Roam’s Road Ahead

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

So I feel pretty certain that Roam’s road to justifying the $200m valuation leads directly to team collaboration and enterprise use. Which feels, to be honest, a little... depressing?

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

Personal todo lists don’t depend on others using the same system (no network effects) and it doesn’t matter to most people if your old todos aren’t there (low switching costs). It’s a tough business