1. Background
Education: PhD in Fuzzy Logic
College: USSR Academy of Sciences
Previous Career:
- Stepan Pachikov worked in Moscow at ParaGraph International (1989–1997)
- 1997 to 1998 - Pachikov served as Vice President and established a Pen & Internet division of Silicon Graphics
- Stepan Pachikov was the president of the Moscow Computer Children Club since 1986
2. Origin Story
The Background
ParaGraph International, the company Stepan Pachikov used to work for earlier, provided handwriting recognition technology to Apple. In 1993, Apple used to ship a gadget called Newton's handheld computer which utilised the technology patented by ParaGraph. Stepan Pachikov was largely inspired by the note taking feature of Newton, which included scrolling back and forth through every item listed. Pachikov also noticed that the note-taking software space was dull in terms of innovation, even though the market was saturated with many products already existing that enabled people to take notes on their devices.
The Spark
One common theme that Stapan Pachikov observed was that each such tool had two main features, which, for him, were limitations. One was that they stored only snippets of information, and the other, that the storage was available only for the short-term. Pachikov's idea was to build a major upgrade, addressing these limitations. He wanted to create an app that could store all the information one wished to remember, and store it for an indefinite period of time.
The Vision
Stepan Pachikov's vision was to see every handheld device (now smartphones) integrated with Evernote.
The Launch
Stepan Pachikov completed the build of Evernote and first launched it as a Windows app in the year 2000.
3. Other interesting points
- Stepan Pachikov built the technology used to automatically read and direct handwritten mail to the right place (used in USPS).
- In Evernote's first press release, the company announced that the app has the ability to “wirelessly sync over the internet between home PCs, office PCs, smartphones, and PDAs”, which we now call as cloud sync and storage.
- Stepan Pachikov pioneered Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) technology.
4. Quote
"What you remember about your life is what makes you you, and me me. Take away my memories, and what is left? My nose. My glasses. Even my jokes will not be the same if I don’t have a memory." - Stepan Pachikov
5. Company growth & sources (links)
Personal Story
How did they grow the company?
Sources
