern babble.

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  > I'm a bit annoyed about this contemporary mentality that if
  > an idea can't be explained in five seconds or doesn't fit
  > in a tweet, there is something wrong with the idea.

I agree that not all products should be explainable in five seconds. But their value proposition should be explainable in five seconds.

And if the product can't be explained in five seconds to someone who is not a specialist in the field, or a regular user, so be it.

But if someone has been using the product for a year, they ought to be able to grasp and articulate the value proposition. If most of your long-time users can't explain what the product dos for them, you have a problem.

Finally, if each long-time user articulates what it does for them, but every explanation is different, you have a coherence problem. That's fundamentally what is being explained in the post:

Evernote itself can't explain what it does, and each happy user has a different explanation, based on the 5% of the product they happen to use.

This makes it nearly impossible to focus efforts on giving any one user an amazing experience.

Explain Wolfram Inc's value proposition in five seconds, or two complete sentences.

Their own description (if you mean Wolfram Alpha) is pretty close actually: Computational Knowledge Engine

Perhaps you should ask someone who uses it.

I'm also at a bit of a loss of what point "There may be a second product in the world that is similarly unfocused" is supposed to be making. Yes... Evernote isn't the only one...? And...? (I mean, literally, I don't even know if it's intended in support of your point or in disagreement.)

"Like Google except for math problems"

"Supports increased growth in Mr. Wolfram's ego."

> Evernote is doing badly because the product isn't that good

Neither is Evernote's self-desicrption:

Evernote transforms the way you work. We design products that fuel inspiration for your projects, from start to finish.

or another one:

For everything you’ll do, Evernote is the workspace to get it done.

I think Evernote and many similar companies could start by cutting their marketing BS and moving down to software BS. Too often the two go together hand in hand.

Apple is brimming with marketing BS and they seem to be doing ok. Every company of that size has a marketing department. The type of language they use doesn't really change the nature of the product.

I disagree, I always liked Apple's product descriptions. Nowhere near the nonsensical "everything you ever needed" that Evernote uses to market a TODO app. Now compare that to the paragraph below the iPhone 6S image here [1] (The moment you use iPhone 6s...)

[1] http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/

> Oracle, Microsoft, Autodesk, MathWorks, Native Instruments

These companies were generally fulfilling a niche which required a certain amount of complexity at the core of the application. They were also difficult to replace as they fulfilled a very specific need.

Evernote, a note taking application, has no reason to be complicated and can be easily replaced. They're trying to appeal to the masses but have overloaded the app with unnecessary features which are not core to the application.

That's not contemporary. Elevator pitches have been a thing for long time. Those companies , at least first three, didn't start out with complex apps.

On top of all that, internet software companies exist in market, where customer ability to switch to competitor is so high and barriers to competitor entry are so low.

There are exceptions, but for most the have to be The Best at one thing or see their market share evaporate.

Most of the ones you describe are not consumer facing, they are, or at least were in the case of MSFT, primarily business facing. Consumer facing applications have to be EXTREMELY simple to be huge because people have no attention span and will do the absolute minimum amount of work.

Occam's law for software development: The simplest product will win in the consumer marketplace.

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