The Ledger
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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 …”
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…”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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…”
Simionato: Subscriber retention is Evernote's single most important metric
“Retention. Subscriber retention is the most important thing on Evernote.”
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?”
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…”
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…”
Simionato: AI accelerates prototyping, but core product prioritization remains essential
“I think with AI you can build prototypes faster and so that allows you to test easily, which is something you couldn't do in the past, but the underlying principle of you need to focus on what matters is still very true today.”