The plan for Obsidian is to never grow beyond 10-12 people, never take VC funding, never collect personal data or analytics.

Continue building with the assumption that software is ephemeral, files matter more than apps. Use formats that are open and durable.

See our manifesto:
obsidian.md/about

making /obsidian • writing stephango.com

we have no lock-in, our users can leave at any time easily

we have less freedom to build fancy features that rely on unencrypted private data (like cloud-based AI) or more sophisticated non-portable data formats

we have limited metrics to inform product decisions, we have to learn directly from what users say

users have the freedom to significantly modify the app via plugins, more things can go wrong or feel less cohesive

... I would not recommend this approach to every business, but these are the tradeoffs we choose knowingly.

A principle is only useful if you can legitimately take the opposite side.

Otherwise it's simply an aspiration that everyone else is also shooting for.

From a traditional business perspective the Obsidian approach has many downsides:

we can only focus on 1-2 things at a time, we can't build lots of stuff in parallel like a bigger company can

we have to cover our costs, we can't subsidize pricing — charging a fair price is a disadvantage in the market

Chief Code Monkey @ https://pocketuniverse.app/

we don't hire, so it's not a problem 😆

sorta kidding, but not really — everyone on the team spent at least 1-2 years as a community contributor

Love it.

How do you find this affects hiring? Do you find it easier or harder to attract good talent with these principles?

neuroscience phd, DeSci advocate, interfaith chaplain. co-host of the /okbanger show and vibe imagineer for /christin. https://seemore.tv/christin

my personal site is chronological, and optimizes for different things than what Publish is designed for (documentation, wikis, non-linear content, etc)

An inspiration 🥹 I’m migrating and consolidating at a glacial pace back to Obsidian and using Publish to relaunch my personal site

I found it quite interesting that you use Jekyll for your site instead of Publish—why is that?

ditching VCs is inspiring—rooting for you!

Love that "Independent" section. I'm also high on serving USERS not INVESTORS! It is so much more real

It’s easy to talk about Alan Kay and Ted Nelson in your tools for thought “app” marketing site. It’s harder to just… not, and build something that respects users. Files! Yes! Goddamn I love Obsidian.

needed this thread today. thank you!

chasing my idea via own funds from client work. client work is behind on invoice payment. feeling that strain this week

love the amazing work ya'll have done. inspiring product and ethos

This is amazing. Lover every word of your manifesto

> never grow beyond 10-12 people

dream team