The Business of Evernote

Written by Phineas Upham

Evernote is a program that seeks to capture all of our ideas in any form they may come packaged in. The company is only seven years old, but it has managed to make waves in the fiercely competitive startup space.

The CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin, migrated to America with his family when he was just 8 years old. He had already founded and sold two companies by the time he got around to Evernote, describing the project as something his team built for themselves.

Libin has built a focused team to produce Evernote. He tries to keep his employees focused on a maximum of twenty tasks at any given time, which helps keep them centered on the feature set that is most attractive for their customers. Libin also believes that his primary role as the CEO is that of risk soaker, or someone who absorbs risk so the team can stay focused on its duties.

Libin plans to turn Evernote into a company that will last 100 years. To that end, the company recently secured $70 million in funding to build the infrastructure it sees as necessary to its improvement. Though it has received offers for acquisition, Libin believes that the company is best run by passionate people like himself. Evernote does plan to premier an IPO, but Libin claims this has less to do with exiting and more to do with the long-lasting infrastructure.

The company had a brush with certain doom in 2008, with just three weeks of funding left in its coffers. Evernote failed to secure more capital, but it received a donation from a customer in Sweden that saved the company.