The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.
A long long time ago, Evernote, the startup of the day with Russian roots was one of the first ones (THE first one?) to come up with the concept of synching notes between different devices. Your write something on your iPhone, then you read it on your PC. It was convenient, attractive, and efficient. People boasted about using such a cool thing, and the app was going viral.
10 years ago, Evernote was among the most trendy startups – the most trendy in the world, not just ‘with Russian roots.’ In 2012, it brought in its best round of investment at the valuation of one billion dollars – but it wasn’t called a unicorn at the time, the term turned up one year later. And back then, ‘unicorns’ were not born twice a week, venture inflation didn’t happen yet, and a billion dollars was a huge rarity. Uber, by the way, didn’t yet reach the uninvented status at the moment – it valued at USD 300M.
And then… Nothing happened. The technically simple idea got replicated by everybody and their mother, and many gave out for free that for what Evernote was charging money. The app became one of the many in a very competitive market. For some time, it remained a buzzword thanks to its old loyal users, but then this effect ran out too. I couldn’t find the 2012 information, but compared to 2014, Evernote gets downloaded four times less today. Meanwhile, the revenue went the other way around and grew 2+ times during this time – i.e. the monetizing efficiency grew 8 times in 8 years. It’s easy to understand what the team was busy with for the most part.
Today, the company got purchased by Bending Spoons – a professional studio specializing in promoting mobile apps, about which I wrote recently. The amount of the deal hasn’t been announced, but I imagine those were tens of millions of dollars, not hundreds. And this is considering USD 290M throughout Evernote’s entire history.
Selling is always a good thing, congratulations to everyone involved, but it’s still a little sad…
#exit #unicorn #russia #usa #app
Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.
