Dropbox vs. Evernote

Two companies that came up with product strategies for each other, but not for themselves

Dropbox and Evernote have the exact opposite product problems. Dropbox’s core product, storing files in the cloud, is both amazing and boring. Most consumers want to use technologies to make their lives easier, and they couldn’t care less about files and storage. Dropbox needs to build products that people love to use every day. Whereas Evernote already has such a product — notes. What they should do is to really focus on the core product and make it the best of its kind.

But in the past couple years, both companies have been busy solving each other’s problems, instead of their own problems — Dropbox hasn’t successfully expanded its core technology to powerful everyday products, but Evernote tried too hard on byproducts but neglected its core.

For the record, I do want to say that Dropbox and Evernote are both great companies, and I use their products every day. This piece is not meant to be criticism. Actually it’s quite the opposite, I hope both companies to become great successes, much greater than what they are today.

Dropbox’s core storage product is awesome. It’s wonderfully engineered, it’s the best storage product for consumers. Actually, it’s almost perfect. But only storage itself is not enough. You can’t build a massively well-known brand just by giving people the best way to store files. If you can’t build a strong consumer brand, you can’t make money from consumers.

In today’s world, with pervasive mobile devices and cloud platforms, “storing files” has quickly faded out from people’s daily lives. We want to use apps, but not worry about files and storage. Many of us probably use Dropbox every day. Many apps use Dropbox as their backend storage, like 1Password or Day One. But in reality, when we use those apps, we don’t see files and we don’t think about Dropbox.

What Dropbox should do is to build amazing apps on top of their storage technologies, apps that make people’s lives 5x or even 10x easier. They have been trying to make (or buy) apps like those, namely Mailbox and Carousel. Those are decent apps, but they both didn’t take off. I just heard that they both will be shut down soon. Google Inbox and Google Photos are better alternatives. Dropbox Paper is another recent attempt. I hope it will make a dent.

But, Dropbox, I actually have another dream app for you to build — a new era of personal computing storage, in which, people have virtually infinite storage and their computers or phones are just caches. The cache is smart enough to identify the “hot” content that should be kept in the cache so the user can make work done even when the device is offline. All the complexity is hidden under the hood. A user doesn’t have to worry about a disk being full, losing a device or switching to a new device. She sees the exact same infinite storage everywhere. It’s a really hard problem. I was hoping Dropbox could be the one that made it happen. Imagine a world where personal computers will not only have Intel Inside®, but also Dropbox Outside®.

If anyone else can make it, shut up and take my money.

Evernote has the exact opposite product problem.

Their core product, notes, is great, but it’s far from being perfect. It has many things to improve — the editor is awkward, it feels heavy weighted, mobile sync often has hiccups, it’s not easy to search for things, its scanner stores files as “untitled.pdf”, etc.

Unfortunately, instead of improving the core product, Evernote has been building other byproducts like Evernote Food, Evernote Hello (a contact app), Evernote Peek (a flashcard app), Evernote Web Clipper, Penultimate, and even wallets and backpacks in its marketplace. I use Evernote multiple times a day, but those products never caught my attention. On the other hand, I started using Apple’s Notes app on Mac and iOS more and more.

What Evernote should do is to double down on its core product and make it the best notes app ever in the universe. Stop worrying about specific use cases like food recipes or travel plans. Users are smart. Trust them to use the product in the best and most creative ways. As for wallets and backpacks, I mean, seriously?

To sum up, I don’t want to worry about storage or backup anymore, and I need a better app to take notes.