Most note-taking apps want to be everything. Docs, tasks, wikis, calendars, AI.
flomo wants you to write one thought. Then close the app.
It has no folders. No ads. No big team. Just a text box and some tags.
Over five years, users have stored more than 100 million notes in it. And in 2024, the tiny team behind it bought a product from ByteDance’s office suite.
Two people bought something from ByteDance. Let that sit for a second.
Snapshot
Company: flomo 浮墨笔记
Founders: Shaonan (刘少楠) and Liu Baiguang (刘白光)
Team: Two core founders
Product: A card-style notes app for quick thoughts
Business model: Free version plus a paid yearly membership
Traction: 100M+ notes stored
Ads: None.
Notable move: Acquired the outliner app Mubu (幕布) from ByteDance’s Feishu in 2024
The Story
The name says most of it. flomo is flow plus memo.
Both founders had spent more than ten years building products. They had seen what happens when apps grow. More features. More buttons. More reasons to feel behind.
So they built the opposite.
You open flomo. You type a thought. You add a tag like #book or #idea. Done.
No “where does this go?” moment. No folder tree. The note lands in a stream, like a feed of your own mind.
The idea comes from an old method. A German one, actually.
The Zettelkasten, or “slip box,” was made famous by Niklas Luhmann, a sociologist from Bielefeld. He wrote short ideas on index cards and linked them together. Over decades, the box helped him write dozens of books.
flomo turned the Zettelkasten into a phone app. Short notes. Loose links. Review them later and watch ideas connect.
Then the founders did something many startups skip. They explained the why. Shaonan writes openly about product thinking, including a long-running series called 《产品沉思录》 (”Product Reflections”). They talk on podcasts. They share how they decide what not to build.
That’s how the users didn’t just get an app. They got a way of thinking.
And then came 2024. ByteDance’s Feishu owned Mubu, a well-known outliner app. Instead of shutting it down or keeping it, they sold it. The buyer was the flomo team. Mubu stays independent.
Usually big companies buy small ones. Here it went the other way.
Why It Works
1. It sells a habit, not a tool.
People don’t pay for a text box. They pay to become someone who writes things down. flomo makes that feel possible in ten seconds a day.
2. Less is the feature.
No folders means no sorting. No sorting means no excuse. Every missing feature removes a small reason to quit.
3. The business model matches the promise.
No ads. No selling data. Users pay, so users are the customer. For a place where people store private thoughts, that matters.
4. It plugs into where people already read.
flomo connects with popular Chinese reading and learning apps like WeChat Reading (微信读书), Dedao (得到), and Jike (即刻). You highlight a sentence there, it ends up in your notes.
5. The founders are the marketing.
Building in public, writing, podcasting. Trust grew before the sales pitch did. Two people can’t outspend anyone. They can out-explain them.
The Build
flomo’s real trick isn’t the text box. It’s how little effort it takes to get a thought in. In China, that means WeChat and reading apps. In Europe, nobody has built that layer for normal people.
The MVP
One text box, tags, a single stream. That’s the app.
Capture from where people already are: a Telegram/WhatsApp bot and a personal email-in address.
Import Kindle highlights (the My Clippings.txt file)
A daily email with 3 random old notes. This is where the Zettelkasten magic happens.
What you cut: folders, AI, collaboration, web clipper, desktop app.
Stack & effort: Next.js, Supabase, Telegram Bot API, Stripe. One builder, 3–4 weeks.
Pricing: free up to 500 notes, then €4/month. “No ads. No data sales. Hosted in the EU.” That’s the pitch, not a footnote.
First 100 users: Zettelkasten was invented in Bielefeld. Lean into it. Write about Luhmann in German, post in r/Zettelkasten, pitch German productivity newsletters. The origin story is your marketing – just like flomo’s founders.
Why it might not transfer
The market is crowded. “Simple notes app” is a hard sell when Apple Notes is free and already on your phone.
Western power users already have Obsidian. The Zettelkasten crowd is loud online, but many are happy with free tools.
The integrations are very Chinese. flomo’s reading app connections don’t exist here. You’d need Kindle, Readwise or Substack instead.
Founder-led trust takes years. The writing and podcasts built flomo’s audience slowly. There’s no shortcut.
See for Yourself
Website: flomoapp.com
The origin story (Chinese): help.flomoapp.com
Tip: The app is in Chinese, but the interface is so simple you’ll figure it out in a minute. That’s kind of the point.
Sign-off
Two people. One text box. No ads.
While the West adds AI buttons to note apps, flomo kept taking things away. It worked.
Sometimes the idea that hasn’t crossed the Pacific yet is just: do less.
See you next week,
Colin