Obsidian CEO: Community Trumps AI in Productivity Tools
The world of productivity software, often dominated by venture-backed giants pushing for rapid user acquisition and ever-expanding feature sets, has a quiet disruptor in Obsidian. At its helm is Steph Ango, a CEO whose path to leadership is as unconventional as the company’s philosophy: he began as a passionate superfan. The journey of Ango, known online as “Kepano,” from enthusiastic community contributor to the chief executive of a beloved note-taking and knowledge management application, offers a compelling narrative about user-centric growth and principled design.
Ango’s relationship with Obsidian, a tool designed to help users build a “second brain” through linked plain-text Markdown files, predates his executive role. He was an active community member, providing valuable feedback and developing popular community plugins like “Minimal” and “Hider,” along with contributing to the core Obsidian 1.0 theme. His deep understanding of the product, coupled with a two-decade career building companies like Lumi and Inkodye (the former acquired by Narvar), caught the attention of Obsidian’s co-founders, Shida Li and Erica Xu. Impressed by his insights and dedication, they brought him on board, culminating in his appointment as CEO in February 2023.
This transition from dedicated user to CEO has profoundly shaped Obsidian’s trajectory and reinforced its unique market position. Unlike many of its competitors, Obsidian operates on a fundamental principle of being 100% user-supported, explicitly eschewing venture capital funding. This deliberate choice, a cornerstone of Ango’s “File over app” philosophy, ensures that the company remains independent and free from investor pressure to compromise on its core values. These values include a commitment to durable, open file formats, guaranteeing users complete ownership and longevity of their data without vendor lock-in. Furthermore, Obsidian prioritizes privacy, offering an offline-first experience with end-to-end encryption.
Under Ango’s leadership, Obsidian has not only grown to millions of users but has also continued to champion extensibility, allowing for extensive customization through its API and a vibrant ecosystem of community-developed plugins. While this open approach can present a learning curve for new users navigating a plethora of plugins, it empowers individuals to tailor the application precisely to their unique thinking processes. The unexpected success of features like Obsidian Canvas, a visual workspace for connecting ideas, further underscores the team’s intuition-driven development approach under Ango.
Ango himself is a polymath, with a background in biology and industrial design, and a personal philosophy centered on “toolmaking” – crafting deeply opinionated tools that reduce friction in the creative process. He champions the power of constraints in design and business, believing they foster creativity and lead to better decisions. This ethos is deeply embedded in Obsidian, which aims to provide a powerful yet flexible environment where users can amplify their own thought processes. As the company continues to evolve, its leadership, born from the very community it serves, stands as a testament to the power of user-driven innovation and a refreshing counter-narrative in the fast-paced tech industry.