Interview with Stepan Pachikov (Evernote)

A few days ago I was fortunate enough to meet and socialize in an informal setting with one of the most famous and, most importantly, experienced IT businessmen of the last decades - Stepan Pachikov. It was he who once headed the ParaGraph company, which he later sold to the famous Silicon Graphics. I'm not talking about the fact that it was Stepan and his colleagues who were directly involved in the Newton project of Apple, which, as you know, became a kind of beginning of the “iPhone era”.

Now Stepan is engaged exclusively in his new project - the Evernote service, about which, by the way, quite a lot and interestingly told in Habré . We talked about startups, business and, of course, about the Evernote service, with the author and chief ideologist of Evernote, Stepan Pachikov, and the vice-president for international development and the head of the Russian representative office, Dmitry Stavisky.

Stepan, let's start with the main question: what is Evernote for?
We all want our memory to be better. A person who says “I am satisfied with my memory, I don’t want any better!” Is almost impossible to find. And what is a good memory? A good memory consists of three components: the ability to quickly and easily memorize all sorts of information, the availability of the information once left in the memory everywhere and always and the ability to quickly remember something about some indirect information. All of this is what Evernote possesses. It allows you to remember not only what you need at the moment, but everything that can be useful to you. Information stored in Evernote is available everywhere, even if there is no connection. And most importantly: he can find what you are looking for, by indirect information: the date, the presence of a photo or a picture, a place, a time, some words - anything.

An important difference between Evernote and human memory is that a person’s memory doesn’t improve over time, and Evernote only gets better and smarter over time. The notes you made today will look better in a year than in a few months. Let's say you made our general photo. Today you can find it by asking Evernote to give out all the notes with photos, tomorrow you will find it by the presence of a certain number of people in the photo, and the day after tomorrow Evernote will find it upon request about a specific person. In other words: the saved data will not disappear anywhere, and there will be much more ways to search for this data.
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How did you get to the concept of the Evernote service? The idea itself is not new. What is the secret of Evernote's growing success?
Well, telling the truth is easy and pleasant :) As you know, I was related to Apple Newton. It was an advanced device in many ways, but, unfortunately, it, as they say, was ahead of its time, and the marketing component of this project was not important. So in Newton I really liked the concept of “endless tape” and for many years I was looking for some suitable database in order to conveniently record all kinds of memos, anecdotes, notes, tasks, anything. This search has become one of the prerequisites for the birth of the concept of Evernote. Another such prerequisite was some nostalgia for Newton, from which, by the way, in fact, the current iPhone has grown. So the current Evernote is a kind of revenge :)

When I once wrote the first simple prototype of Evernote and showed my wife and acquaintances, they really liked the concept of searching for the principle “looking for something, I don’t know what,” when the search is performed by scrolling through the records. After all, it often happens that you do not remember what exactly you need to find and look visually. You remember that it was, say, a small note, with some kind of picture, probably colored, perhaps even with a photograph ... So you have some general idea of ​​what you are looking for, and if the object you are looking for flashes, immediately find out. The only thing that needs to be done is to narrow the search down to a foreseeable number of entries. So the idea was to filter objects by type and all sorts of indirect data.

Another push was discontent with the way the todo list was made in Microsoft Outlook. I have always believed that this, and many other task managers, are not quite right: they require you to clearly pre-schedule tasks by time and date. It seems to me that you need to start "from the end": first, a person should be allowed to just write down what he wants and the way he wants, and only then give him the opportunity to sort it all out, paint in more detail, decide on the other nuances. So I decided that in Evernote I will first write down what I want, and then take the remaining steps.

In addition, Philip (Phil Libin), the current CEO of Evernote, made a great contribution to the development of Evernote as a product, since he himself was nurturing a similar idea. It was he who focused Evernote on the web and often likes to repeat that all notes are “in the clouds”.

Do you remember the very moment when this whole idea came to your mind? Did the apple fall on your head? :)
Of course, I remember this moment, but on this occasion there are a lot of different opinions, and they all agree that I remember wrong :) She matured for a long time. But I can definitely say that for the first time I began to discuss it with Zhenya Veselov ( programmer, text editor, Lexicon, a former employee of ParaGraph, now working at Microsoft, author’s note ) around 2002.

And how did this idea develop to the final product?
Somewhere towards the end of 2002, I had the name of the project, after which the idea gradually faded into the background and slowly matured, as I was doing other things at the time. Later, having enlisted the support of several familiar programmers, I started prototyping, having received what was called proof of the concept. I was looking for tools, technologies that could provide what I wanted to implement.

And somewhere in 2004, I finally realized what the failure of Newton was in terms of text recognition. Unfortunately, people did not understand and do not understand the whole complexity of such technologies and do not forgive mistakes. For example, the word “paragraph”, defined as the word “pornographer,” could only cause laughter, and such reactions to unsuccessful recognitions only worsened the impression of the device. Based on this experience, I realized that in Evernote there should be no transformation of a handwritten note into text, but only an effective search for this note. In this case, the task is greatly simplified, because even a possible recognition error will not interfere. For example, if a query on the word “beer” gives the result in the form of not only notes with a beer label, but also some record about a bear or peering, no one will be upset, since the necessary note will still be found and identified by the user. Therefore, the problem is solved.

In 2006, we managed to find the means we needed, in 2007 Phil came to the company, who brought a strong team of managers, designers, and programmers. They began to build the right system and as a result, in February 2008 they launched Evernote in the form in which it is now.

That is, it turns out that about 7 years passed from the moment the idea appeared to the final result, right?
No, I wouldn't consider it this way. This, I think, is not quite right. I think it would be more correct to consider not from the moment the idea appeared, but from the moment when a real team of people begin to build a real project. Thus, at Evernote it took us two and a half years.

Good. Let's briefly move away from the topic of Evernote and talk about startups ( meaning not only web projects, but also young innovative companies - author's note ). Now there are dozens of them. They appear like mushrooms after rain, and only a few really good projects. Do you like this situation?
Of course, like it! The more they appear, the better! Even more, I will say: they are still, in my opinion, not very productive, there must be even more.

What about quality?
You know, in biology there are two approaches to the evolutionary process: extrovert and introvert. It is possible, like a fish, to lay out millions of eggs, of which only thousands turn out to be fry. And they, in turn, not all eventually survive. And it is possible, like some kind of mammal, to grow a single cub. Nature, as we see, has not decided which method is more correct. But I, being an extrovert and capitalist, I think that in the case of startups, the first approach is good.

Take, for example, video hosting. Imagine that someone decided to establish such a video project: he raised money, scored a team, set the rules for censoring videos, hoping to collect only selective content on the project. And another person took and created YouTube, giving power to users: let them publish what they want. As a result, of the total number of video clips, 90% will be frankly a bullshit, but just let's not pre-determine what we will consider bullshit. Likewise with startups: let them be many, because even 1% of the million of such projects are still worse than 1% of the billion. So I am sure that many startups are very good. Such is the capitalist approach.

Can you single out some successful startups in your opinion? Maybe they themselves use some new services, projects?
Now I use the service vselisdelal.ru, with which we recently began to work closely, and several similar services in the United States.

In general, I like all the projects that are made beautifully. I’ve been a Makovsky man for a year and a half, so I appreciate beautiful Russian services and programs for this platform.

Yes, I see you have a macbook and two communicators on Windows Mobile, but you don’t have an iPhone?
There is, and not one, but even two ( with these words, Stepan did get two “iPhones” out of his briefcase, - author's note )! It would be strange to suspect me of his absence :) In general, since I constantly test Evernote on all possible platforms, I have to carry at least five different devices with me. Not from dude, of course, but from work need. But my favorite phone is the iPhone, on which, by the way, quite a lot of Russian applications are installed. In addition, the iPhone is not only with me, but with my wife, my son, and both daughters.

By the way, I even had some clearly formulated thoughts about how a Russian person who has no experience can switch to a Mac quickly and painlessly. Perhaps in the future I will issue them as a separate article.

Let's go back to startups. Rather, to the conditions of their occurrence and development. You, as a person living in two countries - the United States and Russia, should be aware of the difference in the start-up markets here and across the Atlantic. What is it?
In the US, creating a startup is not worth it: if you woke up in the morning and wanted to make a startup, then you probably will have it by lunchtime. One of the significant differences in creating a startup in the States is that there is no problem getting a legal address: you can make a startup at home, even in the garage, anywhere. In Russia, there are problems with it: for example, I want to make a start-up at home, but I can't! At least it was until recently. This greatly hinders the process of creating a company. The second problem is opening accounts: I don’t know how it is now, but some time ago it was a huge difficulty. For some reason, we believe that if you want to make a startup, it means you definitely want to deceive someone, and in the first place - the state.

In addition, in Russia there is a somewhat different attitude towards failures: by default, it is considered that any startup should be successful, and if it did not become one, then this is another reason to suspect the company of deception. They say, how is it - two years have passed, the money has been spent, even if its own, and the result is a failure.

Speaking of money: where is it better to look for investments in your project?
The current business has become international, because money is worth looking everywhere and taking it where you can get it. For example, I know a Russian company in California, which took money in Russia, there is a startup in France, who took money in Boston - money comes from everywhere. The main thing is to take clean money from good hands.

Let's go back to Evernote. Russia became the first country for which a localized version of the service was released. Why precisely Russia, and not, say, Europe?
Well, first of all, we all have Russian roots: I am Russian, and Dima (Dmitry Stavisky, vice president for international development and head of the Russian representative office - author's note), and Philip, the current CEO, was born in Russia. For me, as the author of the product and one of its developers, it would still be more difficult to test Evernote on some Swahili than in Russian :) This is the first reason.

The second reason is the size of the market: Russia is a fairly large market, having also “windows” in both Europe and Asia. It will be more convenient for us to expand to other countries if we achieve significant success in Russia.

In addition to all this, for us it was enough just to implement the recognition of the Russian text. There were problems there, but they are completely not in the order that you can get when working with, say, Japanese or Chinese.

What are your plans for the near future?
First, we will try to ensure the functioning of Evernote on as many phones as possible. Secondly, we will enter the markets of other countries. Well, of course, we will make Evernote more and more clever, so that with its help you can easily search and find even those things that the user remembers poorly. A lot of plans in fact.

I also have to say that we really appreciate our open API and place great hopes on it and on third-party developers. After all, as often happens: you made some kind of plugin for yourself and for your wife, and he suddenly became popular among all the others.

How big is a developer community using the Evernote API?
At the moment there are about 350.

And what are the results?
There are many results. There are at least a dozen major integrations with popular services and products in the USA. In Russia, there is only one - with the service Vselisdelal.ru. There is also a very successful integration with Twitter.

By the way, you are using Twitter. How do you like this service?
Yes, I use it. I have over a hundred friends there, for which I feel some kind of guilt complex: they, apparently, think that I will write a lot, and I, being a person of another generation, believe that if there is nothing to say, then it is better not to speak. In general, the service is very good. I always wonder at the ability of people to create things, the concept of which at first glance seems to be either obviously simple or absurd, but in the end it turns out that everyone needs it. When the idea of ​​YouTube first appeared, I heard only criticism, they say, who needs it, if there are texts, photos. However, in the end - a phenomenal success.

Is there something that you absolutely do not like in the current Evernote?
Well, since I am at the origin of the company, I have some influence on the development process and can minimize everything that I don’t like, even at the initial stage :) Of course, I would like many things to be done faster. I also want Evernote to be more uniform across platforms. The main thing is that it is fast and convenient. We have over a million users and I’m waiting for the day when there will be more than a hundred million.

As I understand it, the Mac is now the main platform for you.
Not certainly in that way. On Windows, we are not less than on Mac :) Of course, on Mac, we are proportionally larger. On the other hand, Evernote is called the so-called application-switcher, that is, a strong motivator of the transition to the Mac platform, but we did not set such a goal, it just happened.

Now a few questions to Dmitry. Tell me, which platform is the most difficult to develop? Probably, Symbian?
Yes, Symbian is a heavy platform. This is one of the reasons for which we still do not have a ready application for it. Under the "maki" do everything, of course, easier. If we talk specifically about mobile platforms, then it’s harder to develop for them than for desktops. There are more variations. For example, with the same Blackberry this situation turned out: many different models, which, depending on the firmware and operator, sometimes work in completely different ways. Even on the same firmware, but with different operators, the same device behaves differently.


^{Dmitry Stavisky, Vice President for International Development and Head of the Russian representative office of Evernote}

How many employees are working in Evernote?
About thirty. Of these, the vast majority are developers. We don't have a sales department, by the way. We are a very engineering company.

Is it hard for you to get to work? Jobs open there?
So far there are no vacancies open, but when they appear, it will be easy to get to us :) But with talented people, we always speak with pleasure.

Stepan, but with Google, what is the relationship with Evernote?
Our goal is to have a good relationship with everyone, not just Google. Our business strategy is based on becoming an organic part of everything that is reasonable :) Google is a special company, and we are doing everything we can to make our service positive for them. By the way, they already positively relate to us: quietly closed Google Notes :) And it will be even better when we run on Android.

In general, we have good relations with everyone: with Microsoft, and with Apple, and with Google.

What kind of competitors do you want?
Oh.It is very difficult to answer this question right away. We already have a lot of competitors. And we were very proud that Microsoft OneNote was considered to be our main competitor, so we want such a competitor. Such competitors are necessary and enjoyable, as this means that we are playing in the big leagues. So God forbid, if Microsoft closes its project after Google :)

Stepan, what can we expect from you after Evernote?
I have many plans, but first I need to make Evernote a successful company. Like any parent, I want my child to stand firmly on his feet, to become self-sufficient. That's when the number of our users will be in the tens and hundreds of millions, then I can breathe easy and do something else.

Your main goal.
My goal now is to make Evernote a huge firm, at least the size of Google.

At least? :)
Well, well: two times less :)