Evernote Raises $20M from Japanese Media Giant Nikkei | Hacker News Reader

Evernote Raises $20M from Japanese Media Giant Nikkei

techcrunch.com

30 pointsfreshkurt24 comments

I use and pay Evernote. I love the idea.

But lately I think they stopped innovating their software and focused on office supplies and messenger bags. There are many things they could've improved by now.

I hope their easy money won't mislead them even more.

To be fair, the messenger bag is pretty rad. I bought it and it's one of my favorite accessories. For my commute and for travel, it's nearly perfect.

Like you, I pay for Evernote's premium service, love the idea, and - until recently - thought their execution was great.

Now, I think they're too distracted by the "accessories" market and ill-fitting social features that don't fit what the service was sold to be... a digital shoebox.

I don't need WSJ or Nikkei articles to appear in my Evernote searches. Sure, I can turn this "Context" feature off but it's on by default and doesn't do anything I don't get with CMD+T in my browser. Resources were spent on it.

I feel the same way about the Chat feature. Who are these people who want to chat with friends/colleagues from inside of Evernote? Again, more resources spent on that.

In the meantime... Premium features are broken on iOS (passcode security turns itself off), the Windows version doesn't work with HiDPI displays, and the editing/formatting of notes doesn't sync correctly across Windows->Mac->iOS.

I wonder about the long term viability of services like Evernote. I use them, but I would never pay for the service. If I got an email from them stating they'd be going out of business, I probably would move my notes out, maybe?

For those who've paid for the service, why?

I haven’t gone premium yet, but it’s not out of the question. Being able to share notes and use them offline would be nice and I might upgrade in the future.

I also use Simplenote, but I have found their syncing to be too unreliable when sharing notes with others.

The next place you move it too will be developers giving away the service for free thinking they can be profitable down the road but what they don't know is that they have millions of you as their customer. They will shutdown and then you move on to the next free service. The issue with evernote is that they applied the get big quick model fir customer acquisition and they scooped up a lot of tuna instead if samon. Compare this to slack which applied a more targeted approach to customer acquisition with a more focused product.

Evernote needs to weed out customers like you as quickly as possible but it will require a more streamlined product.

I agree that they need to get rid of the freeloaders like me. My issue with Evernote is that I don't think I'd get 5 bucks a month of value from it. I would get 1 dollar a month value. I'd even be willing to pay 12 bucks up front for the year. I wonder if they could move to a model like that. They'd give away the server for a 1 month trial, afterwards have a 12 dollar, non-refundable yearly rent fee.

The reason why you and Evernote have a perceived mismatch on value is because Evernote does not fully solve your need, but it does for some people. This is their problem, they have so many products which are so so and rely on the user to select and create their experience.

Most people won't take the time to explore all the different products and how to fit them together. This is why Evernote says its best when described by a friend but others might say that the best products are an opinionated system directed at a specific type of user and demographic. You could have an Evernote for designers or developers or accountants or bloggers or researchers or wallstreet analysts but these would have to look totally different to get the love from its users. Bottom line Evernote is too general for most.

I pay for Evernote Premium to get PDF searching, offline notes, larger data volume, etc, as I manage all of my projects in Evernote. For me, the cost is trivial compared to the benefit. That said, I hope they don't lose their focus with projects like Context - the social aspect has no value to me at all.

I signed up as premium user for using offline notes in my phone, I dont really use rest of the premium features.

I was a free user for a long time. The annual cost is reasonable and I want to show my support to the evernote guys by being a paid customer.

I kept telling myself that I should pay for Evernote since I use it so much, even though I don't really feel the value-add of premium features matches the premium cost. When I ordered the Evernote bag, there were some fulfillment issues, and Evernote gave me some credit that I could use toward a subscription. When I redeemed the credit, it said it would extend my existing subscription, so it turned out that at some point in the past, I actually had decided to pay for it.

I guess I look at it like a Wikipedia donation. Paying doesn't really get me any must-have functionality, but it does feel good helping them keep the lights on, since I have the disposable income to make a payment.

The service will scan the content of PDF attachments for searching, which is nice. The two bigger premium features, for me, are offline notebooks and passcode security.

Unfortunately, the latter feature has been broken for well over a month on iOS. The most release was supposed to fix it, but passcode security still turns itself off after a few hours.

Wait, Evernote raised $70M at a $1B valuation in 2012. This funding round seems low. Am I missing something?

It's not a funding round, it's a content partnership with a small investment thrown in.

https://evernote.com/corp/news/pr/2014-11-09/

Interesting, Nikkei did a similar thing with Monocle recently as well - http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/article/1310240/monocle-valued-11... (Monocle is probably not hugely known around here but are quite a well regarded media company in certain circles.)

They really needed $20M?

On a side note, I hate how most windows desktop software (including Evernote) just don't bother adapting to High-Res displays.

They wouldn't even hand out a Yosemite beta before the release date. They had one, but they wouldn't give it out.

I keep feeling like Evernote is falling around like crazy to try and diversify. I like and pay for the app but god I don't want EN-branded socks/backpacks/thermoses. Or have it try to shove random articles off the internet into my face when I'm sitting there thinking about My Projects.

I moved away from evernote to free onenote.

Recently I discovered Nimbus Note, an Evernote/OneNote hybrid. Great for capturing ideas and moments with audio, video or notes. Been using it constantly: http://nimbus.everhelper.me/note.php

Does it have advantages over Evernote?

A more straight-forward interface. It's a subjective thing, but I find Nimbus Notes easier to use.

Thanks for the alternative. One of my pet peeves with most cross-platform software is no native Linux client. They've made great strides with the web client (recent UI overhaul), but I still find the Windows desktop client slow to respond.

Nimbus doesn't have a native Linux client either.

I don't blame these companies if Linux users are a miniscule minority.

unfortunately, don't see a native Mac app

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