GigaOM » Phil Libin

Thanks Google Keep! EverNote sees uptick in downloads, usage

Om Malik — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 03:43:57 +0000

When I called Phil Libin, Evernote CEO earlier this morning to chat about Keep, in his typical matter-of-fact manner he explained that Google’s Keep app is both good and bad for his company. Bad, because he now has more competition in the market. And good because now more people are going to be aware of the overall category, which means more attention for Evernote.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin

Libin reasons that just as the Weather App on iPhone helped jump start interest in other apps like the one from say the Weather Channel, Google Keep will push the interest higher in note-taking and clipping apps like Evernote. His arguments are backed by an uptick in downloads of the Android-version of Evernote since the Keep news came out last week.

Libin wouldn’t offer specific details (or numbers) except he acknowledged that when compared to a week ago, downloads and usage are up enough for him to notice. That said, he is of the belief that Keep wouldn’t have any impact on his company’s relationship with Google and its flourishing platform. Evernote is one of the more successful apps on most mobile platforms — iOS and Android included.

Google Keep, is Google playing catch up with rivals such as Apple, Blackberry and Microsoft. Most expect Google to boost the number of stock apps on Android.

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Why I think Evernote CEO Phil Libin is underrated

Om Malik — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 20:00:18 +0000

Evernote, the digital locker software, is an unlikely success story in Silicon Valley. Last week at the Evernote Trunk Conference, its annual developer lovefest in San Francisco, the company announced that it has around 40 million users. The company had about 25 million users when it announced a $70 million funding round in May 2012. That is some nifty growth.

It doesn’t have the sizzle of companies like Twitter and Instagram. It lacks the presence of Box.net. It makes up all that with a methodical approach to business that has made it a quiet success story. It has steadily grown its sales and it has boosted is user base. It has over 200 employees who are based out of its offices on Highway 101 in the heart of Silicon Valley. Evernote has its legions of fans that continue to grow despite increased competition from others. And a lot has to do with the company’s CEO – Phil Libin.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin

Libin, at his conference this past Friday said that he wants to have a billion users. That momentary lapse of reason from Libin aside, I remain a fan of Evernote and Libin. The software (and the service) sits on my multitude of devices and browsers — a key reason for its success — and it benefits from what I call outsourcing-not-so-important data from your cortex. If I use Instapaper as my web DVR, then Evernote is my digital research repository.

The Freemium Story

It is the poster child of the post-mobile Freemium company: like MLB and Netflix, it is available on pretty much every platform, making using Evernote frictionless. What Libin and his crew have done right: they have understood that theirs is a service and the more people use it, the more they will pay for it. And in order for getting them to use Evernote more often, they had to create end points such as apps and browser extensions in order to keep growing.

Of course, in this quest for boosting usage, the company has worked hard on attracting developers and rolling out new applications on top of Evernote. I am not sure if I care much for these new add-ons: for me their basic functionality of clip-and-store is still the key. Even the applications on iOS have started to feel bloated. But that is just a minor quibble in what I find is a useful service. (I mean how else would I keep track of dozens of iPad covers I find on the web for a future story. ;-) )

I spent time with Libin when he took over as the CEO of the company – long before the company had raised millions of dollars and had found fawning fans on Sandhill Road. In his forties, Libin is a programmer-turned manager and has a long history in the software business. He came across as a thoughtful fellow with a clear and concise plan. At the Startupnomics conference over the weekend, he shared with the attendees that Evernote had a six year plan and they are focusing on one thing every year.

The Six Year Plan

For instance, the company focused on growth in 2009. In 2010 it was variable cost management. A year later, it was focus on getting people to come back regularly. For 2012 the focus is on getting people to engage more with the service. Next year, the Evernote focus is on converting people to paying customers and then ratcheting up the profit machine.

So far, Evernote is humming along according to plan. The latest engagement boosting technique: a partnership with paper notebook maker Moleskine and launching a Moleskine notebook. Scribble your notes in the note book and use the phone camera to snap pages and load them to Evernote. This is actually more fun than it sounds.

More than the products, Libin has developed a great culture at his company. When I was reading his interview with the New York Times, I was struck by the similarities in our two companies, including our approach to technology. There is one little thing he said that to me is the sign of a great CEO

The most important baseline skill for any position is communication. We want you to be able to explain what you mean; we want you to be articulate. That cuts out a lot of people, because a lot of people are probably pretty good technically, but if you don’t have excellent communication skills it’s going to be very frustrating for you and for other people. Other than that, then there’s just a core set of skills for the position.

This little insight tells everything about the company – open, clear and concise communication means that you are always managing expectations, another one of Libin’s management philosophies. From those close to Libin say that those two qualities have earned him a lot of room from his investors who know that he is going to come through.

At end of 2012, the company is going to launch Evernote Business with focus on companies big and small. It would obviously allow the company to charge more money and offer more features including the all important: control to the administrators. The company desperately needs to grow its revenue base if it wants to go public. Evernote is rumored to have over a million premium customers. This corporate-market focused products can quickly add to the sales — Evernote for Business is going to be launched in December 2012 and will cost $10 per user per month. All that, is part of Libin’s plan.

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For Evernote, 2011 was a year to remember

Colleen Taylor — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:16:07 +0000

Evernote CEO Phil Libin

The tech industry as a whole has had a pretty strong year. Mobile devices are everywhere, the apps that run on them are flourishing, and the experience of using the web is becoming more personalized to individual tastes than ever before. And as it turns out, all of these trends have been especially beneficial to Evernote, the company that makes note-taking and personal archiving software.

In terms of user growth alone, 2011 has been a red-letter year for Evernote. The company started the year with 6 million users, and ended it with 20 million users, CEO Phil Libin told me in an interview last week. That’s impressive in itself, but Libin says such growth has only whetted the company’s appetite for more:

“On one hand, I’m really proud of that, and I’m really proud of our team. But on the other hand, 20 million users is a tiny fraction of what our overall goal is. There are still about 7 billion people out there on the planet who aren’t using Evernote. We want to improve everyone’s life, and we won’t be satisfied until we’ve gotten there.”

It seems that Evernote’s success is tied to the fact that its management is concerned with longevity above all else, rather than a near-term sale or IPO. Libin often says that he is building Evernote to be a 100-year company, and according to him this mentality affects everything:

“It really impacts how we approach our pricing, our business model, who we want on our board, who we hire as employees. For a lot of us at Evernote, this is our second or third or fourth company we’ve built in our careers. Those first few companies, maybe, we were in the mindset of doing something for a few years to flip it — sell the business and move on. That mentality is not that interesting to us anymore.”

Evernote is not the only web company that is thinking longer term. According to Libin, this is largely attributable to a recent shift in the venture capital industry (Evernote itself has taken on nearly $100 million in funding, its most recent outside investment being a $50 million Series D round led by Sequoia Capital this past summer). The impact of recent changes in how VC funding rounds are structured that allow early investors and founders to cash out parts of their company holdings before a larger “exit” cannot be understated, Libin says:

“The conventional wisdom used to be that there was no money for early investors or founders until either you sold or went public. That meant that people at startups were strongly discouraged from long-term planning and long-term thinking, because no one had any liquidity until the very end.

What Yuri Milner and Sequoia and other people have done recently is conduct investment rounds that break that model. Now, people can buy and sell their shares: Early investors can get out, founders can make a little bit of money but still stay with the company. I think this separation of liquidity and exit is maybe the most important thing to happen in business in the past decade. It’s what’s made the growth of companies like Facebook and Evernote and Twitter possible.”

However, despite the fact that it plans to be around for more than a century, Evernote still wants to retain the energy of its early startup days. That’s going to be a big focus in 2012, since the company has grown significantly in the past 12 months: Evernote began 2011 with 40 employees, and is closing the year with a staff of 130. Libin says he will direct a lot of his personal attention to fighting off the negative side effects of such growth:

“I have to go on a really active battle against encroaching corporate bureaucracy, and the stupidity that inevitably seeps into companies when they get past 100 people. I need to be on a mission to make sure that we don’t get to the point where we have stupid looking corporate clip art hanging in our offices, that we don’t have unnecessary procedures, that we don’t adopt passive-aggressive policies.

Naturally I’m very hands-off as a CEO — I’m not normally one of those people that obsesses about corporate culture. But now that we’ve hit that 100-person threshold, I feel that I have to be much more conscious of it going into 2012.”

That seems like a worthy goal — albeit a challenging one. But then again, New Year’s resolutions are not meant to be easy.

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