Technology Entrepreneurship Part 1 - Assignment 1

This is my submission for Assignment 1 – Why Do Startups Succeed When Others Fail? – of Stanford's Technology Entrepreneurship Part I.

Description

For this first assignment, we'd like you to choose a successful local start-up, describe the business, and list 5 reasons why it’s successful. Our goal is to come up with a global catalogue of successful start-ups so that we can begin to see what attributes successful start-ups share. For this reason, it will be helpful for you to think beyond the obvious when analyzing your chosen start-up's success: lots of start-ups formed around great ideas fail, so having a great idea isn't the only factor in a start-up success. And investors lose a lot of money in start-ups with great ideas, so having funding also isn't a slam dunk. What made your start-up successful? Was it market knowledge? Vision? Understanding the core customer? Or something completely different? The more detailed and specific your answer is, the more helpful it will be to you and your classmates as we begin to build our own (hopefully successful) start-ups!

Special Instructions

This is an individual assignment. In the text box please:

• Identify the start-up (name)
• Describe the business (what it provides or produces) and how it is successful (number of users, market share, revenue)
• List five specific, detailed reasons for its success

Identify the start-up (name): Evernote

Describe the business (what it provides or produces) and how it is successful (number of users, market share, revenue).

‘Evernote is a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving.’ [Wikipedia]. Their tagline is ‘Remember everything’. Notes can be organized, tagged, shared, searched, and commented on; and can consist of webpage clips, snap shots, audio recordings, typed notes, and even written notes. It is available on multiple platforms and for syncing to the cloud.

Funding $251M in venture backing

Number of Users: 65 million [according to maclife.com, http://shar.es/i8iEe]

Revenue: $45/year per premium user (offers freemium usage as well).

Estimated valuation: $1 Billion

Market Share: [via Onavo] US iPhone Market Share (defined as the number of US iPhone users that opened the app): 4.59%

List five specific, detailed reasons for its success.

1.   Universally useful – Human memory is limited and most humans need help remembering things—all sorts of things, from grocery lists to business plan execution tasks and beyond. This app can be useful to practically everyone in numerous contexts.

2.   Supports multiple platforms and syncs to cloud – Having the app/service open to multiple platforms allows for a wider audience of users. Having the data be able to sync makes the app more powerful and convenient.

3.   Features – The features are constantly updating, increasing the app’s robustness. Included, are the number of options for organizing, which is a fundamental functionality when you are gathering a lot of ‘notes’ from a lot of different sources to be used in a lot of different contexts. What good is it to keep something (a note, say) if you can’t find it? As such, Evernote understands the core need and user.

4.   Social Media and Partnering – Evernote is very active with its community.  They maintain Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube accounts, and their own blogs; they host events; they partner with other companies and apps, which spreads the word, taps into expanding audiences, and makes their app(s) even more robust. On a side note, I think their designs and website are well-crafted and uphold a solid image of the company for the public.

5.   Company Culture – I am a believer that a company is just as responsible for performance as you are. I think a company that really puts time into and builds a culture that they envision (vs. just talking about it) fosters better productivity and thereby better quality of work. Evernote does this with its unconventional style of running their internal offices. Phil Libin gets it and puts it in action—and I think he’s really seeing results. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/business/phil-libin-of-evernote-on-its-unusual-corporate-culture.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0