OpenAI co-founder, Andrej Karpathy, published a brief “love letter” to the notes app Obsidian, giving his approval to the product and the company’s approach to running a software business.

I agree with everything Karpathy said. Moreover though, Obsidian is a fascinating example of thoughtful pricing & product strategy, and the tradeoffs that follow.

When users and decision-makers lack the usual incentives and motivation to hit targets or meet objectives, it can be hard to sell & deploy a product which enables them to do their jobs better.

This post describes why and where this happens, and what B2B SaaS & services vendors can do about it.