$200M seed valuation for Roam shows investor frenzy for note-taking apps
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https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
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I struggle to believe there can be any 'tech' that can't be rapidly copied in a note taking app (correct me if I'm wrong)
And it's not _that_ well known either so it's not like they're buying into a massive mainstream thing.
I don't get it.
* org-roam: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam
* Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/
* Athens: https://github.com/athensresearch/athensFor one, people download and use note apps, so I think there's an inherent curiosity about whatever the next one is. And if anyone can get a critical mass to the point that it's a de facto note-taking app for 'most people', people might become accustomed to the idiosyncrasies and add-on features that the 'winner' note app provides.
There's no good reason for there to be a 'winner' note taking app, but I also don't think there's any good reason for there to be a winner video conferencing tool, or a winner office suite, but we have those.
UX should be relatively easy to copy, but it seems (at least to me) that many people have a hard time copying UX. Many people will copy features or appearance, but their execution usually lacks something. This is not a dig: most people don't get it.
There are a few people who do, and when they create something new, only afterward does it seem so obvious.
This is just my take.
So I’ll try to add my perspective after having used and paid for it since they started charging - even though I’m for sure not a hardcore user (yet).
The first problem is calling it a note taking app in the first place. What fits much better IMHO is the term knowledge graph.
The best analog I read is that it’s an extension to your brain. Because your brain works associative, Roam makes it incredibly easy to create bi-directional links between notes.
Wrapping any term in a note in [[]] creates a bi-directional link. I.e. it creates a separate page for the highlighted term automatically which you can then fill with content. On that new page you will also see all the places in other notes that mention the term. This way you create a Wikipedia-style collection of notes very quickly. This is the most basic way to explain it I can think of.
The thing is, it’s not really that easy to grasp it and it has quite a learning curve. But once you start getting it, it is super, super powerful.
I don’t like the whole cult thing around it but the bad website, ugly UI, high price is simply because “they can” and to keep growth under control I think. A few weeks after they started charging their founder mentioned somewhere that they already crossed 1MM ARR.
The app still has a long way to go to be ready for mass adoption (a mobile app for example would help) but I’m sure that they can somehow figure out UX with that funding.
That being said, I’m not sure they have a lot of technical leverage that would stop others from adapting their ideas and concepts.
There are so many options for note-taking apps with all sorts of features I don't think Roam brings enough to the table to justify it. Learn vim/emacs and just use a single text file instead or whatever.
It shows a handful of UI examples but I still have no idea what is special about Roam except that it apparently has hyperlinks, hashtags and versioning?
There is no link in any main part of the page to get a list of features? Or how it works? I have to find some links in the footer... which take forever to load and give you a scary "No changes to the help database will be saved." message... and one is a "complete course" (way too long), another is a long "white paper" (way too detailed).
And I can't even try it out without giving them my credit card?
Maybe this is a great, revolutionary app. But they're sure making it as difficult as possible for me to figure out why that might be.
A $200M valuation and they can't even hire a marketer or even a PM to put together a homepage that gives me good reasons why I should use it?
I'm not one of them — but there is a hardcode, devoted fan base that are convinced it's the best thing since sliced bread. Whenever that occurs, it's worth trying to understand why.
I think the bad homepage is (somewhat) intentional: they only want people who are willing to look past the home screen and actually give it a try... and (I believe) they want to avoid the audience who is trying it just because of a flashy landing page.
But it's funny, what you see as positives I see as negatives. When something has a devoted fan base but nobody else uses it, it tells me it's something incredibly niche for a reason, and therefore probably not applicable to me.
And a bad homepage would be a horrible intention. Why would any product ever avoid an audience? Why would you only want people willing to look past a bad homepage? That sounds like it's screening for people who have a lot of time to waste. I'm not sure why that would be your target audience.
I created an account today (realizing it was actually web-based, no client at all) to try it out and like you, couldn't believe that there was no way to do so without giving credit card info.
However, the "thanks for registering" email does include a link to a playground/test site.
All that being said... wow, that's a crazy valuation!
On a deeper level, I think people who are obsessed with note taking are doing it wrong. I only do it to jot down things to follow up on from a meeting or a conversation. Anything more than that disrupts active listening and keeps you from actually participating in the discussion.
In an academic setting, I would focus on listening and understanding the lecture and referred to the text when it came time to study. I’d maybe take notes for the occasional class where lectures didn’t follow the text, but usually would just get them from classmates who were more dedicated transcribers.
The other thing is that notes tend to be ephemeral in my use case. Things to research or follow-ups from a meetings are basically a task list with a limited shelf life. I do jot down creative ideas in a few notebooks that I’ve kept over the years but that starts to approach journaling, which is a different beast. I guess software could make sense for that but writing by hand would have to become the rate limiting factor for me to cross the threshold.
Roam will probably do very well! But 'seed' means very little here as it's, relative to most seeds, very mature.
Maybe you do like it and think it’s worth the cost but I don’t think it’s my cuppa tea.
I do wonder about the valuation though, and that actually makes me more worried about the future of Roam.
(We work more remote now, we need to take notes, let's do it online, investor frenzy).
I’m interested to see how incumbents like Notion try to compete.
I thought the whole point is it allows you to create relationships between ideas, which would be huge if done well.
Can someone who has used Roam explain what this means?
This also applies on the block level (you can reference any piece of text anywhere else without copy/paste), though blocks & block references are not currently shown in the default graph view.
A simple email draft would have been millions of times better. I don't take many chances on new notes apps now. I'm "sure" Roam won't delete my notes...until it does.
Gmail drafts as notes for life. Offline, syncing, multi-platform, extremely unlikely to shut down. Easy social integration (fill in to: field and tap Send). Got everything I personally want.
I'm also coding my own take on a new notes app......so we'll see.
I can understand the desire to use caution , but “I don’t take many chances on new note apps now” as a result of that rare bug from ONE vendor seems extreme and unnecessary.
suggests that notes apps unexpectedly deleting notes is a major concern for users on both platforms (iOS and Android).
Perhaps my reaction is extreme, but I haven't lost a note since or worried anxiously about that issue with a new app. I get that gmail drafts isn't for everyone, but this type of destructive bug isn't rare at all. It seems to be very common.
And the platform I trust to not cause that bug is gmail drafts. Maybe one day I'll be in for a rude surprise but so far I have been very happy.
Not the original commenter, but I have never had Google lose any of my data ever.
In Gmail, my drafts are saved locally and also synced. It's never failed, I've never lost even a single character of something I was typing.
And I too am in the boat of "bitten once, never again" when it comes to sync and data loss. If it happens once with something insignificant, it could happen to my thesis or book or whatever. My tolerance for data loss is like 0.000001%. Nothing is perfect. But if I ever experience it personally myself, something that ought to be less likely than being hit by lightning... then statistically, it's much more likely that the service is extremely risky to use, than that I got unlucky.