Months after acquiring Evernote, Milan-based app developer Bending Spoons has made steep cuts on the note-taking and activity administration app.
Layoffs occurred at Evernote on Friday, February 17, an Evernote spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch, affecting 129 folks.
“This was a troublesome — but needed — resolution as we pursue our formidable plans for Evernote,” a spokesperson informed TechCrunch by way of e mail. “The corporate has been unprofitable for years and the scenario was unsustainable in the long run.”
The spokesperson wouldn’t verify which particular departments have been impacted. However posts on LinkedIn and Blind counsel the layoffs touched a variety of core Evernote groups, together with the product design, engineering, HR, gross sales, customer support and advertising and marketing departments.
Evernote has certainly had its ups and downs over the previous few a long time, with mass layoffs in 2015 and 2018 — a yr which additionally noticed an exodus of prime execs together with Evernote’s chief technical officer, chief monetary officer, chief product officer and head of HR. However the firm appeared to have turned issues round kind of, reporting $100 million in annual recurring income (ARR) throughout the final 5 years.
It’s unlikely Bending Spoons, for its half, was badly hurting for liquidity. The corporate just lately closed a $340 million enterprise spherical and eclipsed $100 million in ARR final September.
So what’s the reason for the cuts? It could possibly be so simple as Bending Spoons priming Evernote for profitability. Little doubt, the company guardian needs a fast return on its funding, and it’s maybe feeling extra stress from traders. (Bending Spoons was bootstrapped till comparatively just lately.)
However it’s additionally true that Evernote wasn’t notably aggressive. Regardless of its reported excessive ARR, previous to the acquisition, the corporate largely did not hold tempo with opponents like Notion — opting to rely closely on a consumer-focused freemium mannequin whereas eschewing the sorts of collaboration options embraced by its rivals.
In any case, staffers are an unlucky casualty of the circumstances.
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