As reMarkable note, “…paper is the ultimate tool for thinking. It improves our focus, engages our brains, and sets our minds free to work and imagine, without restrictions or distractions.” For me as a self-confessed technology geek- regardless of the tablets, laptops and other devices I carried with me, I tended to still use my trusty notebook and fountain pen for all my meeting notes, thoughts, ideas and work. A few years ago, I started to notice these curious devices in London, and on my travels in the USA – beautifully designed e-ink tablets which (when the owner was accommodating enough to let me try one) felt very much like my notebook and paper. After purchasing my first reMarkable (the reMarkable 2), I became a full convert – all the benefits of paper and pen, but with the key features of a digital tablet – synchronizing, security, multiple notebooks, pens & tools… it was like paper, but better.
What I’ve found particularly fascinating about the remarkable journey is how this privately owned business in Oslo, Norway– took on some of the largest companies in the world, became a unicorn, and created a product which now seems to occupy the day bag of millions of professionals and creatives around the world. It is- excuse the pun- a reMarkable growth and entrepreneurship story, which speaks to the importance of product design, innovation, marketing and a deep understanding of user need.
As reMarkable launch their first colour device (the Paper Pro), I had the opportunity to speak to reMarkable CEO, Phil Hess. Prior to joining reMarkable, Phil spent 24 years at Bose (including as President & CEO) where he was integral to the growth of Bose from USD 500m to 4bn in annual revenues. Phil stepped into the CEO role following reMarkable’s founder Magnus Haug Wanberg. “Throughout my career, I’ve worked on the leading edge of technology that makes a difference in people’s lives,” Hess said. “That’s what drew me to reMarkable. In just a few years, millions of customers have started using reMarkable’s products — helping them focus in a world full of distractions.
We discuss the thesis behind reMarkable which led to the creation of one of Europe’s fastest growing technology companies, and a product with millions of users, which made Time magazine’s list of Best Inventions of 2020. Phil digs into reMarkable’s traction and growth, what he’s learned about product innovation, when to say ‘no’ during innovation processes, the importance of aesthetics and designing with the user at the centre of your mind.
Q: What was the thesis behind reMarkable?
[Phil Hess]: I have to give all the credit to Magnus Wanberg, the founder of reMarkable. When everyone else thought the world didn’t need another tablet, Magnus did. He saw an opportunity for a tablet that was purpose-built for a specific task. He realized we could take the comfort and familiarity of paper and turn it into something incredibly powerful.
Since childhood, paper has been where we coloured and sketched our first ideas. But besides being comfortable, paper provides a unique connection—it’s just you and your thoughts, with nowhere to hide. You have to lock in, or the paper stays blank. It’s a wonderful medium. A canvas for your fragile ideas to evolve into something that could change the world. What’s not to love about paper!
But paper has its drawbacks—it’s hard to organize, easy to lose, degrades quickly, and isn’t very secure. These are problems that silicon and software can address. Many companies have tried to reproduce paper on laptops or tablets. The problem is they haven’t just reproduced the paper (kind of poorly); they’ve added too many other things. Email, social media, notifications.
So instead of me being locked in on the paper, with a laptop or a tablet I have all these distractions. It’s no longer me and my thoughts or ideas. It’s me and the internet. It’s me and my friends. It’s me and all the notifications. It’s me and everything else. All that distraction keeps us from deep thinking.
This is Magnus’s big idea—that each of us needs a space to think deeply. The best space to think combines the comfort of paper and the advantages of digital technology—in a focused, distraction-free environment.
Q: How did reMarkable gain traction so quickly?
[Phil Hess]: … Magnus saw the future well. He recognized a large unmet need—the need for tools that support deep thinking. Hundreds of millions of us suffer because paper is too limited and laptops are too distracting. For anyone who needs to create content, solve problems, or make important decisions, focus is a rare and valuable resource. And I think Magnus recognized this need before most others did. With reMarkable, we offered a solution that resonated with many of these people.
Q: What have you learned about innovation with the user at the centre?
[Phil Hess]: Innovation isn’t easy—even when everything is done right and the rate of innovation is increased, there are still no guarantees. But if you plant the right seeds, sometimes the right stuff grows.
The first step is to help every employee understand that we need true innovation for our business. Innovation is how we grow as a company. Compare that to incrementalism—adding one more feature or tweaking a product—which is unlikely to lead to growth because it doesn’t actually represent anything really new.
The reality is that most consumers aren’t excited by incremental changes. For the businesses that I’ve been part of, to capture consumers’ attention and make the market take notice, you need meaningful innovation—something genuinely new.
A good starting point to accomplish this is by providing every employee with the right context—helping them understand the difference between a leap forward and an incremental step. Most scientists and engineers don’t want to aim at incremental, but without understanding the difference between a leap forward and an incremental improvement, that’s often where we end up.
Our employees are capable of so much more. While the starting point of context helps them understand why innovation is important, those words aren’t enough. Leaders must also have the courage to support innovation—which often means making investments that may not pay off. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s necessary.
Incrementalism carries little risk, which is why it’s so often the path of companies. True innovation, however, requires vision and the courage to take risks.
With context and courage, talented people will recognize a small idea versus a big idea. And with that, they will spend less time on the small and focus their efforts on the big—which is where you need to concentrate effort for innovation. Then it takes courage to make the investments to bring the ideas that truly make a difference to the market.
Q: How do you know when to say no in innovation?
[Phil Hess]: Are we talking about saying ‘no’ to real innovation, or saying ‘no’ to the latest new thing? If it’s real innovation, as a leader, we need to find a way to say ‘yes’. Real innovation is rare and precious, and we must have the courage to invest in it, as I mentioned earlier in our conversation.
That said, there’s a lot of ‘new-and-improved’ stuff in this world that’s sometimes packaged as innovation. If you really want innovation, you have to say ‘no’ a lot of times to what’s incremental. Saying ‘no’ reinforces that the small stuff isn’t enough.
If we don’t say no to the small stuff then suddenly there are too many incremental things. This dilutes the mindshare of our employees who, with focus, are capable of making the big things. But it also dilutes the product. Suddenly, the new product is a jumble of incremental features—a portfolio of small things that doesn’t result in anything big and exciting. It’s about aiming for what will genuinely get our customer’s heart racing.
Q: What about the role of aesthetics in new products?
[Phil Hess]: … As humans, many of us are naturally uncomfortable with change. New technology almost always represents change. That means that for many of us, new technology can be scary. However, when you package technology into something that’s beautiful, there’s comfort, an immediate satisfaction, even a desire to engage.
The aesthetics—beauty, craftsmanship, elegance—are about engaging both the rational and emotional parts of our minds. When a product looks and feels beautiful, it makes us think, “This is something I want. This is something I need.” Without high standards for aesthetics, technology can feel intimidating or unapproachable. Or not familiar enough to be comfortable.
But when you wrap new technology in exceptional aesthetics, you love how it looks. You love how it feels. You end up desiring this new technology so much you want it in your life.
Q: What brought you to reMarkable, and how did you build trust in a team so quickly?
[Phil Hess]: I was a reMarkable user before joining the company; so I’m part of the target audience. I’m one of those people who ‘create’ for a living—turning thoughts into solutions, thinking creatively, or making difficult decisions. I’ve lost countless good ideas on misplaced sheets of paper and struggled to focus on traditional digital devices, so I’m an early adopter in this space.
I believe strongly that with the right tools to allow us to focus, so many more of us can take the enormous capacities of our brains and do even more good for this world. The solution that Magnus first envisioned is what brought me here—because what he envisioned represents a solution for an incredibly large number of people. I want to be a part of something that can make a difference in people’s lives. And helping people think better can do that.
On the topic of onboarding and building trust with the team: There’s an expression when you take over a new role “You have big shoes to fill.” I never saw any value in that expression. Instead, I see it as bringing a second pair of shoes. I view the onboarding process as additive, where Magnus brought some incredible things to the company and culture that I could never have brought, and I bring new and different strengths to the company.
When it comes to building trust: This is a topic that’s been discussed extensively, and I think most of us end up in the same place—with two steps. First, say what your intentions are, and second, show that your actions are consistent with your intentions. That doesn’t sound difficult, but there’s one hard part.
That’s being clear about what your intentions are. That requires a lot of communication. When I arrived at reMarkable last year—I was in Oslo for three weeks—the most important thing for me to do with those three weeks was to meet every employee. As I listened to their questions, I learned what it’s like to work for the company. But just as important, it was also a good opportunity to communicate my intentions as I answered their questions. Letting people in, letting people know who I am, letting them know my intentions was crucial to build that trust.
Q: How do you rapidly understand, and adapt, to different cultures and geographies as a leader?
[Phil Hess]: I’ve had the good fortune of working for over 30 years with a lot of people in many countries. What I’ve found is that people are far more similar than different. I don’t mean to say it hasn’t been a big challenge to adapt to different cultural styles; it’s important that each of us are sensitive to those unique and special things that vary from culture to culture. But those cultural differences and what country you’re from is not nearly as important as the differences that exist between people working in different careers.
An engineer from the U.S. is going to be more similar to an engineer in Norway than an engineer from the U.S. and a marketing person from the U.S. There is a geographic culture element—where you grow up, and a career culture element—the career that you chose.
Of course, adapting to geographic cultures is really important, but I’ve found that it’s even more important to adapt to people and the jobs that they do—the culture of careers.
For me, the adaptation between, say, a meeting with a marketing team and then one hour later meeting with an engineering team is a far larger adaptation than a meeting with US, European, or Asian colleagues.
Q: How do you create the moat, to use the startup parlance, to protect against competition?
[Phil Hess]: Instead of building a moat to keep competitors out and customers in, I prefer to think of it differently. The idea of a moat is to create barriers for competitors and increase switching costs for users. But a better question is: Do you understand your customers’ needs deeply, and are you confident you can meet those needs better than anyone else?
If you’re taking care of the customer better than anyone else can, then a moat doesn’t matter. For our customers, once they’ve committed to this digital stack of paper, it becomes an essential part of their creative and thinking process.
Our customers’ most important thoughts, creative ideas, and most audacious dreams live in their reMarkable tablets. Having that value stored safely in our vault is an important responsibility. But it’s more than that. We have an obligation to help our users get more from their content.
The next chapter for us is about integrating upstream and downstream into a user’s workflow. It’s about understanding their needs and meeting them better than anyone else. With all the notes, sketches, and ideas in someone’s tablet, how do we help our users capture, refine and amplify their thoughts better? Instead of building a moat to keep our market and customer untouchable, we want to build a castle for our customer to live and thrive in—a customer experience so useful, enjoyable, and incredible they never want to leave.
Q: Does the simplicity of the design of your product naturally create a trust relationship?
[Phil Hess]: The relationship between a person and a piece of paper is intimate—it’s private, filled with thoughts, ideas, dreams. We have the utmost respect for that intimacy. The purpose-built design and ethos of reMarkable also reflects our commitment to privacy and security. The content on our customers’ tablets is theirs—and no one else’s.
Q: What does legacy mean to you?
[Phil Hess]: I love the question! When I have a new direct report, I ask a very similar question. I say: standing in the future three years from now and looking back on what you’ve accomplished, what are you proudest of? Aka, what legacy have you left? I should eat my own cooking and have been more prepared for this question. Good for you for making me eat my own cooking.
There’s an expression: Leave the space nicer than how you found it. I like that expression because it’s actionable for me every day. Am I going to stop global warming? I can help, but it’s bigger than me. But every day, I can be a role model for making things better. For the people I can affect—whether it’s my family, my neighbourhood, my community, or the company I’m working for—I can make a difference. I can create an environment for those people where each of them can come closer to reaching their fullest potential. And if I do that well, they’ll see the value in that. And then each of them can do the same—where they create an environment where those around them can thrive. There’s kind of a “pay it forward” thing.
One of my favourite compliments I get is: “I was better because I worked with you.” That means I’m doing okay at leaving a legacy I will be proud of.