Evernote is laying off 13 percent of its employees and closing three of its international offices, marking its second round of layoffs this year and the first since its new CEO started just two months ago. Evernote's new CEO, Chris O’Neill, writes in a blog post that he believes a smaller team "will set [Evernote] up for growth and expansion tomorrow." He intends to hone the company's focus on "notes, sync, and search." That'll be noticeable within the next few months, he says, as Evernote rolls out "major foundational product improvements" while it pulls away from failing services.

It's still about productivity and revenue

In total, 47 employees are being laid off today. That's more than the last round of layoffs, when 20 people were let go from Evernote's team of around 400 employees. At the time, Evernote said those layoffs were about improving productivity and revenue, which is essentially a more straightforward description of what O'Neill is outlining today.

Evernote suggests that its revenue situation is already looking better, with "new paid subscribers" up 40 percent year over year. Evernote has been looking toward an IPO for a few years now, and it seems like O'Neill will be the one to see it through. There hasn't been much suggestion of when that will happen, but it's likely that the layoffs and structure changes we've seen over this year are moving toward it. Evernote has more than 150 million users — it just needs to get more of them to pay for it.