Phil Libin: There is No Exit Strategy

The main goal of Evernote was to just take that mission of reducing the stupidity in the world and make it more direct. Because we said we're going to run the company using these principles, we're going to talk about these principles and we're going to have a product that if you use it, it has a chance of actually just improving your memory, of making you, of making it smarter. So we decided to do this more directly. So this is our dream, this is what we're pursuing. And I finally feel like it's a suitably epic dream that it's actually worth devoting my life to. And so that was always the plan at Evernote. There is no exit strategy at Evernote and there never was. It's our third company and this is the one we get to keep. The first two we didn't build for us, the first two we built for somebody else. Well, we built it to manipulate our environment so that we can have a fun place to work and to make some money. But ultimately the products we were building weren't for us because the first company built E commerce products for retailers, but we weren't a retailer. And the second company build security products for big governments, but we're not a big government yet. And we said, well, the third time around, let's build something for us. Let's build something that we want, that we love. And if you're doing that, why would you ever want to exit? And so there is no exit, there is no acquisition strategy. We've turned down every acquisition offer, we've structured the board, we've structured our investment in such a way that we can build a hundred year company because that's much more fun, that's much cooler, it's much more interesting to come into work every day and think, I'm pursuing my life's dream and I'm doing it in a way that I intend to do in all seriousness for the rest of my life. And I'm not taking any shortcuts about building the company in such a way that I can flip it, that I can sell it, that I can exit. Because if you want to exit, if you want to sell your company, something's wrong. If you want to sell it, something isn't correct. Right? Because you're obviously not sufficiently in love with it. You're obviously valuing it less than the acquirer. So why is that? I mean, maybe there's a legitimate reason. Maybe you think that your dream has a much better future if you combine forces with the acquired. That makes sense. But if you're just doing it to exit. That doesn't make any sense to us. And so having exited two companies, we explicitly said no exit at Evernote.