Here’s one for you: if I offered to invest $10,000 for every pound you gained, what would that make you?

Obese.

In the same way, venture capital is turning our once beloved companies into voracious, unappeasable beasts that speak only two words: “FEED ME”.

Little different than the hormones injected into mass-produced livestock and cattle, venture capital is steroids that accelerate the rate of growth and size of an entity, often to unhealthy proportion. Needless to say, the goal of raising a steroids injected chicken is not its health.

For companies, you might say, growth is good. Expansion means prevalence and trust. Too big to fail, perhaps. The reality is, there are winners and losers in this game, and the users are the ones who lose when a company is acquired. And while we congratulate recent acquirers and acquirees, we ought to begin planning for the funeral of user experience, data integrity, and product sustainability.

We really should begin asking ourselves, when considering a new service, how long is this stint going to last? Because like most teenage relationships, the answer is usually “not long”.

Occasionally I mourn the loss of my past self. I have been on a computer since the age of seven, and have probably produced countless documents from that era that are now nowhere to be found. What I wouldn’t give to see the documents my ten year old self created (if you’re a member of the NSA, please get in touch. Would love to reminisce together on my old data).

All this brings us to Evernote: the beastliest, most bloated notes app I have ever seen. Evernote is the quintessential case of what happens when you inject cow steroids into a rat. What’s worse is that they have not yet fulfilled their manifest destiny — they are legally obligated to keep growing. And while the mass and volume of Evernote and the VCs continue to erect, the users are once again left holding the fat. Huge, unwieldy applications that suffer from a deep infestation of bugs. Performance and stability issues that forbid users from accessing their own data. And an insatiable desire to find more ways to keep growing, even at the expense of user privacy.

Some things should just come small.

If you’re an Evernote user, it might be prudent to begin drafting your contingency plan, because there’s really only three paths from here:

1. An IPO. From a handful of demanding investors to THOUSANDS of them. God speed.

2. An acquisition. Say hello to EverOneNote.

3. And if neither of those happen, it’s likely they’re un-investable. Which means layoffs. Less engineers. Less support. More unfixed bugs and performance issues. And perhaps inevitably: abandoned ship.

Are you ok with any of those outcomes?

Notes, to me at least, are the most important byproduct of my existence. They are how I know myself. And 30 years from now, on a cold snowy Sunday morning, I’d like to sit by the window and read what I wrote decades ago, and remember where I came from and who I was.

I’m sorry Evernote, but you’re not in it for me. You’ve lost passion for your product. You’re in it for the exit.