Meet Logseq, an open-source knowledge management system that ‘stores data like a brain’

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Awareness, as the previous saying goes, is electricity. But when that understanding is splayed throughout sprawling, fragmented repositories, it can be hard for even the most organized personal to sign up for the dots and make feeling of it all.

This is a thing that fledgling startup Logseq is location out to clear up, with a privateness-centered open up-source understanding base that aids men and women and corporations incorporate all their disparate notes, investigation, PDF markups and much more into an interconnected program for storing and retrieving information and facts.

With assistance for markup languages this kind of as Markdown and Emacs’ Org-manner, Logseq enables people to build jobs, take care of and keep notes or to-do lists, embed internet pages, annotate PDFs and create links concerning all the details contained inside of, to generate a free of charge movement of info.

Logseq is entering a area that consists of incumbents these types of as Roam, Obsidian, Foam and Athens, although in truth it’s searching to supplant legacy awareness management devices that are built in a “skeuomorphic” way to mimic linear techniques crafted all around webpages, data files and folders. In fact, Logseq is conceptually a lot more akin to some thing like a international wiki that shops info “like a human brain” — a graph of nodes consisting of myriad interconnected concepts. It also supports visualizations based mostly on a graph database, allowing consumers to express specific tasks and sub-tasks on a graph that demonstrates their interconnectedness.

To take matters to the subsequent degree, Logseq these days exposed that it has lifted $4.1 million in seed funding from a slew of noteworthy backers, which include the CEOs and founders of providers this kind of as Stripe, Shopify and Quora.

Logseq in action

Logseq, which people can already entry by using a desktop app or native iPad / iOS application, can be utilized to create and link just about any type of text-primarily based be aware. For instance, it can enrich observe-using for task meetings, via bidirectional inbound links and graph databases on best of simple Markdown documents — this can help any participant revisit earlier conversations and notes and use filters to select topics relevant to the assembly.

Logseq also touts by itself as “local-1st,” which means that it supports storing info in Markdown textual content information on users’ local machines, which provides them full, unfettered obtain to all their facts. And since it supports Markdown and Org-method out-the-box, it implies that it is interoperable with other platforms and systems.

Another likely use-case lies in PDF annotation, with Logseq enabling end users to spotlight a chunk of text on the document and create notes connected with all those highlights.

So, who, specifically, is the intended close-consumer with Logseq? Anyone and anyone, in accordance to Logseq cofounder and CEO Tienson Qin.

“Individual researchers and buyers at house now count on Logseq to retail outlet complicated information bases and particular CRMs,” Qin told VentureBeat. “SMEs and enterprise teams use Logseq to store notes for groups in methods that establish deeply interconnected relationships to give quicker context to new hires, additional simple data management and preserve extra comprehensive logs of their collective mental assumed processes.”

The story so significantly

Qin and Co. designed Logseq as an open up-source “passion project” in early 2020, though it has only existed as a formal company for the earlier yr. But in the intervening months, the corporation has garnered a growing consumer foundation that contains developers, scientists and lecturers from a host of superior-profile organizations these as Google, Meta, MIT and Stanford.

“It’s a terrific platform for scientists and teachers who are cataloging a lot of information and facts, both equally in groups and on their possess,” Qin advised VentureBeat. “Logseq is utilised by teams at firms who need to have to better retailer info in interconnected structures. Logseq’s products is created to be so unbelievably easy to use, that even younger youngsters can decide it up and start off discovering.”

In phrases of how Logseq designs to make money outside of its current donation-based solution, the firm intends to set at minimum some of its seed expense toward using the services of and merchandise growth — this translates into quality options for people today and organizations.

“We’re discovering a Logseq ‘pro’ approach for men and women that would include things like stop-to-conclusion encrypted sync, publishing, an AI assistant and collaboration, as perfectly as prospective for enterprise programs,” Qin spelled out. “But, very first, we’re focused on expanding speedy by permitting open-source, prevalent collaboration.”

In fact, it is this open up-supply basis that could established the firm up perfectly as it builds out a business products, notably in sectors where by knowledge ownership and command are a top priority.

“Because it is open up source and prioritizes privateness, we have an considerable person-foundation that we do not actively keep track of the identities of, which also speeds up compliance evaluations,” Qin said.

What’s more, the reality that Logseq is a group-driven undertaking signifies that contributors the earth over can insert (or request) their options. Qin reported that in the earlier a few months by itself, the Logseq neighborhood has established much more than 80 plugins to guidance integrations with calendars, all-natural language processing (NLP) apps and even Readwise.

In the coming weeks, Logseq is gearing up to start attributes to improved assist serious-time collaboration, enabling teams to edit notes on their Logseq know-how graphs concurrently, a small like Google Docs.

“Logseq is great at aiding groups get the job done on datasets together — it’s even improved at letting many teams to work on the exact dataset,” Qin famous. “This is because the concepts and information and facts contained in that dataset becomes naturally related in a bidirectional graph, which means group are not limited just to documents and folders, but fairly logically, like a mind performs, to preserve investigation relocating forward.”

Logseq’s seed funding spherical included investments from Stripe CEO Patrick Collison Shopify founder Tobias Lütke ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman Quora founder Charlie Cheever renowned software developer Dave Winer Andreessen Horowitz husband or wife Sriram Krishnan Craft Ventures Matrix Companions and Working day One particular Ventures.