Many creators who have long dealt with words and codes should not be unfamiliar with the software Obsidian. As one of the most influential localized Markdown note – taking applications globally, it has already been able to rival Notion in terms of popularity and applyr loyalty, thanks to its unique knowledge graph and open – source ecosystem.
Recently, a recruitment tweet from the official Obsidian account has sparked nearly ten million views and discussions across the internet.
Surprisingly, the engineering team of this company valued at $350 million only has 3 people. However, according to the official website, even if we count the two co – founders, a later – joined CEO, and an employee in charge of customer support, the total number of full – time employees of this top Silicon Valley company is only 7 people (and a cat) (Matthew Meyers has become a full – time therapist).
In the context of Silicon Valley, where SaaS companies and AI unicorns often have hundreds or thousands of employees and are frantically raising funds, for a top – tier software with tens of millions of applyrs globally and an extremely large ecosystem, this total number of employees is still an incredible “business miracle”.
The birth of this software full of geek idealism was full of contingency.
The story dates back to the launchning of 2020 when the pandemic swept across the globe. The two core founders of Obsidian, Erica Xu (current COO) and Shida Li (current CTO), who are alumni from the University of Waterloo in Canada and long – term entrepreneurial partners, were trapped in a quarantined room.
After attempting all the note – taking software on the market, they were deeply disappointed. They wanted a pure – text tool that was extremely rapid, completely offline, and could safely store knowledge in the long term, but none of the mainstream products at that time could perfectly address these pain points. In the spirit of the geek philosophy of “if you can’t acquire it, build it yourself”, in March 2020, the first beta version of Obsidian was developed during the “garage days” of quarantine.
With the explosive growth of the community, Steph Ango, a well – known open – source theme developer and a dedicated applyr, was later invited to join and serve as the CEO. From “solving their own pain points” to “solving the pain points of tens of millions of people”, the story of Obsidian vividly illustrates that in the rapid – paced Silicon Valley, there are still people adhering to the most primitive craftsmanship spirit to polish the most fundamental cornerstone of the digital age.
The “Small and Beautiful” Anti – Silicon Valley Model
How can only 3 full – time engineers meet the massive necessarys of tens of millions of applyrs globally? Obsidian’s answer is: “Absolute Indepfinishence” and “Open – Source Ecosystem”.
Different from most Silicon Valley companies that seek venture capital for rapid expansion, one of Obsidian’s core principles is to reject external capital. In today’s era when major SaaS companies are burning money to acquire customers, they rely 100% on applyrs’ payments for value – added services (such as cross – platform Sync service, one – click Publish service, and commercial licenses) to maintain operations.
This healthy cash flow and indepfinishent ownership structure allow them not to forcibly expand the team to meet the capital’s exit cycle, nor to stuff the product with bloated commercial functions or even sell applyr data to boost revenue. Their only “boss” is the applyrs who apply the software every day.
The most direct advantage of the “compact and beautiful” model is almost zero management in – fighting. The founders have publicly stated that becaapply the team is extremely compact and the core members have cooperated for many years, they hardly have long cross – departmental meetings and mechanical reporting processes. Everyone can devote almost all their time and energy to pure “coding” and “product building”.
In this completely remote team, there are no top – down commands, no annoying morning meetings, and no cross – departmental tug – of – war. The company even only has one offline gathering per year.
Without meetings, how can the team stay aligned and cohesive? Ango recently shared on social media their secret weapon, which has been in operation for two years and is regarded as a perfect substitute for the “no – meeting culture” – the “Ramblings” channel mechanism.
In Obsidian’s internal chat software, instead of a noisy large group, each member has a dedicated “Ramblings” channel named after themselves. This mechanism has extremely geeky rules:
Only the channel owner can post new threads, and others can only interact in the reply threads to avoid interrupting the train of considered;
It is muted by default, and there is no obligation to read or reply;
Work and life are not separated: The channel contains not only inspiration for product codes and requests for rubber – duck debugging but also complaints about picking up kids, travel photos, and wild “what if” ideas.
Compared with being forced to read dozens of mixed messages in a group every day, this “1 – 3 times a week” personal micro – blog not only maximally protects the engineers’ flow time but also surprisingly provides an excellent “water – cooler” social atmosphere. The team found that many of Obsidian’s best ideas and functional prototypes were born from these seemingly casual “ramblings”.
In terms of specific tquestion promotion, they have taken the concept of “eating their own dog food” to the extreme: They apply the chat software for daily chats; code alters and reviews are directly resolved on GitHub; and all tquestion planning, PRD (Product Requirement Document), roadmaps, and stacked checklists are all completed in an Obsidian Vault shared by all employees.
In addition to high internal efficiency, Obsidian’s trump card lies in the “plasticity” of its underlying design. Inspired by Microsoft’s open – source code editor Visual Studio Code, the founders built an extremely powerful plugin system at the product’s core.
Today, the Obsidian community has thousands of open – source plugins contributed spontaneously by global developers – from calfinishars, kanban boards, mind maps to extremely complex AI large – model access modules. This is equivalent to Obsidian having an “unpaid off – the – books engineering corps” composed of top global geeks. The official team only necessarys to focus on perfecting the underlying text rfinishering, speed, and basic APIs, just like maintaining the foundation, and leave the rest of the skyscrapers to countless applyrs who love it to build.
Obsidian vs. Notion
When it comes to note – taking software, Notion cannot be ignored. The confrontation between Obsidian and Notion is essentially two different information management philosophies in the digital age.
Notion represents the pinnacle of the cloud era, with data stored on the official server for online collaboration anytime and anywhere; while Obsidian is a complete “deffinisher of data sovereignty”, prioritizing local storage. All notes are saved in the most basic .md pure – text format on the applyr’s private hard drive. Even if the Obsidian company goes bankrupt one day, the applyr’s life – long efforts can still be opened by any text editor.
Notion is like a “well – organized office”, centered around a database and emphasizing top – down structured management; while Obsidian is a “laboratory of ideas”, centered around bidirectional links and a huge knowledge graph, mimicking the divergent jumps of human brain neurons.
In today’s AI productivity revolution, Notion and Obsidian have once again taken completely different paths.
Notion AI follows a highly commercialized and integrated “out – of – the – box” approach. As an official built – in paid service, Notion AI is deeply embedded in its cloud database. Users don’t necessary to know any technology. Just press the space bar, and the AI can summarize long texts, polish the tone, and even conduct Q&A searches based on the entire team’s cloud workspace. It is smooth and powerful, but the price is that applyrs must completely expose their data to the closed – source large model in the cloud and pay a high subscription fee continuously.
In contrast, the official Obsidian has not launched a mandatory built – in closed – source AI but has completely returned the choice to the applyrs. Upholding its geek spirit of “plug – in” and “data privacy”, a large number of open – source AI plugins (such as Text Generator, Smart Connections, etc.) have emerged in the Obsidian community. Users can configure freely: If you pursue power, you can connect to the ChatGPT or Claude API you purchased; if you are an extreme privacy advocate, you can even run an open – source large model on your local computer through tools like Ollama, allowing the AI to read and analyze your local private notes without being connected to the internet and without uploading even a single byte of data.
So, in today’s digital age, do you prefer Notion, which embraces the cloud, or Obsidian, which deffinishs local storage, or both?
Reference Links:
https://nesslabs.com/obsidian – featured – tool
https://x.com/kepano/status/1951000025850585241
This article is from the WeChat official account “Almost Human” (ID: almosthuman2014). The author is someone who pays attention to amazing companies. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.
Leave a Reply