Prediction Not checkable as stated
Source code will become irrelevant as AI prompts replace programming, predicts Simionato
“But I think the code will become irrelevant, but I'm biased. I'm a PM. So I care about the prompt and the result. But I think that ultimately what you want to do is to deliver a great UX by giving the right commands.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Neuralink will transform the world more than AI over 50 years
“I think Neuralink is the product, like the thing that can change the world the most in 50 years, including AI, in my opinion. So I know people love AI, I love AI, I use it every day, but I think that ultimately the way you perceive reality and the way it chang…”
Assertion Supported
Evernote's 2023 price hike caused its largest subscription churn event
“The thing we did on Evernote that produced the biggest churn was when we raised prices in 23, which is something that we thoroughly analyzed, and we ultimately made the decision to do it nonetheless.”
Insight
Evernote cannot compete with free Apple Notes for casual users, says Simionato
“They wouldn't pay because they are casual, and so they wouldn't invest much on a product that just gives them, like, basic functionality. They have loads of competing products that they can choose from. Apple Notes, Google Keep, and stuff like that, and so it …”
Assertion Supported
Evernote's headcount dropped from hundreds to under 100 after Bending Spoons acquisition
“Evernote was a few hundred people and now it's less than a hundred.”
Insight
Mature apps should aggressively monetize existing users, while growing apps prioritize virality
“It has been the case often where we've made the paywall more visible than in the past, just because acquiring products that have already grown and that already have a large user base, then you have more to unlock by monetizing people who are already there. Ins…”
Assertion Supported
Bending Spoons monetizes WeTransfer by paywalling expired file recovery
“On WeTransfer, we built a feature that allows you to recover expired transfers, which wasn't available before. We noticed that many people were hitting this page where basically would tell you the transfer has expired. You cannot download anymore because of co…”
Insight
Simionato: Deceptive price hike messaging signals product value insecurity
“If you're trying to like shy away and like, should we like use bullshit language and not really tell people that we are increasing their prices? That's a bad move, and I wouldn't, it means that you're not confident that your product is delivering value to peop…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Product designers will abandon static pixels to design directly in code
“I think so, to be honest. I think that the role of a designer will be as important as it is today, maybe even more, but I think that the tools that we use will evolve. And so you won't work on pixels and then code, but you will likely merge the two things.”
Insight
Simionato: Products for millions of users require polish over speed
“Speed matters when you're trying things and you're trying to find your way and you're probing the area around you, but then it's all about polish when you actually need to build something that, that millions of people use. You cannot half ass an experience.”
Insight
Subscription models fail for mobile games due to long engagement lifespans
“The lifespan of that experience is much longer in time, and so it doesn't make sense to pay a subscription for something that, that gives you that much runway.”
Disclosure
Evernote now monetizes based on content creation volume, not feature gates
“Instead we monetize based on Content. So based on how much you have on the product. And so if you want to create a lot, then you pay more. If you don't create much, then you can use it for free.”
Opinion
Simionato: European and Silicon Valley software teams exhibit identical work cultures
“Honestly, I don't see that, that big of a difference. No. It's not like I spot a trend in how, I don't know, the WeTransfer team versus the Evernote team, just to name two that I worked very closely with. WeTransfer was based mostly in Amsterdam, some people i…”
Insight
Ideal PM candidates are former entrepreneurs or deep analysts, says Simionato
“I think the best background to enter as a PM is either being an entrepreneur, which teaches you to think about things that matter, or being a very good analyst of some kind, like somebody who's done very deep, thoughtful analysis over how something works at Mc…”
Insight
Simionato: Exploratory AI product features cannot be forecasted with upfront business cases
“When you build instead an exploratory AI feature on Evernote, you don't have a business case because you don't know how many people will use it. You can guess, but it's different.”
Insight
Simionato: Fitness Apps Suffer Poor Retention Due to Motivation Friction
“And one of the things that we noticed is that 30 Day Fitness is a good product because people want it, but it's not great at retaining people, meaning that after a while people lose the motivation that they need To show up every day, you know, when you're trai…”
Insight
Simionato: Bending Spoons builds Evernote features for utility, not ROI
“Many of the things that we do on Evernote are not because we want to increase revenue, but it's because we want to make the product more useful. And in a very unquantifiable way, we just trust that by making the product more useful, people will keep choosing t…”
Insight
Simionato: Subscriber retention is Evernote's single most important metric
“Retention. Subscriber retention is the most important thing on Evernote.”
Insight
Simionato defines retention as the percentage of life spent using a product
“The way I think about retention is it's the percentage of your life that you choose to spend together with a product, right?”
Insight
Validate features by asking users for past use cases, not future intent
“The things that people actually do are different from the things that they say, and so you should ask people, instead of do you like this feature or would you use it, you should ask them, what's a use case that you had in the last month for which this would ha…”
Insight
Simionato: Mature software products should focus on retaining existing users
“If you're already have an existing customer base, I think your number one job is just to make sure that they love being on that product. Unless you have some crazy insight for, by doing this, I could 10 X my user base. It's very hard. It's very rare. I think y…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Simionato: AI tools will enable product teams to test 3-5x more ideas
“So today we have a backlog of a hundred ideas and we know that we can only try 10 of them in a few months. You know, I think that we'll reach a point where we can actually try 2030, 40, 50. Both because people will be faster, but also because the manual work t…”
Prediction Partly held up
Bending Spoons will announce Evernote V-Eleven with new AI features next week
“Next week, we are announcing Evernote V-Eleven, and it's going to be a significant change compared to what Evernote is today. It's mostly a reflection of all the work that went through in the last three years, but it's also containing three advanced AI feature…”
Disclosure
Bending Spoons spent up to $7M licensing games for failed platform Playond
“We spent, I think like five or seven million dollars on, on licensing and it eventually didn't work.”
