Evernote CEO Chris O'Neill to depart and be replaced by Ian Small
Hi, I'm Ian Small. — Today is my first day as CEO of Evernote. — This morning, the Evernote board announced to the team that Chris O'Neill was leaving the company and that I was joining as CEO.
Context & Ripple Effects
Evernote is changing CEOs for the second time in three years: Phil Libin handed off to former Google Glass executive Chris O'Neill in mid-2015 (hired from Google's Glass team), and O'Neill immediately ran a contraction — cutting 47 people and closing three offices in pursuit of a "smaller, more focused team".
The bench around the CEO had already turned over once: founding CTO Dave Engberg left in 2016 alongside a wave of new product, marketing, brand, design and China chiefs. Ian Small inherits a company that has cycled through nearly all of its founding leadership and is still searching for a stable operating model.
First-order effects
- Chris O'Neill exits after roughly three years in which his tenure was defined by downsizing rather than growth, and Ian Small takes over as CEO effective immediately per the board announcement.
- Small starts with no transition period — his first-day note frames him as an outsider arriving into a company whose prior strategy was cost discipline.
Second-order effects
- With the founding CTO gone and a new CEO installed, Evernote's remaining veteran executives face another reorganization cycle, raising execution risk for whatever product roadmap follows.
- Investors and partners will read the change against the $290M raised to date: a third CEO signals the board judged the current trajectory insufficient rather than merely refreshing leadership.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Evernote completes its shift from founder-led growth company to professionally managed incumbent — a structure where successive outside CEOs trade expansion bets for consolidation, and where the eventual test is whether a rebuilt product can justify the capital already deployed.
- The churn also illustrates a broader hazard for late-stage consumer software firms: each leadership reset resets strategic commitments, making multi-year turnarounds harder to sustain across CEO transitions.
The trend: Post-founder consumer software companies are cycling through outside CEOs as they pivot from growth to consolidation, with Evernote's third chief executive marking another step in that arc.