How the head of Obsidian went from superfan to CEO

In this episode of Decoder, Casey Newton interviews Steph Ango, the CEO of Obsidian, a note-taking and productivity app. Ango describes Obsidian as a personal Wikipedia where users create links between notes, fostering a web of knowledge. He highlights Obsidian's unique features, such as storing files locally in Markdown format, which ensures data durability and user control. They discuss the role of plugins in Obsidian's growth, the company's flat organizational structure, and its sustainable, profitable business model. Ango explains Obsidian's approach to AI, emphasizing privacy and user autonomy, and shares insights into the company's future plans, including the development of the Bases feature for visualizing notes in a database format.