Evernote Plans Hiring Binge This Year and Next

Aiming to grow his company’s ranks significantly, Evernote CEO Phil Libin joked on Thursday that he should just lock the doors and force the roughly 400 attendees at its Trunk Show conference to join the company.

While he didn’t do that, the note-taking software company was heavily recruiting at the event and is looking to hire at a torrid pace, increasing its staff from a current 85 to 400 by the end of next year, including another 45 hires in 2011. The privately held Mountain View, Calif.-based company started the year with just 45 employees.

Libin told the crowd that he is aiming to build a company that is around for the next 100 years and said he has no plans to sell the company. That, he said, is part of the reason the company has raised more financing than it might otherwise need, including $20 million raised last year from Sequoia and others.

“We are asking people to believe us that we will be around and be a trusted service,” Libin said in an interview, talking shortly after he finished his keynote speech at the San Francisco event where the company announced its growth plans, including its acquisition of drawing app Skitch. Libin said the company has other deals in the pipeline.

While lots of bigger names offer cloud-based document storage, a big part of Evernote’s pitch is that it is not tied to any one company’s agenda and will work on any device the user has handy.

That’s important, Libin said, if people are going to trust a company with their memories.

“You have no idea what kind of computer or device you will be using in five years,” Libin told AllThingsD. “In 20 years you have no idea what devices will even be like.”

Mobile is a huge focus, Libin said, noting that while 85 percent of its 12 million current users have a PC or Mac as their primary device and a mobile as a secondary device, a similar percentage of the next billion users won’t use a PC at all. As a result, Libin said, he is pushing to open more offices in emerging markets, where mobile growth is leading the way.

“We cannot figure out how to do that here,” he said. “We have to do it in Brazil. We have to it in Singapore.”