Beyond a limited market and raising too much capital, a core reason for Evernote's decline was its foundational architecture. Built as a private, single-player tool, it was technically and conceptually unable to pivot to the collaborative, multiplayer experience that competitors like Notion later capitalized on.
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Dropbox's shrinking revenue illustrates a key strategic risk. Despite being an iconic product, it became a feature within larger ecosystems like Google Workspace and Microsoft Office. Its failure to expand into a defensible, multi-product platform (e.g., failed Mailbox and Carousel acquisitions) led to its current stagnation.
While competitors tried to build a social network and a recording tool simultaneously, Metal focused exclusively on creating the best video capture tool. By solving a critical user pain point first, they achieved massive scale (tens of millions of users), which they then leveraged to bootstrap a thriving social network on top of existing user behavior.
While tools like Miro serve many use cases adequately, they are a "bad fit for all of them." The future of canvas tools lies in vertical-specific applications that go deeper on a single use case (e.g., pharmaceutical workflows, remote onboarding), offering a more powerful, tailored feature set that a generic tool cannot match.
While generic AIs in tools like Notion are powerful, they struggle to identify the 'source of truth' in an infinite sea of documents. A purpose-built PM tool has a smaller, defined information domain, making it more effective and reliable for specialized tasks.
Early user research showed designers did not want a collaborative, multiplayer tool. However, Figma's web-based architecture made a single-player experience technically terrible (e.g., tabs constantly reloading). They were forced by the technology to build multiplayer functionality, which ultimately became their key differentiator, proving the platform's needs can override initial user requests.
Don't fight battles you can't win. For a product like Evernote, competing with free, pre-installed apps like Apple Notes for casual users is a losing proposition. The winning strategy is to focus on the advanced user segment whose complex needs justify paying for a more powerful tool.
The Browser Company found that Arc, while loved by tech enthusiasts for its many new features, created a "novelty tax." This cognitive overhead for learning a new interface made mass-market users hesitant to switch, a key lesson that informed the simplicity of their next product, Dia.
