Evernote

How it happened

Evernote was the elephant-logo note-taking app beloved by millions, and one of the first consumer-software unicorns at a ~$1B valuation around 2012. But years of feature bloat, buggy releases and strategy churn — against free rivals like Notion, OneNote and Google Keep — left it unprofitable and shrinking. After failing to raise near its old valuation, it was acquired by Italy's Bending Spoons in a deal closed in early 2023. Glassdoor reviews chart the handover: employees praised a transparent, well-liked pre-acquisition culture, then described the new owner laying off nearly all US staff and moving operations to Europe, with those who remained recounting a markedly less open, more top-down culture afterward.

Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.