The accounting tool Bench shut down with no warning 3 days before the end of the year. They had raised $110m in venture capital.
The app is no longer accessible. There will be a way to export your data, but it’s not available yet.
File over app is not just for individuals.
File over app is why I use Obsidian, iA Writer, and (sometimes) AnyType. If my data isn’t sitting on my hard drive in a format I can read, it’s not mine. While I have to use cloud-based services for work, like Slack and Google Docs, I don’t entirely trust them.
I think the Web 2.0 era, despite at least one early cautionary tale, made us entirely too comfortable storing our lives on other peoples’ hard drives. I’d like to see that mindset reversed. Tools like Obsidian—and the larger shift towards more open, decentralized social media technology—feels like a step in the right direction.