Phil Libin on why Evernote stumbled: the biggest mistakes are people mistakes, especially not firing the wrong people fast enough. He wanted Evernote to be a 100-year startup, a Nike for smart people.
Big challenge. What other challenges have you faced before at Evernote, perhaps in team dynamics or any other stories that you have when Evernote was getting big?
Well, you know, it's all— it's been a couple of years. I haven't been at Evernote for about 2 years. And so, you know, when I look back, like, I only remember more or less the good stuff. Like, all of the unpleasant stuff, like, I think human nature, you just forget about. So I'm sure there's all sorts of difficulties and challenges, but like now it all just seems great. Like even people that, like, I know I remember that I used to be like really angry at these people, but now, like, I don't even remember why. Like, it just seems like, oh yeah, that was a good guy. I should hang out with him more. In hindsight, like, it's just an amazing experience. You know, the difficulties were, I think, The mistakes that really count in business, or maybe in everything, are almost always people mistakes. And at business, it just basically comes down to not firing someone fast enough. So, like, all of the significant mistakes are, you know, staying involved with someone who isn't the right person for longer than you know you should. And that's just like the recurring pattern. And like everything else is like, you kind of, it's even hard to remember what those mistakes were. They get swept under the rug. Like, the real mistakes always come down to people mistakes. And they're the hardest ones, though, because, you know, it's hard to separate yourself from people. It's hard to fire people. But you have to. And not doing it is probably the number one reason why startups get screwed up and fail.
So then you stepped out of Evernote. Before that, did you know at the very beginning that Evernote would impact the lives of so many millions, so many people? of people when you started Evernote? Was this your big thing when starting it?
We definitely— that's what we wanted. Like, we definitely, we definitely had that ambition. Um, our ambition was, um, we want to, um, you know, we kept talking about making a 100-year startup. That was very important to us, is we want to make a 100-year startup. So we want to make a company that is around in 100 years. So it has to be like bigger and like much more durable than us, than me, than anyone in it. And we still want it to feel like a startup in 100 years, so it should still feel innovative. And we took that very seriously. And the only way that I know of to think long-term like that is to say, like, I have no idea what the product should be. I don't know what the product should look like in 100 years. But I have a strong idea of what the brand should stand for, even in 100 years. And the brand, as we said, we want Evernote to be— the phrase we used internally, we didn't really talk about this outside, Internally, we said Evernote is Nike for smart people, which doesn't mean that Nike is for dumb people. It means that Nike is the signature brand. It's the most important brand for people who self-identify as athletic. Nike's whole thing is everyone's an athlete. I'm not, but everyone else is. And if you self-identify as being athletic, Nike is the brand. We wanted Evernote to be that for people who self-identified as being productive or being smart. Like, we wanted to be the signature brand for, like, people who are like, yeah, I've got my shit together. Like, I am smarter than the average bear. Like, you know, I've got a well-structured life. And we had that vision right from the beginning. And that was like, we wanted to be the top brand in the world that meant that. And that influenced a lot of stuff. So we definitely wanted to impact tons of people. The fact that we did to some extent was great. I don't know how confident we were that we would succeed, but it was definitely the ambition. Right.
