Growth Matters: Evernote makes you smarter

Posted Mar 5th 2009 12:30PM by Peter Cohan
Filed under: Products and Services, Technology

With all the gloom in the global economy, I got to wondering whether there is anything else going on in the world of business. I'm looking for growth because I think that's what will ultimately bring the economy out of the doldrums. Not surprisingly, that growth is coming from technology companies. In Growth Matters, I look at consumer technology companies that point the way to growth trends -- and in the process introduce services and products you may want to explore.

Do you accumulate lots of electronic stuff? Do you wish you could keep it altogether in one place and synchronize it with your laptop, mobile devices, and desktop computers? If so, Evernote is for you. According to my interview with Phil Libin, Evernote's CEO, "We had a good year in 2008. We raised money to get through this difficult economic period. And I am optimistic. The big idea behind Evernote is that a few billion people want a better brain. People need to deal with more stuff and process more stuff. They need an external brain to store and recall the stuff they want to remember."

How does Evernote meet this need? As Libin explained, "Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment, using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere."

How does Evernote make money? According to Libin, "Our basic service is free to members who get 40 megabytes of storage per month for storing new stuff. And we charge $45 per year for a premium service that provides more storage, more security, and the ability to synchronize files -- such as business cards, white boards, and other files -- on a user's different devices, including their office computers, mobile devices, and home PCs."

Users were asking for this service. As Libin explained, "We decided to do synchronization as our first premium application because we got a lot of requests for it on Twitter and the blogs. Synchronization was consistently the most asked-for feature. We have more coming out in 2009. Free users will get stuff, and premium users will get extra."

To Libin's credit, Evernote has grown. As Libin said, "We just passed 700,000 users yesterday (January 29, 2009), and it was zero only a year ago. Why so much growth? We do only one thing and we have word-of-mouth activity at the grass roots level; we have no advertising; 50,000 to 60,000 blogs write about us; people are talking about Evernote on Twitter; and we have been able to attract many of the early-adopters without doing advertising."

If you've tried Evernote, let us know how you like it.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College. His eighth book is You Can't Order Change: Lessons from Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

Tags: Evernote, Growth Matters, Phil Libin, synchronization