The only real technology company that has been around for 100 years is IBM. That is, if you do not count car manufacturers like Ford or utilities companies like General Electric. In its modern format, the Internet has been around for about 20 years and widely used for about 15. Evernote has been around since 2006 and has only gained popularity (now with 11 million users) in the last year or so.
So, what makes this company think that it can last for 100 years?
In his blog post, Libin quotes Sean Parker (as played by Justin Timberlake) in The Social Network: ""A million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? A billion dollars."
"Well, we don't think a billion dollars is all that cool either. You know what's really cool? Making a hundred year company," Libin wrote. "That's a pretty big deal; not many companies make it anywhere close, but we sort of signed up for the task when we started talking about earning your lifetime trust. You plan on living a long time, right?"
A Lot of Things Can Happen in 100 Years
There are so many things that could happen in 100 years. Global warming could melt the planet. Nuclear war could ... well, also melt the planet. Skynet could take over and let the machines rule the world. Do the machines have need of Evernote?
A hot new startup could make online note-taking easier, more powerful and more intuitive than Evernote or a new technology could make the need for digital archives obsolete.
In its short history, Evernote has shown that it can innovate and adapt rapidly to an ever-changing landscape. It recognized mobile as a big opportunity early and now has applications for almost every major platform. It recognized cloud storage and computing early and the necessity of making its service available anywhere and everywhere through the cloud as an essential practice with parallel thinking to what Google wants to do with its applications.
Unlike a lot of startups these days, Evernote uses its own servers to host and make transactions along its database. That means the company is not beholden to Amazon Web Services or Rackspace or any other data center. That is important, as building its own infrastructure will be key to sustaining longevity. The fact that the company now has a fat war chest and a profitable business model will keep Evernote around in the near-term future, even if the economy reaches Depression-era levels.
Evernote Just Might Have The Chops
Evernote has hired Ken Gullicksen (an Evernote board member and formerly of Capitola Ventures, BilltoMobile and Voltage Security, among others according to his LinkedIn profile) to lead its corporate development and acquisition strategy. Here is what Gullicksen had to say about Evernote in a press release.
"It's rare to see a company develop so many high quality products, rapidly grow its user base into the millions and become profitable in such a short period of time. This is a testament to Evernote's leadership and team," said Gullicksen. "With the right strategic decisions, Evernote is in a position to go from popular app to fundamental technology. I'm thrilled to come onboard and be a part of the company's next phase."
So far, Evernote has shown that it is managed well by forward thinking leaders with a cadre of talented developers churning out new features to the platform all the time. The company is already profitable and the new round of funding will be used to compensate long-term investors and employees and then for innovation and acquisition. So far, so good.
But a lot of things can happen in 100 years. Evernote is 1/20th of the way there. Can it continue to grow and innovate uninhibited for another 95 years?
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The 2012 election cycle is proving to be a bit of a dry spell for fundraising for many Republican contenders, as even the most powerful fundraisers are appearing to underperform. Last night Rachel Maddow took a look at the finances of several candidates– from the formidable fundraiser Mitt Romney to folksy upstart Rep. Thaddeus McCotter– and found they made significantly less money than one would assume. This led Maddow to conclude the money was being channeled elsewhere, to third party PACs, which could potentially decide the 2012 election.
Maddow did not deny that “Mitt Romney is the prohibitive favorite,” but noticed that the total funds he had put together so far were not exactly meeting expectations. That’s not to say other candidates were doing better: Jon Huntsman dove into his private money to fund himself, while other candidates with less private largess were simply making do. But for Romney this appeared most damaging to Maddow, as he was largely considered the frontrunner because of his money-making ability. “If you don’t actually attract the amount of money you said you were going to, what happens then?”
The culprit, to Maddow, was this year’s landmark Citizens United case, which dismantled much of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (aka McCain-Feingold) and allowed corporations to donate to candidates as persons. “Money is just carving a new path down the mountain this year,” she suggested, noting that, if given the choice, donating anonymously via corporations to private groups instead of candidates is the more appealing way to invest in politics. “Why not instead give unlimited money that you don’t need to put your name on– why not starve the candidates and instead spend on outside groups?”
The night’s guest, E.J. Dionne, agreed, abstaining from calling Citizens United the worst Supreme Court decision ever (Dred Scott came to mind) but calling it “very, very alarming” and “a terrible decision.” He did not give the new fundraising all the credit, however, suggesting that “let’s beat Barack Obama” is a far more popular conservative argument than “let’s elect one of these people.”
Citizens United has done very much to change the landscape of campaign finance, but in arguing that the 2012 election will be more muddled with anonymous money and, particularly, decided by outside groups than any other election is to ignore much of what has happened in the past decade. If anything, the internet’s democratization of campaign donations has done more to involve the public in politics than any decision, as has the establishment of 527 groups that can pay for mass political statements unaffiliated from either campaign.
It is impossible for the 2012 election to be the first decided by a third party group– that title belongs to the 2004 election. Yes, Sen. John Kerry’s loss can be attributed to the fact that he was uninspiring, long-winded, and offered little new or different to the country. But the final nail in the coffin for that campaign was indisputably the campaign by third party group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose members came out of nowhere to strip Sen. Kerry of what was perhaps his greatest advantage in the 2004 campaign– unlike George W. Bush, he was a war veteran. The Swift Boat Vets turned Sen. Kerry into nothing less than a despicable traitor and national embarrassment. There’s a reason the verb “to swiftboat” is still a common member of our political lexicon: the Swift Boat ads were the first time an unaffiliated third party group used outside funds to sink a presidential candidate with masterful efficiency. For Maddow to present this phenomenon as new is near-sighted, though she is absolutely right in suggesting that the ease with which Citizens United and several similar Supreme Court cases allow for campaign donations will only exacerbate the possibility of such swiftboating.
The segment via MSNBC below:
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