Catch Notes
» see catch.com as it lived, on the wayback machine
~ the obituary ~
catch notes never made it onto my phone. by 2013 i was already in evernote's gravity well, like most people who had ever tried to keep notes across two machines. the alternatives looked like work to switch to, and switching cost was the moat that note apps were built on.
the app started life in 2008 as 3banana notes, an android-only note-taker built by snaptic in san francisco. the company rebranded twice, first as snaptic then as catch.com. the apps grew through the early android years when google had not yet shipped keep and evernote was still figuring out its own android client.
by 2012 catch had four million users on android. the ios and web ports came later but never matched the android base. it raised $9.3 million in a series a led by excel venture management and was hiring against evernote on the mobile front.
~ the case file ~
| Born | 2008 as 3banana notes for android |
|---|---|
| Peak | around 4 million users by 2012 |
| Killed | 30 august 2013 |
| Lifespan | about 5 years |
| Made by | snaptic, then catch.com (san francisco) |
| Killed by | consumer-to-enterprise pivot after series a |
~ what really happened ~
on 31 july 2013 the team posted a notice saying the consumer note apps would shut down on 30 august. the company was heading in a different direction, which translated to enterprise pivot with no clear successor product. there was no acquirer announcement and no migration tool to evernote or anywhere else. the api closed alongside the apps.
~ what got buried with it ~
catch's distinct thing was a spatial home screen with color-coded note tiles, plus a sharing model built around groups before the term meant slack channels. neither feature survived the pivot. the.apk files that float around on third-party mirrors will not log in to anything anymore.
~ the long tail ~
evernote went on to win the note category in 2013 and lost the next decade to onenote and apple notes. catch.com the domain still resolves but does not point at any product the original team built. four million users got an email and exported what they could into evernote or text files before moving on.
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