Evernote CEO Phil Libin is unusually open about his online productivity software company’s $30 million revenue run rate, and the $1 billion valuation given to Evernote recently by investors.
 

“It’s easier to be open than secretive,” Libin said, but also he is asking users to put their faith in Evernote, which builds applications that organize personal data in order to make users more productive.
 

Evernote is an Internet company that seeks to be an “external brain” for users, enabling them to capture, store and locate information, photos, experiences or ideas on various mobile devices and platforms.
 

“We want people to trust us with their lifetime memories. It seems only fair to explain how the company works,” Libin said at his company’s new 90,000-square-foot Redwood City headquarters.
 

It probably doesn’t hurt, as well, that the story Libin has to tell is of a company on fire, with revenue tripling annually — meaning, he said, that it will be around $90 million next year.
 

To take advantage of the growth, Evernote has rapidly expanded staffing, with plans to boost its 200-person headcount to 500 in two years. At that point, Evernote will have filled out its new building, and Libin is already keeping tabs on potential properties nearby.
 

Evernote recently moved from Mountain View to Redwood City. The company has raised $166 million, including a $70 million round in May and a $50 million round in July 2011. Most of the $70 million is untouched, Libin said. Evernote is surviving mostly off cash flow.
 

Libin’s calculated openness was strange at first for Ken Gullicksen, who led the $10 million Series B round as a general partner at Morgenthaler Ventures.
 

But Gullicksen, an electrical engineer and Stanford University M.B.A., acclimated quickly. He was so impressed with Evernote’s product and the adoption curve by users — all by word of mouth — that he joined the company as vice president of corporate development.
 

Evernote recently moved from Mountain View to Redwood City. The company has raised $166 million, including a $70 million round in May and a $50 million round in July 2011. Most of the $70 million is untouched, Libin said. Evernote is surviving mostly off cash flow.
 

Libin’s calculated openness was strange at first for Ken Gullicksen, who led the $10 million Series B round as a general partner at Morgenthaler Ventures.
 

But Gullicksen, an electrical engineer and Stanford University M.B.A., acclimated quickly. He was so impressed with Evernote’s product and the adoption curve by users — all by word of mouth — that he joined the company as vice president of corporate development.
 

Before joining Evernote in May 2007, Libin led various companies, including two he co-founded — a security firm and an e-commerce software company, both of which were acquired.
 

Evernote was originally a note-taking application created in Sunnyvale in 2002 by Stepan Pachikov, a Russian emigré and serial entrepreneur who previously created handwriting recognition software used in the Apple Newton and similar software used by the U.S. Postal Service. Pachikov lives in New York. The company was reborn in 2007 when it merged with a team Libin was leading in Boston that was developing similar software to aid productivity and memory. Libin and his cohorts moved to the Bay Area; the next year the Evernote service launched to the public.
 

From the start, Evernote used a freemium model, with one level of service available free of charge and a premium service available with payment. In Evernote’s case, server use is limited on a monthly basis for non-paying users. Evernote’s approach stands out from other freemium companies because the free services are so generous, he said. The idea is that over time users will be so happy they will eagerly look for ways to buy premium products.
 

Evernote has 35 million users, of whom 1.5 million are paying customers. It so far has been solely serving the consumer market, but it is preparing an offering for business use, Libin said.
 

Evernote has also attracted 15,000 developers to make applications that run on its technology. The company plans to host its second annual developer conference on Aug. 24 at the San Francisco Design Center.
 

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Gartner, said Evernote is being embraced by early adopters. The company fits in with a major trend Gartner has identified — the rise of the “personal cloud” — in which rapid growth in the use of apps and services is changing how people store, synchronize, share and stream content, Gartenberg said.
 

Gartner predicts the “personal cloud” will eclipse the personal computer as the hub of consumers’ digital lives by 2014.