Could Evernote Be Acquired? Founder & CEO Says No
Writer CNBC.com Asia
Evernote, a U.S. mobile startup whose shareholders include NTT DoCoMo and Sequoia Capital, has no intention of being acquired and its owners have "no exit strategy", according to founder and CEO Phil Libin.
"We want to build a 100-year startup. We are not going to get acquired," Libin told CNBC Asia's "The Call". "We don't want to sell. We don't want to exit."
Libin was responding to market speculation that the company could be Facebook's next acquisition target after Facebook bought photo-sharing app - Instagram - in April for $1 billion.
Libin said Evernote is unlike the two previous companies - Corestreet and Engine 5 - that he sold in the past, as the latter firms were "built for somebody else." Evernote, on the other hand, is his "life's work," he added.
Evernote, which makes mobile-phone applications that help users collect content and write notes, is now valued at $1 billion, Libin said earlier this year after the company raised a fresh round of $70 million in funding from a group of investors including Meritech Capital and CBC Capital. That's on top of the $70 million raised the past two years.
The four-year-old service, which has more than 30 million users worldwide, including a million who pay to use the applications, is already profitable, Libin said.
Evernote hopes to sign up 120 million users by the end of 2013 and be ready for an IPO by then, even if the company might not immediately become a public company.
"We actually don't want to go public by the end of next year. We'd want to delay that (an IPO) by a few years so that we can extend the period where we're having fun," he said.
By CNBC’s Jean Chua.