Evernote's owner filed an IPO.
June 22 2026 | Issue 101 | Link to this issue | Subscribe
Hi Reader –
You may have seen the news earlier this month: Bending Spoons, the company that owns Evernote, filed to go public – an SEC filing to list on the Nasdaq under "BSP," targeting an approximate $20 billion valuation and about a $1.5 billion raise, possibly before the end of June.
When I saw it, I had the same question you probably did: is this good or bad for me, as someone who relies on Evernote every day?
A quick reminder: I'm an Evernote Certified Expert, but I don't work for Evernote or Bending Spoons.
Underneath that is a bigger question I talk about with Academy members often: do you trust your app? If you don't trust Evernote, you won't really use it, and that's true of any tool you'd hand your information to.
I coach that trust in your app comes from three things:
The privacy and security policies of the app
Your own fluency with the app's features and how they work
Your trust in the company behind the app
This news impacts the third one. And trust isn't all-or-nothing – it's a spectrum, and where you land is personal. You don't have to trust Evernote the way I do; you just have to educate yourself enough to establish your own line.
The Filing
So I asked Claude to read the Bending Spoons filing and weigh the pros and cons for Evernote users. Most don't sort cleanly into good or bad. Here's how I read them.
What I liked: Bending Spoons runs a subscription business: 93% of its 2025 revenue came from subscriptions, up 95% year over year to $1.31 billion. A company that lives on renewals has a real reason to keep paying customers happy. Going public puts the company under real financial scrutiny – audited annual reports and ongoing disclosure that make it harder to let a product quietly drift. And filing to go public on the strength of this portfolio is a serious commitment to these brands, Evernote among them.
Other parts I'm watching closely: Evernote is one of many brands under the Bending Spoons umbrella – Vimeo, WeTransfer, Eventbrite, AOL, and more. Do you find a big diversified parent reassuring, or would you rather trust a company built on a single product?
And that same public accountability also brings pressure to run lean. Part of running lean: the filing says AI now writes or co-authors over 90% of their code, up from under 10% a year ago. This can mean faster fixes, and also fewer humans in the loop when something breaks. The four founders also keep voting control through a dual-class structure, five votes a share to everyone else's one.
None of it moved my trust much. Yours might, in either direction.
Two things the IPO doesn't settle
This news really only speaks to that third factor of trust in your app: who's in charge. Your privacy-and-security read, and your own fluency with the app, are separate questions you'd want a point of view on regardless of any IPO. Should you keep sensitive documents in Evernote? Do you understand the details of how sync works and how it contributes to the redundancy of your data? What level of backup, if any, do you need? The better you understand how Evernote works, the more you trust what it's doing with your data – which is exactly the kind of confidence the Academy is built to give you.
🧠 Academy Members: Do You Trust Evernote? is the lesson that walks you through finding your own trust level. For the ownership picture behind this week's news, see About Evernote's Ownership: Bending Spoons.
What changes for you today
In practical terms, not much. Your notes are still your notes, and Evernote keeps rolling out its regular updates, the same as before the filing. An IPO is about who owns the company and how it reports its numbers, not about what's in your account.
For my part, I'm hopeful. With more than 40,000 notes in my account and years of teaching Evernote as a Certified Expert, I believe in the direction the company is headed, and I'm interested in the new level of transparency that comes with going public. As a public company, they'll have to disclose more than they ever did privately, so we'll all see more of how Evernote is actually doing. I welcome this.
Does the IPO change how much you trust Evernote, or not at all? It’s a good question to get clear about your answer.
Cheers to your productivity –
Stacey
Subscribe to auto-receive my next tip!
No fluff. Just practical, immediately actionable advice from someone who's been teaching Evernote mastery for over a decade. Sent every Monday, for free.