Evernote is officially leaving Singapore.
In a Facebook post by the head of Market Development in Evernote APAC, Tiang Lim Foo, he announced that he has been tasked to close down Singapore operations, before leaving by the end of October. This follows global news that Evernote is laying off 13% of its employees and three of its international offices in its second round of layoffs since new CEO Chris O’Neill started two months ago.
(Editor’s Note: The Facebook post has since been privatised.)
However, this hardly marks the end of Evernote APAC. Evernote APAC alone commands a userbase of 35 million, larger than their other international markets like North America (27 million), and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (31 million combined).
There is talk that Evernote will be going for IPO, so the trimming that O’Niell has been doing seems to be gearing up for something greater in the horizon. As he wrote in an Evernote Blog post dated on Tuesday:
I believe that a smaller, more focused team today will set us up for growth and expansion tomorrow. Here are two things that you can expect from us over the next several months: we will launch major foundational product improvements around the core features that you care about most, and we will pull back on initiatives that fail to support our mission.
The end of Evernote Singapore could be due to its small size — with a little over 5 million in population, this island-city is relatively a small drop in Evernote’s big pond. The fear is that Singapore is becoming less relevant the more companies like Evernote grows, because our user base has little to offer in size and influence, when compared to our APAC counterparts like Indonesia, who recently hit 2.2million users.
Or, Josh Dickson could be right, and Evernote may be facing a bitter end pretty soon. Who knows?
In the meantime, let’s wait and see what else Singapore will be able to offer to companies like Evernote.
