Fresh off the Series D round of $70 million, Evernote is putting that cash to good use and continues to branch out into multiple lines of business. In this case, the acquisition of Penultimate allows them to take advantage of free-form hand writing recognition, something they had previously dabbled with in Skitch and RiteScript, but nothing at this level of sophistication.
While this clearly indicates signs of growth, it remains to be seen whether Evernote can be a strategically focused business that can weather the long-term. It’s great that the engineers at Evernote have cooked up so many innovative tools, but the company still lacks that killer app which revolutionizes the industry. If their main Evernote product was able to elegantly integrate handwriting from Penultimate and saving from Web Clipper, they would make it most of the way there. Next, they need to bring in the ability to organize all those ideas, very much like the way Workflowy operates. Finally, Evernote has yet to live up to the second half of their vision which is to, “Our goal at Evernote is to help the world remember everything, communicate effectively and get things done.”
For now though, it is undeniable that Evernote is riding a large wave of momentum. I have faith that, in due time, Phil Libin and team will do exactly as they promised.
