Wednesday 19 November 2014

Evernote loves Japan. Here’s how the country influences its philosophy and products

[​IMG]
Libin at the Dublin Web Summit. Photo: Daylon Soh


There are many things in Japan that make Evernote CEO Phil Libin tick. These include Enji, his favourite lunch spot in Tokyo, and Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, who Libin considers a business mentor. Japan has shaped some of Evernote’s features and the entire company’s managing philosophy.

In an interview with Tech in Asia at this year’s Dublin Web Summit, Libin reiterates Evernote’s quest to become a 100-year-old startup. It’s a movement inspired by the Uchida Yoko Group in Japan, a publicly listed company that mainly provides business equipment and services to enhance workplace productivity.

“The Uchida Yoko Group is one of the 21,000 companies in Japan that has been around more than 100 years but it doesn’t feel like an old company as they have been innovating very actively.”

Libin leans in closer and says, “The whole idea of building a 100-year startup is something deeply inspired by Japan while I was there. It combines the best of Japanese long-term management planning and Silicon Valley’s culture of rapid innovation. That has influenced how we built products, how we raise money and how we set the culture in Evernote.”

Evernote was founded in 2007 and now hires more than 300 employees around the world. In essence, the bigger Evernote grows, the better they understand the type of tools needed to manage complexity in large companies and the solutions to help them stay nimble.

“When a company is small with less than 10 people, it’s at a level of hyper productivity as everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Evernote is built to help big companies feel small.”

Libin recalls several features directly influenced by Japanese culture, one of which is the prevalent business practice of exchanging business cards. That was the reason why Evernote got serious about developing its namecard scanning feature.
-

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Download iOS 13.2 and iPadOS 13.2 Beta 2

Apple today released the second developer beta of iOS 13. 2 and iPadOS 13.2 for all compatible iPhones and iPads. The first beta of iOS 1...