The company Evernote recently made the City of Redwood City and the real estate firm Cassidy Turley very happy when they signed a deal to move out of their current digs in Mountain View to a nearly-90,000-square-foot, five-story office building at 305 Walnut Street.
Evernote creates cloud-based note-taking and archiving products to help individuals and companies remember their ideas, record and archive them, and be able to access them on any device such as a computer, pad or smartphone.
In addition, the company has also launched a number of iPhone and iPad apps that have skyrocketed in popularity recently, such as Evernote Food, which allows users to keep track of favorite recipes and restaurants, and Skitch, which allows users to draw and annotate on images. Skitch alone has grown from 200,000 to five million users just in the past eight months.
The company's other products include Everynote Clearly, which allows you to read something online more easily by wiping away all other content on the page such as ads and pop-ups, leaving only that which you want to read.
Besides offering compelling products, Evernote - founded in 2007 - has also developed quite a reputation for having a unique company culture. In a recent interview with the New York Times, founder and CEO Phil Libin described how the desks have no phones on them, and lengthy, back-and-forth e-mails between employees are discouraged, in order to get employees to talk face-to-face more, and be more productive while in the office. Employees are also treated to free, fresh daily lunches and break rooms continuously stocked with beverages and snacks.
In addition, employees get perks such as unlimited vacation time - as long as they are perceived as "getting their work done" - and rewards for taking vacations of a week or more at a time, such as $1,000 spending money for the trip.
Employees also receive two days per week of professional housecleaning services for their homes, and free public transportation such as Caltrain.
"At Evernote, we promote an entrepreneurial spirit and perspective and engage a management style that encourages the free exchange of new ideas and rewards self-motivation," says the company's website.
Evernote was recently voted Inc. Magazine's 2011 "Company of the Year."
Evernote's website indicates the company plans to completely relocate to its new Redwood City headquarters by June 1.
Visit www.evernote.com.
