Luca Ferrari

I thought it was a contrarian view, but now that I know your friend thinks the same, maybe it's not as contrarian as I thought it was.

But yes, I think people in general overestimate the value of R&D.

Let me qualify.

They think that generously pouring money into building stuff pays off.

It's really not true at all.

What we find is that there's a very small number of things that pay off handsomely, and most things are a waste of money.

And while there is an element of you don't know before you do it, so for sure, a lot of it you do.

For example, if you start from what your customers need, really focus on that.

rather than maybe what your engineers think is cool, or fancy visions that have very little to do with the core problems you're solving, you're probably actually already taking big strides in a direction of greater efficiency.

And by the way, it's not just about keeping costs more under control, but it's also doing the thing that matters better.

Evernote today

has a lower cost base than before.

But I promise you, if you take 10 users at random, power customers, power users, nine will tell you that it's actually higher performance, more resilient, a better feature set.

And part of it is we've really focused on what these customers painfully needed.

That helps you do more with less.

All else equal, we do prefer a permanent capital.

And it's not so much because even permanent capital could ask you to liquidate.

It's just that you don't have to.

And I think the fact that you don't have to reduces the probability that you'll find yourself in a situation where it's just an unnatural, complicated moment.

Incentives can become a little bit perverse.