Steph Ango describes Obsidian as a note-taking app that functions like a personal Wikipedia. The core unit is a link between notes. For example, while journaling, you could create a link for a podcast you were on. This link might not point to anything initially, but you can create a note for it later, gradually building a web of knowledge over time. This approach fundamentally improved how Steph thinks.

A key philosophy behind Obsidian is data ownership. Notes are stored in Markdown, a simple, durable, plain text format that is likely to be readable even 100 years from now. This ensures users maintain control over their data long-term.

The app allows you to network ideas together, forming more complex thoughts than you might otherwise be able to hold in your mind at once. Simple ideas become like Lego blocks that can be combined and interchanged in interesting ways. Steph provides an example of how this process helped him write an essay called "Pain is Information."

I read this book by Murakami, 'What I talk about when I talk about running,' and in it I came across this quote that was something like, 'When you sign up for a marathon, you know that you're signing up for pain, but then the question is, like, pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.' That idea was really interesting to me because I was going through quite a painful time, and I was thinking about when you touch your hand on a stove, that gives you a signal that that's probably a bad idea, but that's information. And so I was starting to kind of think about information and pain and the relationship between those things.

Obsidian serves as a digital space where disparate concepts can coexist and connect, from philosophy and language learning to hobbies like woodworking. This free-form environment can act as an engine for serendipity, allowing you to discover connections you might not have otherwise. Unlike tools with a rigid, top-down hierarchy like folders, Obsidian allows for a more fluid process where connections between ideas can emerge organically.

Steph Ango was not a co-founder of Obsidian; he was brought in as CEO in 2023. His journey with the company started as an early user when the app was released in 2020. He began creating custom plugins and themes for his own use and shared them with the community. These contributions gained significant traction, as he brought a sense of design and product that complemented the co-founders', Shida and Erica, engineering expertise.

His popular community creations led to conversations with the founders. After Steph sold his previous startup, Lumi, he was spending all his time in Obsidian and pitched the idea of joining them. The collaboration began with contract work, during which he designed the app's 1.0 release. This arrangement allowed the co-founders to focus on engineering, which they loved. Steph's role naturally evolved into that of CEO for the small, seven-person team.

I think for me it's around design, kind of consolidating what is the true essence of Obsidian and trying to communicate it out to the world. And then lots of a long tail of random things. Because we're only seven, a lot of hats have to be worn, whether it's accounting, legal, all these random things. So, I had a lot of experience running a few startups, so that I think was helpful.

Plugins have been a primary driver of Obsidian's growth, both in features and in attracting new users. Steph Ango explains that the plugin ecosystem is what allows the core team to remain small. It serves as a defense against feature bloat, which often happens when apps continually add niche capabilities requested by a small fraction of users. This can make an application slow, hard to use, and confusing for newcomers.

The initial idea was a defensive move to avoid implementing every requested feature themselves. Because Obsidian is built on common web technologies like JavaScript and CSS, it's accessible for many people to contribute.

You don't need to know Swift or be a cross platform app developer to know how to make a plugin. You can make something really simple in a matter of minutes or hours, depending on your level.

The creativity of the community continuously pushes the platform's capabilities. When a plugin becomes essential for a large portion of the user base, it signals that the feature should be integrated into the core application. For example, the upcoming "Bases" feature, which provides a database-style view for notes, was inspired by several popular community plugins offering similar functionality.

Some of the most popular plugins for Obsidian are very simple. One example is Advanced Tables, created by Tony Grisinger. It simplified the process of making tables in markdown, which was previously difficult. The plugin became so integral that Obsidian hired Tony, and he built the functionality into the core application. This is a common practice for the company; many people who work on the team were once community plugin authors.

Other popular plugins focus on customization and integration. Many users enjoy theming plugins that allow them to change fonts and colors, making their digital journal space feel personal. There are also numerous plugins that integrate with other services, such as calendars or to-do list apps. This allows users to manage tasks directly within Obsidian if they choose.

The plugin system lets users tailor the application to their specific needs. For example, someone using Obsidian for world-building a tabletop RPG can install relevant plugins without being burdened by features like calendar functionality that they don't need.

Plugins were a key feature that brought Obsidian to the attention of many users, allowing it to develop much faster than competitors like Roam Research. According to Steph Ango, attracting the first plugin developers was the result of a combination of factors.

First, the languages and frameworks used are simple and familiar to anyone with web development experience, making it highly accessible. Second, Obsidian's core values align with what developers typically appreciate in a tool. Its focus on privacy, the use of the Markdown format, and its high degree of customizability attracted a large base of developers as users.

Additionally, the company published a well-documented API very early on, which allows developers to modify almost anything within the app. This combination meant that if a developer using Obsidian found something they wanted to change, they could easily scratch that itch themselves.

If Obsidian is not working the way you want, you can pretty much change it very fast, however you might want it.

The fundamental difference between Notion and Obsidian is their architecture. Notion is a cloud service where the source of truth is online. Obsidian, however, keeps all data local to the user's device. This single distinction shapes many other aspects of the products. For instance, it's easier for Obsidian to support plugins and themes because it doesn't have to worry about running arbitrary code on a cloud platform.

This leads to different design philosophies. Notion is known for its pixel-perfect polish, while Obsidian has a more DIY, hacker ethos. Steph Ango likens Obsidian's customizability to his early experiences making themes for the music player Winamp. He believes this appeals to users, particularly younger ones, who desire more control over their digital spaces. The team is constantly trying to balance making the app approachable for newcomers while retaining its depth for power users.

It's like you're going to the beach. We want to make that shallow waters a little bit more accessible for people who are coming into it. But then you can swim as far as you like, as deep as you like, into the complexity of Obsidian.

Obsidian's team does not know how "sticky" the product is because they do not use any analytics, prioritizing user privacy. A core tenet is data ownership. Since Obsidian uses standard markdown files, users are never locked in. If the company were to disappear, users would still have all their files in an open, accessible format. Steph suggests this feeling of freedom and security is paradoxically what makes the app sticky. Users feel comfortable knowing they can leave at any time.

This approach aligns with their business model. As a small team, Obsidian isn't trying to be the next Microsoft or compete with a venture-backed giant like Notion. Their focus is on sustainability and building a tool they themselves want to use. They recognize that different people have different ways of thinking, and if another tool works better for someone, they believe that person should use it.

A common concern with note-taking tools is that they can become a substitute for thinking rather than an enhancement. Spending all day tending to a "digital garden" might prevent the brain from having the space it needs to breathe and form new ideas. Steph Ango acknowledges that some apps are explicitly designed with anti-patterns, using notifications and engagement metrics to keep users coming back, even when it is not needed. Obsidian, by contrast, avoids tracking user data to prevent the incentive to create unnecessary usage.

Many people get caught up in the process of organizing or beautifying their notes. Steph suggests this is not always the fault of the app, but rather an "affliction of the digital age." These malleable digital tools can scratch an optimization itch in our brains, which can feel addictive in an unhealthy way, similar to solving puzzles like Sudoku. To counter this, he recommends being aware of how apps are designed to capture attention and time.

I'm always disabling notifications for everything, trying to spend a lot of time walking in nature, doing woodworking, cooking, other activities that I find restorative. And then it makes my Obsidian time more rewarding and productive and useful... I have things to write about. I have a life that I'm trying to dissect.

By engaging in restorative, real-world activities, the time spent using tools like Obsidian becomes more meaningful. If you do not have other things going on in your life, you have nothing to write about, and you end up just massaging information in the app without a clear purpose.

Obsidian is structured with a flat hierarchy of seven full-time employees. Two people work on community-related tasks like customer service and plugin review. Three are full-time engineers. Erica handles marketing and community, while CEO Steph Ango, a designer by training, focuses on UX design and marketing but has also taken on engineering tasks. The company scales its support by leveraging its active user communities on platforms like Discord and Reddit, where users often help each other.

This structure allows for a unique work culture with very few synchronous meetings. Steph contrasts this with a previous 45-person startup where he was in meetings 10 hours a day.

Obsidian, we have one meeting per year.

This is achievable because the team communicates constantly through asynchronous tools like Discord. The team's alignment comes from a few key factors: everyone is a user of the app, there is a shared understanding of what feels right for the product, and they typically only focus on one or two goals at a time. This fosters a self-motivated environment.

Obsidian is unique in many ways. It doesn't require a signup, it's free to download and use, and users can create unlimited notes. This raises the question of how the business is sustainable. The company has several revenue sources. One major driver is Obsidian Sync, a paid service for keeping notes synchronized across multiple devices like a phone, iPad, and computer. While users can use other services like Dropbox or Google Drive, Obsidian Sync is presented as a superior option because it's fully integrated, offers version history, and is end-to-end encrypted for enhanced security.

Another revenue source is Obsidian Publish, which allows users to turn their notes into a website. The company also has programs that function like donations. The Catalyst program gives users access to beta versions and a way to support the project financially. There's also a commercial license for businesses. These streams are effective because the company's needs are modest.

Because the team is small, we don't need mountains of cash to pay for that. It's just us and some computers, so it's not like there's a big amount of expense.

This lean approach has worked well. The business has been profitable almost since day one, starting with the Catalyst program even before the Sync service launched.

Decisions at Obsidian are guided by a company manifesto that outlines their core values: privacy, customization, and durability. The goal is to create an app built around files that users can own for the rest of their lives. Feature development is driven by two main forces: the community and the internal team. The community often highlights gaps in the product. For instance, users pointed out the need for a Web Clipper, a feature common in other apps like the original Evernote, which prompted Obsidian to build one.

The internal team also plays a crucial role, as they are all daily users of the app. Team members become champions for features based on their own experiences. Steph Ango, for example, frequently uses the iOS app and identifies areas of friction to improve. The company's flat structure allows for quick decision-making. An individual can easily prototype a solution for a few days and present it to the team for refinement.

Because the organization is so flat, we can make decisions very easily. Or it's very easy for one person to just go off and like prototype something for a few days and show it to the team and say, 'Hey, I kind of solved this problem, help me get this polished in a way that we can release it.'

This process is supported by their independence from investors. With no top-down pressure or imposed deadlines, the team can prioritize the freedom, flexibility, and joy they find in building the product, even if it means some users wish for faster releases.

While many productivity tools are in an arms race to incorporate generative AI, Obsidian's view is more cautious. Currently, the only built-in AI feature is in their Web Clipper, which is intentionally separate from the main app. It allows users to extract metadata from web pages using prompts when capturing them.

Steph Ango voices a personal concern about AI replacing human thinking. He wants to avoid a situation where the insights he gathers are replaced by an AI-generated summary. However, he acknowledges that AI is extremely popular within the Obsidian community. AI-related plugins are the most popular new category, partly because large language models have made it very easy to create them. This has created a new challenge for the Obsidian team: reviewing a rapidly growing mountain of new plugins.

Obsidian's philosophy dictates that any future AI integration must align with their core principles, especially privacy. They are uncomfortable with user data being stored on external servers, like OpenAI's, without explicit consent. They aim to give users confidence that their thoughts remain private and won't be used to train future models. For now, the team feels no urgency to add native AI features, as the extensive plugin ecosystem already serves users who want them. They prefer to focus their limited resources on other priorities.

Maintaining an app like Obsidian is a never-ending task. It is built on top of multiple operating systems like macOS, Windows, and Android, which are constantly changing. This ongoing work presents a significant challenge.

Steph Ango believes that Obsidian itself will not last forever. It is hard to predict whether the team will run out of ideas first, or if a radically different technology will come along and replace it entirely.

Obsidian is not necessarily going to last forever. I don't know if it's in five years, one year, 10 years, 50 years. But probably we're not going to be using these exact same kinds of apps and I don't know what is going to replace it.

While future computer interfaces may change dramatically, the core principle is that the user's files will remain valuable. This is already evident with the rise of AI, as Large Language Models (LLMs) are proficient in using Markdown because it is plain text.

I do feel confident that the files that you create will end up being really important in that new world.

It seems more likely that Obsidian will eventually 'die of old age' as an application rather than the team running out of ideas for it. The team might even move on to a different app concept in the future.

Steph Ango is currently working on a feature for Obsidian called Bases, which creates a visualization layer on top of existing data in your notes. It takes the properties and metadata you store in a file and allows you to view them in different formats, such as a table or cards, with plans for Kanban and other views in the future.

Steph describes it as a "backwards database" because all the data is already present in your notes. Bases simply provides a new way to look at it. You can query your notes to see everything with a specific tag, like "books," and it will generate a table with all the metadata, which you can then edit directly.

It's kind of like a backwards database because all the data is already in there. You're just looking at it by saying, show me all notes that have the tag books, for example... and then I get a table and then I have all my metadata and I can edit it. So it's quite powerful.

The feature is useful for people who enjoy tracking things like the books they read, movies they watch, places they go, or articles they've read. It can also be used for project management. Bases is currently in beta but has been more popular than expected, with positive feedback suggesting development will continue for a long time.