Obsidian
Obsidian is a local-first, Markdown-based note-taking and personal knowledge base app made by Dynalist Inc.
- Productivity software
- active
- Founded 2020
- Researched Sep 2026
The story
Obsidian was created by Shida Li and Erica Xu, who had previously built the outliner app Dynalist together after meeting at the University of Waterloo. They released Obsidian as a free beta in March 2020, grew it into a widely used, plugin-extensible knowledge management tool, and in 2023 brought on community contributor Steph Ango as CEO.
Timeline
Dynalist launched
Shida Li and Erica Xu launch outliner app Dynalist, precursor company product
Obsidian public beta
Obsidian beta released during early COVID-19 lockdown
Obsidian 1.0 released
Version 1.0.0 shipped after two years of beta development
Canvas feature added
Spatial, freeform canvas for arranging and linking notes
Steph Ango becomes CEO
Community contributor Steph Ango joins as CEO after Lumi acquisition
Web Clipper app launched
iOS Obsidian Web Clipper app released on the App Store
Founders
Shida Li
Co-founder, CTO
Co-founded Dynalist in 2015; previously a software engineer intern at Dropbox
Erica Xu
Co-founder, COO
Co-founded Dynalist in 2015; earlier software engineer intern at Quizlet
10 sourcesEvery fact above links back to these.
- About - Obsidianobsidian.md
- Obsidian - Sharpen your thinkingobsidian.md
- Obsidian (software) - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
- Dynalist Inc. - Wikidatawikidata.org
- Obsidian - Crunchbase Company Profile & Fundingcrunchbase.com
- Erica Xu - Co-founder @ Dynalist - Crunchbase Person Profilecrunchbase.com
- History of Obsidian: Second Brain to AI Knowledge OStaskade.com
- Obsidian - Connected Notes - App Storeapps.apple.com
- Obsidian Web Clipper - App Storeapps.apple.com
- Obsidian - Apps on Google Playplay.google.com