Evernote Lays Off Most of Staff, Triggering Fears of Closure
- Paul Thurrott
- Jul 09, 2023
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25
In a shocking development, Bending Spoons, Evernote’s new corporate parent, has laid off most of Evernote’s staff and will relocate all operations to Europe.
Most of the company’s “operations will be transitioned to Europe,” Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari told SFGate, due to the “significant boost in operational efficiency that will come as a consequence of centralizing operations in Europe.” As a result, most of Evernote’s staff in the San Francisco Bay area and Chile has been laid off and those offices will be closed for good.
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Bending Spoons is a European technology company; it announced that it would acquire Evernote in November 2022 for an undisclosed amount, and it completed the acquisition this past January. At the time of the announcement, Mr. Ferrari said that he “saw the potential” in Evernote, which has struggled in recent years after being a Silicon Valley startup darling a decade or more ago. Evernote experienced layoffs in 2015, 2018 (which I wrote about), and 2022, and some office closures and executive departures. But Ferraris said that he was “confident that Bending Spoons can bring Evernote to new heights.”
Bending Spoons won’t confirm how many Evernote employees it laid off, but Ferrari claims all is well.
“Our plans for Evernote are as ambitious as ever,” he said. “Going forward, a growing, dedicated team based in Europe will continue to assume ownership of the Evernote product. This team will also be in an ideal position to leverage the extensive expertise and strength of the 400-plus workforce at Bending Spoons, many of whom have been working on Evernote full-time since the acquisition.”
That’s nice, but it’s not clear how Evernote can succeed in a market that is now crowded with more modern note-taking solutions like Notion, Obsidian, and Microsoft Loop. And its users are rightly worried about the end of Evernote. It’s probably wise for any remaining Evernote users to look at migrating their data off the service should it be shut down suddenly.