Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons(evernote.com)
evernote.com
Evernote to be acquired by Bending Spoons
https://evernote.com/blog/evernote-next-move-joining-bending-spoons/
344 comments
This is going to be a disaster - Bending Spoons is not a good actor:
“let’s talk about Bending Spoons’ business model. The basic concept is very simple:
- Find a solid app that someone else built and buy it from them (see Splice (acquired from GoPro) and 30 Day Fitness)
- Optimize the monetization of said app (by implementing from scratch or fine-tuning existing subscriptions), thereby driving higher lifetime value (LTV)
- Take that higher LTV and use it to bid on expensive ad inventory (on Google, Facebook, Apple Search) where you can acquire more users (aka drive more downloads) - i.e. leverage performance marketing for growth
- Convert those new downloads to paying users
- Massively ramp revenues and cash flow by combining the new users + the better monetization
- Use the new cash flow - plus the debt from those lovely Italian banks - to fund the next acquisition
- Lather, rinse, repeat
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this business model. What differentiates Bending Spoons, though, is how they do it.
Remini - Bending Spoons’ new app that the press is gushing over - is $10 a WEEK. And Splice, the app that started it all? That’ll set you back a cool $5/week.
Does anyone really think it’s appropriate to pay $10 a week for a photo editing app?”
https://open.substack.com/pub/impassionedmoderate/p/ryan-rey...
“let’s talk about Bending Spoons’ business model. The basic concept is very simple:
- Find a solid app that someone else built and buy it from them (see Splice (acquired from GoPro) and 30 Day Fitness)
- Optimize the monetization of said app (by implementing from scratch or fine-tuning existing subscriptions), thereby driving higher lifetime value (LTV)
- Take that higher LTV and use it to bid on expensive ad inventory (on Google, Facebook, Apple Search) where you can acquire more users (aka drive more downloads) - i.e. leverage performance marketing for growth
- Convert those new downloads to paying users
- Massively ramp revenues and cash flow by combining the new users + the better monetization
- Use the new cash flow - plus the debt from those lovely Italian banks - to fund the next acquisition
- Lather, rinse, repeat
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this business model. What differentiates Bending Spoons, though, is how they do it.
Remini - Bending Spoons’ new app that the press is gushing over - is $10 a WEEK. And Splice, the app that started it all? That’ll set you back a cool $5/week.
Does anyone really think it’s appropriate to pay $10 a week for a photo editing app?”
https://open.substack.com/pub/impassionedmoderate/p/ryan-rey...
I learned three things watching EN snatch defeat from the jaws of victory:
1) There is almost never a case for a total ground up rewrite of your core product. Just don’t do it.
2) Don’t abandon the users who made you successful in the first place. They’re the ones who advocate for you and get your foot in the door.
3) real time google docs style collaborative editing is table stakes for this software category. Build your V1 with it in mind. Otherwise you’ll have to do a rewrite later. See 1.
1) There is almost never a case for a total ground up rewrite of your core product. Just don’t do it.
2) Don’t abandon the users who made you successful in the first place. They’re the ones who advocate for you and get your foot in the door.
3) real time google docs style collaborative editing is table stakes for this software category. Build your V1 with it in mind. Otherwise you’ll have to do a rewrite later. See 1.
Yeah.
> And enterprises of great pith and moment, > With this regard, their currents turn awry, > And lose the name of action.
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
I was employee #3 at original Evernote, when we were just implementing that brilliant idea.
Here is the photo of pretty much precise moment when Evernote was born: https://notes.sciter.com/2017/09/11/motivation-and-a-bit-of-...
What a memory, I really miss that atmosphere ...
> And enterprises of great pith and moment, > With this regard, their currents turn awry, > And lose the name of action.
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
I was employee #3 at original Evernote, when we were just implementing that brilliant idea.
Here is the photo of pretty much precise moment when Evernote was born: https://notes.sciter.com/2017/09/11/motivation-and-a-bit-of-...
What a memory, I really miss that atmosphere ...
I loved Evernote and was a paying subscriber right up until they changed their TOS to let their employees read all my notes to work on ad targeting. They backpedaled after a while but trust was lost, I cancelled immediately. I have no sympathy for their failure.
At long last, Evernote takes an Incredible Journey to be broken down for parts by its new owner. Can't get any more fucked up than it already has been, it went from being an important part of my daily workflow to a place of pain. The rewrite is part of why my last graphic novel ground to a halt, I was using EN to collaborate on scripts with my partner and it is just agony to use any more. I cancelled my subscription a few years back and really have not found anything to fill that hole. Every theoretical replacement is either a shitty sluggish web view, owned by a megacorporation I don't want to get involved with, or both.
Personally I think the best thing the new owners could do would be to dig up the pre-EN10 codebase, get it compiling again, and make that available. I would resubscribe in a heartbeat.
Personally I think the best thing the new owners could do would be to dig up the pre-EN10 codebase, get it compiling again, and make that available. I would resubscribe in a heartbeat.
The End of an Error for the world's most disappointing note-taking app.
I think part of the struggle here is that no two people can agree on what ailed them.
From lack of innovation for years, to an incomprehensibly bad rich text editor interface that broke all established conventions, to 0-60 from "zero monetization" to "monetize every time you even think about clicking a button", to a ground-up rewrite that put it on part with it's counterparts from 2012, etc.
It's almost like it's failure was overdetermined.
Fascinating case study in a journey from ubiquity to obscurity.
I think part of the struggle here is that no two people can agree on what ailed them.
From lack of innovation for years, to an incomprehensibly bad rich text editor interface that broke all established conventions, to 0-60 from "zero monetization" to "monetize every time you even think about clicking a button", to a ground-up rewrite that put it on part with it's counterparts from 2012, etc.
It's almost like it's failure was overdetermined.
Fascinating case study in a journey from ubiquity to obscurity.
I really liked Evernote. Yearly subscription instead of the monthly Netflix like prices that ever half baked app asks for these days. Integration amongst all my devices phone, table, various desktops. All nice. And no further dependency on Microsoft, Google or Meta.
Product development stalled a long time ago though. I do hope this thing stays in the air, cause I got a lot of notes in there.
Product development stalled a long time ago though. I do hope this thing stays in the air, cause I got a lot of notes in there.
I do miss the old Evernote. Many of the 'enhancements' over the last few years just get in the way of the main benifit of the tool.
Ah, I drove past their office just last week and noticed all the lights were out and the parking lot was empty.
At the time I assumed they'd actually gone under, but now I realise that that would have been the "there is no spoon" scenario.
At the time I assumed they'd actually gone under, but now I realise that that would have been the "there is no spoon" scenario.
Bit late to the thread. This is a hbit of a shame but also quite clarifying.
I had been holding on to EN as there is no app that does quite what it does quite as well. I liked being able to mix notes, to-dos, captured images, web content, etc, and organize it into folders. The fact that they are working towards a Linux client helped, as well.
What I didn't like was their prioritizing of features that were aimed at enterprise customers at the expense of everything else. The world didn't really need another collaborative text editor for teams with chat, and I never saw EN being anyone's choice for that.
It is a shame. Seems like yet another company that could have made a nice living for its employees by servicing their natural customer base but was instead destroyed by the ambitions imposed on them by their investors.
I had been holding on to EN as there is no app that does quite what it does quite as well. I liked being able to mix notes, to-dos, captured images, web content, etc, and organize it into folders. The fact that they are working towards a Linux client helped, as well.
What I didn't like was their prioritizing of features that were aimed at enterprise customers at the expense of everything else. The world didn't really need another collaborative text editor for teams with chat, and I never saw EN being anyone's choice for that.
It is a shame. Seems like yet another company that could have made a nice living for its employees by servicing their natural customer base but was instead destroyed by the ambitions imposed on them by their investors.
These are mostly negative reviews of Evernote. Yet, I do like the product and I am yet to find a replacement that offers these must-haves:
* Multiple tags per note
* OCR/search on attachments
* Web clipping (full page and individual sections)
* Mail to Evernote (with attachments)
* Decent WYSIWYG
* Good scanning support ("scannable" app)
It did have its problems and did lose 3 or 4 notes due to syncing issues but today's web version is usable and the product seems stable now. I agree that the acquisition is probably not good news. So, if anyone knows of a replacement with these features, pls reply!
* Multiple tags per note
* OCR/search on attachments
* Web clipping (full page and individual sections)
* Mail to Evernote (with attachments)
* Decent WYSIWYG
* Good scanning support ("scannable" app)
It did have its problems and did lose 3 or 4 notes due to syncing issues but today's web version is usable and the product seems stable now. I agree that the acquisition is probably not good news. So, if anyone knows of a replacement with these features, pls reply!
Wow, I'm sure I'm not alone in having completely forgot about Evernote after importing all my notes into Bear. They fell off my radar with such force that I literally haven't even thought of them in years, except for one moment months ago when I noticed their logo on maybe a physical notepad sitting in some old bookstore window. Other than that, I have not even seen the logo anywhere else. Like others, it was the device restriction, but also just terribly glitchy note editing/pasting etc.. Moving to Bear (which has also now stagnated pretty hard, but is still good) I was just stoked on the fact that editing was a smooth experience and it kind of got out of my way.
This is unrelated to the news, but does anyone here ever get unknown charge from "Google Play Bending Spoons"? It doesn't appear in the Google Transaction History, but my ewallet provider confirmed it was from Google Play.
Someone has asked about it in Google Play Help and got no meaningful answer https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/159064766/help-...
Someone has asked about it in Google Play Help and got no meaningful answer https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/159064766/help-...
Related ongoing thread:
Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33626047 - Nov 2022 (143 comments)
Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33626047 - Nov 2022 (143 comments)
The only reason I've stuck with Evernote is because it scans all of my old paperwork and lets me search by the OCRed text. Without it, so many years of personal data would be locked in images I'd never have time to eyeball.
Please someone release me from this foul daemon by suggesting an alternative with this key feature.
Please someone release me from this foul daemon by suggesting an alternative with this key feature.
imagine being at the local tech happy hour and someone asks you where you work and you have to yell over the loud music "BENDING SPOONS, I'M A L3 SRE" ... "what?" ... "BENDING. SPOONS."
I used to work for a company that rented a portion of Evernote's HQ, in Redwood City. Nice office and location. Evernote eventually recovered and kicked us out.
Just my personal piece of nostalgia.
Can we all please go back to buying stable desktop software without continuous upgrade nags, now?
I still hate that Evernote bought Skitch. Really wish the new team would revive it or sell it off to an interested dev.
For anyone looking for an INCREDIBLE note-taking app, check out UpNote. https://getupnote.com/
- Sleek UX/UI. It does not overoptimize there either. Just the right amount of perfect for me.
- Importantly, cross-platform: as someone on Android and Mac, it works seamlessly
- $24.99 Lifetime pricing. No subscription BS.
- Developers pay close attention to user feedback but they're also not dumping features there left, right, and center. Most updates are targeted at making this faster than bigger. (It is already fast enough)
- No "Social/collaborative" BS. I want my notes to be mine.
- Export capability to PDF, HTML etc.
Disclaimer: No, I have no affiliation with the product. Just a super-happy user who'd like to recommend this to everyone. I have tried many note-taking apps out there but this one really hits it out of the park
- Sleek UX/UI. It does not overoptimize there either. Just the right amount of perfect for me.
- Importantly, cross-platform: as someone on Android and Mac, it works seamlessly
- $24.99 Lifetime pricing. No subscription BS.
- Developers pay close attention to user feedback but they're also not dumping features there left, right, and center. Most updates are targeted at making this faster than bigger. (It is already fast enough)
- No "Social/collaborative" BS. I want my notes to be mine.
- Export capability to PDF, HTML etc.
Disclaimer: No, I have no affiliation with the product. Just a super-happy user who'd like to recommend this to everyone. I have tried many note-taking apps out there but this one really hits it out of the park
I guess Phil Libin's plan to make a company that could last 100 years didn't quite work out.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-evernotes-phil-libin-pla...
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-evernotes-phil-libin-pla...
How the mighty have fallen.
Who the heck are Bending Spoons?
Who the heck are Bending Spoons?
Can someone educate me on the difficulties in raising money from your user base?
It seems like businesses like this should give fair warning to their users before transactions like this occur to make sure they don't have a better option than shutting down or selling out.
Evernote has tens of millions of paying users. It doesn't seem too far-fetched to believe that each user would fork over on average $50 (as an investment, presumably) to just freeze product development, fix bugs, and improve performance.
Put another way, I'm pretty sure Evernote could have raised hundreds of millions from their user base.
Why not try that approach? Are there regulatory issues that make it unfeasible?
It seems like businesses like this should give fair warning to their users before transactions like this occur to make sure they don't have a better option than shutting down or selling out.
Evernote has tens of millions of paying users. It doesn't seem too far-fetched to believe that each user would fork over on average $50 (as an investment, presumably) to just freeze product development, fix bugs, and improve performance.
Put another way, I'm pretty sure Evernote could have raised hundreds of millions from their user base.
Why not try that approach? Are there regulatory issues that make it unfeasible?
I had enjoyed and even paid for Evernote for several years, until their "restructuring" and they dropped the export of everything but "Evernote Database"... I think they have since restored an export to HTML, but that always was the biggest problem for me... I want to be able to export (and backup) my notes in TXT or MD, not just HTML or their proprietary format.
No idea if they've since added in more reasonable export features, but it was a dealbreaker for me (a big plain-text fan).
No idea if they've since added in more reasonable export features, but it was a dealbreaker for me (a big plain-text fan).
"At Bending Spoons, we create our own cutting-edge technologies and products."
https://bendingspoons.com/
https://bendingspoons.com/
evernote was one of the programs that trapped me,
it took some effort to finally migrate my data (I'm now using md files/ obsidian for mobile frontend synced with syncthing)
I'm adding here in case Evernote reads this thread.
I used to use Evernote extensively, mainly for web clipping, but also filing things away.
Nowadays I rarely use anything except the mobile apps, or the clipping browser plugins, but Evernote is essential to me for permanent filing which I can search at any time. I would be lost without it and am willing to keep paying for it. I'm sure other people want it for note keeping and I have no idea how well that works. What does work is their document/photo scanning app, which I use regularly.
A long time ago, the founder made much of the fact that my data was fully portable and provided the api details to enable me to export it out of Evernote completely. I think this is very important, especially for a company that may be seen as less viable for a while. I was disappointed, the other day, that I could no longer use Evernote's published query language to search using a boolean query. This may well be because the facility is now a pay-extra feature. I have to say that adding on little features and then asking users to pay for them is the worst thing when I am already a premium user! Please stop doing this.
That's my two penn'orth.
I used to use Evernote extensively, mainly for web clipping, but also filing things away.
Nowadays I rarely use anything except the mobile apps, or the clipping browser plugins, but Evernote is essential to me for permanent filing which I can search at any time. I would be lost without it and am willing to keep paying for it. I'm sure other people want it for note keeping and I have no idea how well that works. What does work is their document/photo scanning app, which I use regularly.
A long time ago, the founder made much of the fact that my data was fully portable and provided the api details to enable me to export it out of Evernote completely. I think this is very important, especially for a company that may be seen as less viable for a while. I was disappointed, the other day, that I could no longer use Evernote's published query language to search using a boolean query. This may well be because the facility is now a pay-extra feature. I have to say that adding on little features and then asking users to pay for them is the worst thing when I am already a premium user! Please stop doing this.
That's my two penn'orth.
I was a paid Evernote user who didn’t use the service much but paid anyway, partially because I liked the company, until they raised prices in 2016 by like 40% for the premium plan.
I’m one of those whale customers that SaaS companies love because I’m fairly price insensitive and I often don’t have tons of usage or support needs. For a solid 5 or 6 years, I’d been giving Evernote $50 a year, even though I mostly used other services. But raising the price 40% (and neutering the free plan that was the only reason they had as many users as they did) was enough that even I took the time to cancel.
It’s a sad end to what was at one time such a good (if significantly overvalued) product, but the writing has been on the wall for 6 years.
OneNote is more than good enough for most people who want an Evernote sort of note system and for people who are more particular and want to pay, the new wave of single brain apps is just far, far better.
When Evernote tried expanding into food and all these other areas, that was a sign things were getting out of control.
I used to be mad about what happened to Skitch, but CleanShot has finally filled that void from me from back before Evernote neutered and abandoned it.
I’m one of those whale customers that SaaS companies love because I’m fairly price insensitive and I often don’t have tons of usage or support needs. For a solid 5 or 6 years, I’d been giving Evernote $50 a year, even though I mostly used other services. But raising the price 40% (and neutering the free plan that was the only reason they had as many users as they did) was enough that even I took the time to cancel.
It’s a sad end to what was at one time such a good (if significantly overvalued) product, but the writing has been on the wall for 6 years.
OneNote is more than good enough for most people who want an Evernote sort of note system and for people who are more particular and want to pay, the new wave of single brain apps is just far, far better.
When Evernote tried expanding into food and all these other areas, that was a sign things were getting out of control.
I used to be mad about what happened to Skitch, but CleanShot has finally filled that void from me from back before Evernote neutered and abandoned it.
Result being that today I'll migrate everything out of Evernote and cancel my subscription.
That sucks.
That sucks.
I dumped Evernote when they restricted their free accounts to 2 devices. Ironically I'm now paying for Ulysses, money I might have give to Evernote had they not been so awful to early adopters.