
$200M seed valuation for Roam shows investor frenzy for note-taking apps - telotortium
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/a-200-million-seed-valuation-for-roam-shows-investor-frenzy-for-note-taking-apps?shared=931cbf4ce58ed9bd
======
dang
Alas, since this article is hard-paywalled it's off topic by HN's rules. For a
while The Information was unlocking their articles for HN readers when we
asked, but they haven't for a while now. I'll try again.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=a...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

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jonplackett
Where exactly is the value here?

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.

~~~
icey
There are already free / free-ish clones of Roam:

    
    
      * org-roam: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam
      * Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/
      * Athens: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

~~~
rawrenstein
+1 for Obsidian. Lots of refinement in such a young product. It has been my
main driver recently. I picked it up primarily to keep things local rather
than rely on an internet connection. Even so, took only a few minutes to add
encrypted backups to S3 debounced on file change.

------
llbeansandrice
There's a guy that has a blog/course/whatever centered around Roam. I wanted
to try it out but the pricing is honestly just insane.

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.

~~~
jjeaff
I doubt that software engineers who use vim are a significant target market
for them.

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crazygringo
Their homepage is _really_ bad.

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?

~~~
kennethfriedman
For anyone looking to understand Roam, I would suggest searching "roam cult"
or "#roamcult" on Twitter.

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.

~~~
crazygringo
Thanks for the search term.

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.

------
nt2h9uh238h
Everyone here should honestly review: "What happened to the future?" by Peter
Thiel [https://foundersfund.com/the-future/](https://foundersfund.com/the-
future/)

------
julian_pm
It’s puzzling that given the massive hype about roam on Twitter, nobody of
their hardcore fans made it here.

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.

------
icey
No other note-taking service has been able to get me to stop using paper
notebooks the way Roam has. I think it's because the default view is a daily
diary and it's low-friction to use it. The linking is simple enough that I
actually do it (versus having to remember to do it consistently). I'm
undecided if it's software that I'd pay a lot for every month, but it is nicer
than Notion for my use case.

All that being said... wow, that's a crazy valuation!

~~~
tmpz22
Weren't people JUST saying that about Notion...

~~~
icey
I'm not convinced Notion's valuation is sane either...

------
cik2e
I don’t get it... I use paper or a running text file for notes. Never have I
ever had a desire to make it more complex than that.

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.

------
sergiotapia
Tried it out, the UI is slow and janky, and there's no element of "riffing" to
the tool. In notion I can riff easily and polish the notes later then share.
Everything is a `/` away. This tool feels tailormade for those neurotic types
that use seven different colored highlighters and plan out their month down to
10 minute blocks. "Productivity junkies".

------
parhamn
All this really says is they've done a lot more work before the typical seed.
Theres a product, a hashtag, a following, a user base, a expensive video
training class and more. All bootstrapped by an individual. Super impressive!

Roam will probably do very well! But 'seed' means very little here as it's,
relative to most seeds, very mature.

------
wyxuan
Just looked at the pricing page- wow. Roam is pretty expensive. I totally am
open to paying for software but I’m not sure that by charging the amount they
do, they can beat lower priced competitors, or stickies .

Maybe you do like it and think it’s worth the cost but I don’t think it’s my
cuppa tea.

~~~
stingraycharles
I’m not sure how others feel about this, but for me a tool that supports me in
my work is fine to pay for, and I honestly don’t really care between $5 or
$15. I like that there is some kind of value exchange, and these prices all
remain more than reasonable. I pay for quite a few things like this on a
monthly basis.

I do wonder about the valuation though, and that actually makes me more
worried about the future of Roam.

------
adeveloper870
I'm sorry, but I don't see any value in note-taking apps. It's likely these
investors are just turning away from other products that have likely been hurt
by covid.

(We work more remote now, we need to take notes, let's do it online, investor
frenzy).

------
dawg-
I am an Evernote junkie but Roam is really intriguing. Linking thing together
on Evernote is very clunky. Not sure if I will switch to Roam but if Evernote
adapts some of their ideas I will be very happy.

------
leetrout
I think this has the ability to be similar to Dropbox. Everyone on here
knocked Dropbox with “all you gotta do...” alternatives.

I’m interested to see how incumbents like Notion try to compete.

~~~
gum_ina_package
Funny to hear Notion described as an incumbent! Having used both though, Roam
did much more to fundamentally change how I took notes and use them to form
new insights and ideas.

------
whiddershins
Is characterizing Roam as a note taking app accurate?

I thought the whole point is it allows you to create relationships between
ideas, which would be huge if done well.

------
thrwn_frthr_awy
> "As powerful as a graph database."

Can someone who has used Roam explain what this means?

~~~
ssalka
Basically with Roam you think of your notes as a graph - when you link to
another page, that becomes a relationship in the graph. Technically this is
possible with any note-taking app that allows links between pages, but one of
the nice things allowed by Roam due to modeling this way is you can see
automatically all the pages that link to the current page, as well as
instances of the page title that are still unlinked.

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.

------
nahtnam
Evernote part 2?

~~~
cryptoz
In 2011 I downloaded Evernote for Android and promptly took an important note
down while in a meeting. I got an email during the meeting (tablet
notification), and I opened it. Upon returning to Evernote (using the Android
app switcher), my note was _gone_. "Ever"note must have deleted my note in
onPause or onResume. Ugh. I've been calling it Nevernote ever since. The #1
thing Evernote had to do was not delete my notes but that's all it did for me.

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.

~~~
haswell
No offense, but using Gmail Drafts of all things as a response to what sounds
like a pretty rare bug (I’ve been a paying Evernote user for 10+ years and
have never lost a note) does not make any sense. What happens when something
glitches out with your drafts?

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.

~~~
cryptoz
An attempt at a non-biased search
[https://www.google.com/search?q=note+app+deleted+my+note](https://www.google.com/search?q=note+app+deleted+my+note)
and another
[https://www.google.com/search?q=note+app+deleted+my+note+and...](https://www.google.com/search?q=note+app+deleted+my+note+android)

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.

