It seems like only yesterday that Evernote was launching Evernote Hello and announcing a partnership with Orange at LeWeb 2011, when I first got my hands on Evernote. This week, the company announced on their French blog that the company has passed one million users in France. The company counts more than 50 million users around the world, more than double the 20 million users they boasted at LeWeb 2011 just over a year ago. According to Dmitry Stavisky, the number of users in France has more than doubled in the past 12 months, and is 5 times its size 2 years ago.
This past December at LeWeb 2012, Evernote sponsored an entire floor (coincidentally the same floor as the Press Lounge), and really stepped up their commitment to the French & European market. After the launch of their new Evernote Business line, Evernote announced a partnership with Azendoo, a French project management platform.
In general, Evernote hasn’t really followed the mold we’ve come to love in the startup scene – instead of thinking 3,5, or 7 years ahead, CEO Phil Lubin said gloriously that he wanted to build a company that had 20,000 employees and lasted 100 years, and his company’s strategy has reflected just that. With monetization always taking the back seat, the company has focused on finding ‘the right users’ and creating an engaging suite of tools for those users, all centered around “never forgetting anything again.’
As Evernote passes 1 Million users in France, it’s interesting to see that this kind of goal, this problem-solving, it permeates across borders, across languages, as it touches on a need so basic, so general, that, as long as you are willing to commit to the idea that it may take 10 years to really find the solution, you will eventually win over the entire world.