Catch Notes, the popular competitor of the Evernote app, designed and created to take notes, has permanently closed its doors on August 30th, 2013.

To say that the sudden disappearance of this app has amazed fans is very little. The news of its closure, in fact, blew a huge and general “What the hell!”

But what made ​​ Catch Notes so special? The list of favourable elements, given the situation, is really incredible:

• at the time of its birth, in 2010, this start-up has been able to count on a funding of more than $ 9 million to be invested only in this application;

• Catch Notes gathered in a single product the best of its competitors like Evernote, Springpad etc., improving them: clean interface, simple and high usability, it recorded not only written notes, but also voice and photographs. The app could be used both online and offline (and this alone is a great benefit, if you think that many of the other competitors offer this option only for a fee). And all this in the basic version, so you don’t  have to spend nothing;

• it was multi-platform, ideal to share notes in the most diverse situations, from office meetings to shopping lists between roommates, at different times and on different devices;

• Catch Notes has been widely publicized and promoted by a giant of the computer industry such as Apple, both in stores and on the site.

How is it possible, then, that an app with all these points in its favour, with nearly 10 million downloads and many projects developable also at  enterprise level,  withdrew from the market, just like that, with no apparent explanation? Yes, because the only laconic, notification that comes from the company informs us that “Catch has made ​​the difficult decision to take the company in a different direction.” Close to try new paths.

So? Why? What transition did we miss?

I assure you that the astonishment of ex-users of the app is more than real. Many of them, despite the help provided online by Catch to save their notes before the service went down permanently, have seen disappearing under their eyes notes taken several months or years before they could realize.

Given this enormous support from the users, why not try to save this project that is loved so much, even just trying to charge for it, maybe at a very competitive cost? Did no investor believe in a service that was in reality already well underway?

Of course, the market laws are sometimes unfathomable, but in this case, where no explanation seems plausible enough, it seems as if they surrendered before trying their all or nothing.

No pain, no gain.

Now, to paraphrase the words of those directly concerned, the company has taken a different direction. We hope for them that they find the missing ingredient to the magic formula funding + winning idea + public success.

That perfect harmony that Catch Notes has not been able to find.

Perhaps this is only true passion for their vision.

The love which we have described in another article.

Italian Version of the article here.