Months after acquiring Evernote, Milan-based app developer Bending Spoons has made drastic cuts to the note-taking and task management app.

The layoffs at Evernote took place on Friday, February 17, an Evernote spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch, affecting 129 people.

“This was a difficult yet necessary decision as we pursue our ambitious plans for Evernote,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch via email.

Company

“The company was losing money for years and the situation was unsustainable in the long term.”

A spokesperson would not confirm which specific departments were involved.

However, posts on LinkedIn and Blind indicate that the layoffs have affected a wide range of key Evernote teams, including product design, engineering, HR, sales, customer service and marketing.

Indeed, Evernote has had its ups and downs over the past few decades, with mass layoffs in 2015 and 2018.

A year that also saw the exodus of top executives including Evernote’s CTO, CFO, product director, and HR chief.

However, the company seems to have more or less turned things around, reporting $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) over the past five years.

Bending Spoons is unlikely to significantly hurt liquidity.

The company recently closed a $340 million venture round and eclipsed $100 million in ARR last September.

So what is the explanation for the cuts? It could be as simple as bending spoons to prepare Evernote for profitability.

No doubt the parent company wants a quick return on its investment and may be feeling additional pressure from investors. (Bending Spoons was only introduced relatively recently.)

But it’s also true that Evernote wasn’t particularly competitive. Despite its reported high ARR before the acquisition.

The company has largely failed to keep pace with competitors like Notion — opting to rely heavily on a consumer-focused freemium model while eschewing the kinds of collaborative features its competitors have embraced.

In any case, the employees are the unfortunate victims of circumstance.

Sources: Techcrunch | Flipboard