Evernote: Case Study Analysis

Steven Pistachio Born in Varnishes, Azerbaijan attended Novosibirsk State university followed by Tidbits State University (Georgia). Finally it was at Moscow State university where he received an honorary master’s degree in economic applications of mathematical methods. He received his PhD in fuzzy logic from the USSR Academy of Sciences.

He worked at paragraph International, a company that dealt with handwriting software. In 1992 he opened the US branch of ParaGraph In Silicon Valley, where he created and distributed software called Calligrapher for handwritten Input on tablets and touchstones.

From 1997 to 1 998 he served as vice president and established a Pen Internet division of Silicon Graphics. Pistachio is a co-founder and board-member of a many which provides optical character recognition (OCCUR) and handwriting recognition to Lockheed Martin which packages processing machines for the US Postal Service. In 2002, he founded and became chief architect of the application, services, and vision behind the Everyone line of services.

By 2004 Everyone was formed using the vast knowledge he had acquired through the years. Phil Levin Phil Levin was a Russian born American entrepreneur.

Born in Russia moved to the US by the age of 8. He graduated Bronx science In 1989. He had already created two successful startups In the past and later sold them. First was a company called core street which was sold In 2009 and the other was engine 5 which was sold In 2000 for 26 million S .

Len 2007 he formed a team and was going to form a company called ribbon allowed users to capture and retrieve information. Later when he found Everyone he Joined forces and the company was formed with certain modifications which included a change in name.

Overtones symbol and significance So what does the symbol signify? It shows us a picture of elephant . The reason why an elephant is because they are animals with excellent memory and can’t forget things. That Is Ideally the same repose that Everyone tends to stand for. It basically organizes people’s Information so that they can easily remember things.

What does the product offer? T noels users to capture, Nonentity Ana search tongue texts t enamel users to make notes say for meetings, grocery lists, website URL (with the help of the chrome web clipper), create remainders etc.

Second, it helped the users to search thought written documents and texts with the help of an inbuilt search engine. Third it uses the cloud computing system which means they could access their data from anyplace or any computer through the internet . The data stored was extremely secure. Third, for foreign languages it even provided translation services which helped them to understand the texts better.

How did the business model work? Everyone is a readily available app which is easily available on all platforms ranging from the windows Mac SO to phone & android APS.

Users could easily download the app from the app store. They operated on the premium model means they offered two kinds of services one the free services which provides the basic features and the other the premium or the paid service. Both had its advantages while the free service loud store up to mob of data whereas the paid service could store up to KGB of data loaded with extra features like better customer support etc. 90% of Overtones revenue came from their premium customers .

They began to broaden their business by going global, they were extremely successful in Japan with a lot of consumers more familiar with Everyone than their counterparts in the US. Soon they began to set up business in countries like Russia, China & Germany with their headquarters in China (Beijing) being the biggest and its operations run by their manager Ana Chunk. Below are the list of offices across the globe ) Redwood City 2) Austin 3) Zurich (international operations) 4) Tokyo 5) Beijing (largest) 6) Seoul 7) -retreat Network effect of Everyone Everyone did not advertise as much as its competitors used to.

They relied mostly on word of mouth networking. Users that generally used their service recommend their use to others. Further because of their popularity networks like Japanese dukedom began to offer premium services free of cost for their subscribers Everyone timeline Year 2008 2009 2010 2011 2013 Key product launches Everyone Mac Everyone windows Everyone phone Everyone android Everyone pad Hello stitch

Penultimate Everyone business Everyone market Country launches US Russia Germany Japan Spain Italy India Taiwan Korea Brazil MEME Turkey China Hong Kong Indonesia Singapore Benelux Nordic Eastern Europe Australia International (non US as % of total user base) 53% 75% Domestic (US % of total user base) 39% 34% 29% 25% 2) Discuss the prospects of the company in terms of options thinking? What is the company’s dilemma now, and how can it be structured in terms of options? Options thinking Options thinking gave mangers options to think about when they plan to invest or plan to expand their business.

The whole model of options thinking basis its model on two namely the binomial and the black hole model. So basically the options thinking model gives a manager options to either push (expand) the project or call (put of a project, if he finds the project not feasible enough. Basically the options thinking models gives managers an idea how to negotiate uncertainty in their business. It is generally this uncertainty that generally clouds a company’s vision for the future. The new models like the black hole and binomial model help to negate some part of this uncertainty.

The binomial model is more frequently used engendering its less use of assumptions. But each of these models do have their drawbacks also. How does options thinking work? It basically divides the process into various stages namely such as 1) Stages 2) Abandon 3) Defer 4) Strategic growth 5) Change scale 6) Switch The options are further detailed as below Stage: A project is divided into various stages after each stage the project is evaluated to check if proceeding further is worth moving or not.

Abandon: In case pursuing a project is not worth or if it is making losses then it is possible to abandon the project without damaging the company’s future benefits. Defer: This option is useful in terms in investment where in an investment can be put on hold so that it can be pursued later.

Strategic growth: An initial baseline investment allows the company to add investments in the future. Change scale: A project can either be scaled up or down depending on its feasibility . Len case of future benefit the project can be scaled up and in case of future of losses or less benefit the project can be scaled down.

Switch: A product that might not be used for its primary purpose can be used for another if it serves the purpose with similar benefit. I en prospects In terms AT pitons twinkling Is Tanat ten company Is at crossroads (as given in the case) and that it can pursue any of the above options to expand in future.

Company is at critical stage as it has to pursue on the options to make a mark in the future. The next stage for Everyone that it must do in the future is to sustain its growth in the future.

When Everyone started in 2008 the APS industry was new and many players were finding their feet, today the scenario is very different. The current dilemma they face is the very fact that their model can be readily copied I. E. The first over’s advantage is wearing off a bit plus added to that the red queen effect might take a toll on the product itself as many other developers may follow the same and thus result in the congestion of the product.

Another major threat they face is in the form of Microsoft and their product one note.

The threat they face is that majority of the users across the world use windows as their operating system and also use MS Office for majority of their office work so when they integrate the new one note with their present office they intend to create the lock in effect thereby making users get comfortable with their new app. Also many of their other work projects can easily be synced with office. Another dilemma they face is that their launch of their product in Japan made them very famous globally giving them great exposure globally.

Today Everyone is widely recognized in Japan more than their users in the US.

Based on this success they plan to expand more in size globally. They set up operations in China but business model and structure needs to be bit different considering the fact that more established companies like Google were finding it hard to adjust to the business climate in China. They face dilemmas from two sides one from domestic side in the Oromo of other developers like Microsoft, product diversification, new customer segments etc. And the other in the form of their international operations.

Company can be structured based on a number of options considering the fact that they don’t intend to sell off the company and for their vision of a hundred year old company to survive they need to adapt fast to competitive market. If they would want to take on the domestic side of things they could buy some new companies with the strategic growth option. Later they can use the switch option so as to move into newer segments such as medical, cookbook, and education etc . They can specialize their services even for business also.

In terms of the international market they could use the stage option later combine it with the scale option so that they could decide whether to scale up or down depending on their feasibility .

Lake your structuring AT real pitons Trot 2 to speculate auto want ten growth options foretell for the company. This of course is a subjective analysis and we are looking to see your group’s take on the prospects. However, you must be able to justify your conclusions about future prospects either from material in the case or from data from any research that you may have conducted.

Let us take into account of the various growth options that are presented in the case Option 1 This talks about the prospect of selling the company despite the fact that they had got no offer but had they made in effort in doing so they could have got some interested buyers. The above option makes use of abandon option wherein they have made up their minds in cutting off losses by selling off the company.

This option seems to be remote possibility as it does not match the vision of its founders who vision Everyone as hundred year old company but the possibility of a takeover cannot be completely ruled in the distant future.

Option 2 Deals with the expanding and deepening its product line through acquisitions and or organic developments. They aim to concentrate on newer customer segments. The above option makes use of the strategic growth option wherein they make initial investments by buying newer acquisitions and then may be add in options later. The problem with this option is that it will cost a lot of money to acquire these new companies which also include costs to integrate it into system and none guarantee hundred percent success.

Option 3 Everyone double down on international growth replicating Japan moving to newer ones like China.

The above option makes use of the scale up or sale down option wherein they could assess the situation in these new zones before they could scale up or scale down operations. The problem is that while they wait they could lose the first mover advantages in these newer zones also interests with technology might also change with time. Operations in these new zones might vary from their previous ones.

Option 4 Once ever note was considered as a consumer product now they want to use it as a business account. The above option makes use of the switch option where the same reduce is redesigned so as to cater to a new business segment.

This opportunity presents itself with increased costs but also increases the stickiness of the product with user. Option 5 The last option uses the strategic growth where they could double down the Everyone platform they could increase the functionality of the product among a wider platform.

This could boost the relations and provide growth and increase its value. This option would increase the visibility but to compete with Microsoft in this sphere woo a De very Doolittle as majority AT users already use ten wallows reduce ideally syncs their files in windows format such as excel word Powering etc..

To compete with a giant in this sphere at this point would not be so viable. For the future prospects of the company in terms of growth options we must look into two areas one the international (global) and he domestic point of view.

International point of view From the research and other material we see that the no of users for Everyone outside US has gone up from 50 to 75 % . This shows that the Overtones potential as a product lies more in the global market . So how does Everyone approach the global scenario. We initially keep entering a country as stage option.

So let us consider entering Japan as stage considering its success in Japan it began to scale up operations in Japan. Today Overtones presence in Japan is so strong that it more recognized than their users in the US.

Let us consider entering china another stage option since the business climate in china is very different in comparison to Japan . Many companies like Google have found out that doing business in china is very difficult. So we have to see what the opportunity presents us based on that we can either scale up or scale down operations, another important feature that they roved is the translation feature which is why Everyone could be more successful than other note making APS.

The translation could be added advantage as their next stage could be countries in the Asia pacific like India and Middle East considering the different no of languages that these countries possess this could be good platform for Everyone to be launched. Domestic point of view To tackle the domestic side of view Everyone will have to first deal with their upcoming threats in the form of Microsoft one note. They will have to make use of the strategic growth option coupled with the switch option. The strategic growth option sakes use of the need for more organic development and acquisitions that can add value to their product . Hey should do so by concentrating more on the mobile platform where windows does not have an upper hand, by acquiring other companies which might add value or those that might be similar might boost its market share thereby giving a wider presence in the market. The second option makes use of the switch option this option makes use of the Everyone product expect that its primary use as a customer product is redesigned to cater to a business requirement.

As we all know that 90% of the company’s revenue comes from the paid arrive or the premium customers, this option allows us to increase the number of the premium customers.

The above option also helps in increasing the stickiness as more number of users will begin to feel the use of Everyone in organizations this is where they could even counter act Microsoft strategy as they will also trying to do the same through their lock in strategy as majority of businesses across the world use their platform. In this way Everyone can beat Microsoft at their own game. So Everyone’s vision as a hundred year old company has to be seen in the upcoming years.