Evernote business model

Have a look at this great presentation of the CEO of evernote, Phil Libin:



A lot of things to learn from him. Here are the best points (taken from the TechCrunch Blog):

• Sometimes people say “The best product doesn’t always win”, and are implying that you should focus on other areas, like marketing. In the Internet age, a good product can get the rest of that stuff (marketing, etc.) for free. So focus on that. And then charge for it.
• A year ago Evernote was making most of its money from licensing its technology, but it focused on its premium plans ($5/month or $45/year) because that was more scalable. Now, premium subscriptions bring in around $300-400k a month, and licensing represents around $45k.
• Evernote has 3.1 million cumulative users, and adds around 10k a day. Around 68k paying customers.
• Users have grown more valuable over time. New users convert to premium at a rate of .5%.  But of the users that signed up two years ago and are still active, 20% have become paid customers.
• This trend is important — most users quit quickly. But the ones that stay become much more likely to pay over time.
• Evernote’s cost per user is around 9 cents per active user per month. It makes around 25 cents per user per month. The site reached break even a year and a half ago.
• Entrepreneurs should aim to be making money on each new active user as soon as possible. Otherwise scaling just means you’re losing money faster, rather than earning it

And even if you thing that the summary is enough, watch the video. Phil is really great.