Valued at $1 Billion, On Way to IPO, Evernote to Hire 150

Evernote plans to hire as many as 150 new employees this year after raising $70 million in new venture capital earlier this month. The company was valued by investors including Meritech Capital and CBC Capital at $1 billion, putting it in the rarefied company of privately-held tech companies like Pinterest and Dropbox that have entered the billion dollar club.

Founded in 2006, Evernote makes computer and smartphone software that lets users organize and save content from the Web. "Our goal is to help you remember everything," said Vice President of Products Phil Constantinou. The company, which has 150 employees, has more than 25 million users across desktop and mobile, Constantinou said.

Constantinou plans to hire at least 70 new employees for the product group. Open positions will include user experience and user interface designers, front-end and back-end engineers, data analysts with a machine learning background, and iOS and Android developers. Evernote will also be hiring for its marketing group and business development.

Employee perks include house cleaning, unlimited vacation time, free lunch, and public transit subsidies. The company is considering buying its own shuttle buses to ferry employees to and from work as many other Silicon Valley companies do.

Cash and equity compensation is competitive, Constantinou said. He declined to discuss the company's total revenue but said that the company generates revenue of over $1.5 million a month from credit card payments on the company's premium products, and additional revenue from partnerships where the company's application is bundled with that of other software makers.

The company's chief executive, Phil Libin, has said that the company aims to go public by the end of 2013. However, an IPO isn't something that employees spend much time thinking about, said Constantinou. Employees have already been able to cash in shares on secondary markets, he said, and they'll continue to have such opportunities before an IPO.

The company's culture is design-centric, Constantinou said. The company determines the user experience it wants to create, then figures out how to accomplish it technically. "Designers play an instrumental role and engineers seek out the designers because they know their work isn't going to be valued if it doesn't look beautiful," he said.

Canada's RIM to cut at least 2000 jobs

(Reuters) - Research In Motion Ltd is preparing for a major restructuring beginning in the next couple of weeks that will see it eliminate at least 2,000 jobs worldwide, the Globe and Mail reported on Saturday, citing unnamed sources.

The Canadian newspaper, citing several people close to the company, reported that the next round is layoffs is said to be planned for around June 1 - a day before the BlackBerry smartphone maker's first quarter ends - but some expect the announcement even earlier.

One source close to the company told Reuters the impending layoffs could hit as many as 6,000 people and affect RIM's legal, marketing, sales, operations, and human resources divisions.

"The strategic question is: are you accelerating into a better future or shrinking to a niche operation," said the source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the job cuts.

A RIM spokeswoman contacted by Reuters declined to comment on the report.

But she pointed to comments that new Chief Executive Thorsten Heins and Chief Financial Officer Brian Bidulka made on RIM's last earnings call about plans to streamline operations and save $1 billion in the fiscal year.

The spokeswoman said RIM now has about 16,500 staff globally. This is down from a peak closer to 20,000.

RIM reported a fourth-quarter loss in March, when the new CEO announced the initial steps in a strategic overhaul. Heins took over from longtime co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in January.

Once the dominant player in the wireless e-mail sector, RIM has lost market share due to fierce competition from Apple Inc's iPhone and phones running on Google Inc's Android software.

RIM has already been through one round of restructuring. Last July it announced plans to cut about 11 percent of its workforce, or 2,000 jobs.

A string of high-level employees have departed RIM recently, including global head of sales Patrick Spence, who was set to take a senior job at audio company Sonos.

Several sources close to the company told Reuters RIM had been letting more junior staff go for several months in what has come to be known internally as 'Goodbye Thursdays,' because the cuts typically occurred on that day of the week.

The job cuts have failed to boost the company's stock. On Thursday RIM shares hit a multi-year low of C$10.87 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The stock changed hands for more than C$150 in 2008.

AOL's Patch To Ax 20

AOL's Patch.com, the online local-news network whose high costs have made it a lightning rod for criticism of AOL's strategy, is laying off about 20 people as part of a broader restructuring.

Patch will consolidate its four geographic zones into three by integrating the South and East zones, allowing it cut some managers. No sites will be closed or merged and no local editors or ad managers will be affected. Patch, which has nearly 1,000 full-time journalists, announced the restructuring in a note to staff Tuesday morning.

"After implementing a more efficient field structure earlier this year, we have seen an impressive boost in both traffic and revenue," said Jon Brod, chief executive of Patch. "With an eye on our overarching business goals, streamlining our field management structure not only gives us additional operating leverage, but also allows us to better serve our users and out communities. This is the next step in Patch's strategy to win."

The high costs of keeping Patch running has become the centerpiece of dissident investor Starboard Value LP's campaign against AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong's strategy for the Internet company. Armstrong has promised to cut costs at Patch this year and get it to profitability by next year.

After expanding its presence from 30 towns to more than 850 towns in the past two years, Patch's annual loss has soared to more than $100 million--more than twice AOL's operating profit in 2011.

Starboard, which is running a proxy contest to win several seats on AOL's board at next month's annual meeting, argues Patch should be closed, sold or put into a joint venture where someone else covers some of the costs. Armstrong isn't backing off.

"Patch continues to deliver on its original mission and is on the right path for success in 2012 and beyond," he said in a statement. "AOL is executing a bold turnaround and Patch addresses a large and exciting market for our shareholders."

The cuts are the latest move made by Armstrong pre-empting Starboard's criticisms. In April AOL struck a deal to sell a portfolio of patents to Microsoft Corp. for $1.1 billion, shortly after Starboard had highlighted the patents as an underutilized asset. AOL also decided to return to shareholders all the cash raised from the sale, as Starboard demanded, after initially saying it would only return part of the money.

This story first appeared on WSJ.com

Hewlett Packard Considers Cutting at Least 25,000 Jobs

Hewlett-Packard is considering cutting its workforce by 8 to 10 percent, or a minimum of 25,000 jobs, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as newly installed CEO Meg Whitman strives to return the storied Silicon Valley institution to growth. 

The job cuts, which could include retirements, are under discussion but have not yet been finalized, several people familiar with the situation told Reuters. Th e sources did not elaborate on a time frame or other details. 

HP, which employs more than 300,000 people across the globe, could announce the layoffs as soon as next week when it unveils quarterly results, said the sources, who asked to remain anonymous because the plan has not been made public. Analysts have been expecting job cuts in the wake of Whitman's plan to merge the company's personal computer and printer divisions.