Thursday, January 24, 2013

Evernote: The New Billion-Dollar Mobile Company

Mobile app operator Evernote has raised $70 million in a Series D round — including investors like Meritech Capital and CBC Capital — at a cool $1 billion valuation.

No doubt, the goal is to eventually bring Evernote public. But the company might not be in much of a rush. After all, some of the recent social deals, like Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA), Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN) and Pandora (NYSE:P), have been lackluster performers.

Evernote has a variety of apps that help users collect content and write thoughts and notes. It�s simple stuff, but users love the products — and most importantly, people often willing to pay for them.

Evernote provides premium versions of its apps, which currently enjoy more than 1 million paid customers. This is in stark contrast to Instragram, which Facebook recently acquired for $1 billion. The company’s photo app, while popular, was good for precisely $0 in revenues, and the company has nothing resembling a business model.

With the capital, Evernote plans to keep up its aggressive growth plan. This will include acquisitions, as well as a move into China.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin wrote up an interesting blog post about the funding. One notable quote: �This financing brings us another small step closer to our long-term goal of building a hundred year startup that can be everyone�s second brain.�

Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He also is the author of �The Complete M&A Handbook”, �All About Short Selling� and �All About Commodities.� Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli or reach him via email. As of this writing, he did not own a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

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