Roam’s Road Ahead

The default trajectory leads towards intellectual nerds, purchasing on their own and using Roam privately. This is typical of Roam’s current usage patterns, but won’t satisfy Roam’s investors. The swerve leads towards organizational collaboration, network effects, and enterprise customers.

The best software businesses are networks. When every new user that joins makes the network more valuable for the other users, it leads to a sort of accelerating value and growth that is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Nobody can copy the value you provide, because the value isn’t derived from your functionality, it comes from your us... See more

So, the race for Roam to become more like a network — and less like a todo list — is on.

Plus, what would Roam’s financial position in this ecosystem of interlinked writing even be? Would they charge writers? Likely not, as this would undercut the core network effect and create potential energy for a free and/or open-source competitor. Would they create an ad network? Seems extremely dubious.

If you take a bong rip and close your eyes, you can imagine a world where Roam is a new sort of internet. Where people can publish ideas and reference each other’s ideas in deep, interlinked ways. It’d be like a giant public brain, instead of a private second brain.

That certainly would be a network effect.

The only problem is, I’ve seen a lot of “pu... See more

But there’s a trade-off here that requires careful navigation and timing: if Roam remains focused on improving the single-player experience for too long, they might miss their window when they can make it work for teams.

Right now, Roam is like a todo list, but they’re in the process of becoming more like a network. How successfully they pull this off will define their future.

The only problem is, I’ve seen a lot of “public Roams” but I never enjoy the reading experience. Non-linear “digital gardens” of notes are of immense usefulness, but only so long as the individual nodes provide quality linear reading experiences. And it’s not impossible to do so in Roam, but I’ve rarely seen it.

If they hadn’t raised at a $200m valuation that wouldn’t be the end of the world. But now, the indie hacker path is out of the question.