[jmyeet]

My take? Evernote failed because it's a Feature, Not a Company ("FNAC") [1]. There are lots of examples of this. Just because something is a good idea doesn't make it a viable standalone business.

Evernote was early in this space but it already competed with (for eample) sending yourself emails. Nowadays there are all sorts of alternatives like Apple has a note-taking app on their devices, which is just free (it might use storage but that's a minor issue). Likewise, you can use Google Apps.

Evernote's attempts to make it a business by introducing the friction of a subscription to get syncing beyond 2 devices (and other variants I'm forgetting I'm sure) just exposed this FNAC problem.

Now could this have been leveraged to build a sustainable business of which note syncing was a part? Maybe. But that's not exactly easy either.

[1]: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/explaining-fnac-feature-not-...