Evernote is now my life

"Evernote has become my whole life now, this is my third venture, and we feel we want to set up a company that we want to keep running, to do something that is truly classic enough." If you want to make something your life's work, then go the other way. -Fille Liebing, chief executive of Evernote

This passage is not feeling very familiar to more and more startups, seems to have a more and more obvious trend, the founder wants to create a lasting landmark enterprise. I often hear a few words, this is my last venture ", as if to say so, the company will be able to last for a long time."

But now the days are gone, and for the founders of a continuous venture, their goal now is to find the authority of the next century.

Why is there a change?

I don't have a simple answer and I don't have enough data to create a complete picture to describe this trend. However, I do have some observations that I think can explain why the idea of entrepreneurship around the world is changing:

1 The cost of starting a company has fallen sharply: Once upon a time, it was a major achievement to start a company and then push the product to market. These days, technology, automation and outsourcing mean that only high school literacy students can start a similar entrepreneurial program, with only a small value-added you can create a company, and now the founders are eager for higher standards.

2 failure is really bad: although you may realize that failure is really a bad thing, no entrepreneur has failed at least once, and the positive meaning is to avoid repeated experiences of similar failures. If you fail more than once, starting a company and running it will always sound good. This means that you will never fail again (at least in this way), so you can well wrap your own success.

Why is all this important?

Whatever the reason, I admire the vision of creating a century-old enterprise, while worrying about how it changes the founding thinkers. In the same way, targeting a short-term acquisition will hurt your company, and the goal of a permanent business may lead you to make an unsatisfactory business decision.

For example, in the early days of a company's life, you need to focus as much as possible. This means you may need to grab some big market opportunities or create a product that is not yet in the future with great potential. If you focus on the current decision it is easy, but if you focus on the future you may not want to give up so many future values. Once the decision becomes difficult, you start making mistakes.

Similarly, you will overuse the company in the early days of your business, if your goal is to become an eternal company. It is important to make sure that you have the right funds at a specific company stage and you can limit future choices by exceeding or below capital limits. If you focus on a 100-year plan, it seems like a good idea to increase equity, but it can lead to mistakes.

These are just a few examples, not all founders will be blinded by 100 years of desire. However, no matter what self-awareness you have, you may be able to influence your goals. Adding any goals, especially existing forever goals, will shape your thinking, although you probably don't realize it.

It's been a long time.

If you are eager to create a 100-year venture, I sincerely hope that you will succeed. I would like to know whether the focus of this time on short-term earnings can build a long-term company.

I will leave you with a list of the oldest companies in the world, according to wikipedia it is not surprising that these companies have the longest duration in the enterprise, most of which are the basic components of human life (hotels, buildings, food).

By investigating more than 100 surviving family-owned businesses around the world, they basically have the following four things in common: 1 their products are traditional products that are closely related to life and are essential for people's lives. 2 have excellent successors. 3) able to adapt to the times, continuous improvement, innovation. 4 The pursuit of excellence in values.

I don't know whether technology, especially software, will be in this category. Unfortunately, you and I will never find out. After all, 100 years is a long time.