How Obsidian Built a Cult of Note Taking

Obsidian is likely the most popular Markdown note-taking app in the world. It’s so unusual and different from the previous companies I covered here that even the CEO doesn’t know how many users they have – they simply don’t track it. But Obsidian estimated to have three to four million users in early 2025. It’s completely free and earns money on additional but replaceable features like cloud sync and publishing. Before Obsidian, Erica Xu and Shida Li built Dynalist, an outliner app and an alternative to the then-leader Workflowy. A few years later, one of their users asked a question on the company’s forum: “Why isn’t Dynalist as well known as Workflowy?” They thought the product was better. It had more features. Why weren’t more people talking about it? Erica Xu replied that Workflowy had five-year head start, venture funding and backing of Y Combinator. Dynalist was bootstrapped and grew slower, mostly through word of mouth. Another user wished someone would promote Dynalist with…

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