like yourself I would not be overly optimistic about EN moving in the direction of the concerns raised here unless the commercial pressure is massive. I interpret that to be a commercial concern, but I clearly don't know. clearly I am just wild guessing here as there are no public numbers, but I read two things in Ians statement: annoyance with and a certain concern about the "intensive customers". so if there is a significant drop in the revenue forecast, that indeed would create an issue for the exec team, both from the VC owners as well as for their own bonuses. They need to show decent revenue, at the minimum self sustainability or a strong upward trajectory. EN is a fairly "old" startup, so it is no longer being valued on customer numbers (that could be monetized in some way form or fashion by a new owner) alone any more. Once users understand that, EN's decision making will make a lot more sense.įully agree with your comments especially on the company valuation. For a company that needs an exit (sale or IPO), maximizing valuation is the goal, and keeping power users happy has very little to do with that goal. And things breaking disproportionately adversely impacts power users.Ī tiny paying group of power users does not make for a high valuation. In their defense, a small, VC financed company is under a lot of pressure to move fast, and moving fast means things break. I think anyone who reads Small's response as EN changing how they view their power users is going to be disappointed. That's right - it doesn't happen! The QA and beta testing and no negative surprises approach that an established company like Microsoft can take is completely different from what we have seen from EN, not just with this release, but every release going back years, which is why I suggested earlier in this thread that Ian Small's response was nothing new - every EN CEO does something similar after they release product they know will disrupt their power userbase. Now think about the last time you went to a new version of Excel or Word and some basic feature was borked. In fact, this has been par for the course with EN - long term power users, am I wrong? Users who have been on this forum for a long time know that this is not the first time EN has released product that broke basic functionality and nuked user workflows. I have long suspected that no one in executive management is what the actual power users on this forum would consider a power user. The evidence over the years strongly suggests that power users are not their priority. I think you overestimate the importance of power users. the way I read Ians statement is that something is happening with these very paying subs, something that concerns them enough to finally react. from a commercial point of view the basic users are just cost (with the hope to be converted to paying at some point), it is the paying subscribers that are critical. Without ongoing and regular engagement with beta users, participants quickly realize that providing feedback is as useful as trying to nail Jell-O to the wall, and it should surprise no one when product quality suffers as a result.Īs about the the wrath of the tiny fraction: the key question actually is how big a percentage this tiny fraction is as part of the *paying* user base, not of the overall base. This is the currency that drives a beta program.
#Onenote vs evernote quote collection free#
Without the offer of free product, the reward for beta users is the communication with and acknowledgement of issues by Evernote staff. With close to zero communication to beta participants, what incentive is there for beta users to write up detailed bug reports? For free? Some apps offer beta users paid access to the product in exchange for the time consuming prospect of testing, writing reproducible bug reports, filling out questionnaires, and so on.
#Onenote vs evernote quote collection software#
Now, I am aware that software is never perfect - no software program of any complexity would ever ship if every known bug has to be squashed first.īut, if you run a half-hearted beta program, you're going to get half-hearted results. Despite an extensive QA process and a long-running beta program, some of our customers have encountered frustrating bugs and performance issues.Īs has been extensively reported on these and other public forums, dozens (if not hundreds) of issues were reported by beta participants, never acknowledged by Evernote staff, and shipped "as is" in the production versions.