
How Roam Research analyzes product design and team building - jeffmorrisjr
https://thetwentyminutevc.com/conorwhitesullivan/
======
lukevp
I’ve been using Roam some, and it feels mostly like a personal wiki with
markdown, and the pages generate automatically based on the notes entered. I
like the functionality, but it’s not optimized for the way I take notes or
think about most concepts.

I’ve spent years trying different tools to organize information, and none of
them feel tailored to my note taking approach. I want something that is light
weight, works on every device, syncs immediately, works offline, and functions
more like a traditional notebook (focus on creating notes as quickly as
possible) while providing just enough tagging and query support to easily find
what I need later. Nothing strikes that perfect balance for me, so I started
on my own platform.

I plan to launch soon, but if anyone is interested in alpha access and would
like to give me feedback prior to launch, I would love to hear from you.
Contact info in profile!

~~~
gatleon
I've been using Roam daily for the last month. What I like about Roam is the
markdown, the ease of creating bidirectional links, and the automatic daily
notes. The daily notes feature particularly eliminates friction for me. I just
start writing.

What I don't like about Roam is its slow load time. Also writing does not feel
snappy enough - if that makes any sense. I feel a slight delay at times
between typing a key and seeing the character on screen. Every time that
happens I like Roam a little less. I've never experienced that with an app
like iaWriter, and as a result, even for all its lack of features, every time
I use iaWriter I like it a little more.

I think what Roam is missing for me, besides improving the writing
performance, is a weekly email digest somehow summarizing my notes. This could
use the bidirectional links and give me a quick overview of what I wrote for
the week. That would help improve my memory and be more introspective.

~~~
robenkleene
Every time I read about Roam it sounds like the same note-taking system I've
built for myself. I just use a couple of Bash scripts with light text editor
integration on top. (The Bash is so I can quickly add the same features to
whatever text editor I'm using, today that's VSCode and Vim, but I setup Emacs
at one point too. It’s mainly just keyboard shortcuts that call the Bash
scripts.)

The basic features are taking a default Markdown mode and adding:

1\. Follow a link to a relative file at the cursor

2\. Make a link to a relative file out of the selected text (e.g., "my big
idea" becomes `[my big idea](my-big-idea.md)`

Daily notes is just open a text file with the current date. (This doesn't
include back links or transclusion, but I don't think those are make or break
features either?)

All in all this is pretty trivial to add to an existing text editor, and if
you do, you get all the power of that text editor: E.g., the best search,
comparison, and split view systems anywhere. Plus the longevity of plain text.

I can see the appeal of Roam, especially for audiences that aren't already
using an extensible text editors. But for people that do already use
extensible text editors, I'm surprised there's not more discussion about how
easy these features are to add.

~~~
infogulch
> This doesn't include back links or transclusion, but I don't think those are
> make or break features either?

I thought this at first as well, but automatic backlinks make a bigger
difference than you may guess. It basically turns each document into _two_
things: 1. the document itself, 2. an automatic query of all references to
this document that renders automatically as soon as the document is opened.
Just like you can have a document with content but isn't referenced anywhere,
you can also have a document with _no_ content whose purpose is only to be the
place where everything is linked back to, and persistent filtering per
document means that you can make it behave exactly how you want. There is no
difference between the concept of a saved search and a document, they have
been unified.

The biggest value proposition to me is that you maintain each document by
itself, only changing things in one place, and other documents/views
automatically reflect that. Automatic backlinks with persistent per-document
backlink filtering is one way Roam enables this pseudo-DRY thing where you
only edit things in one place.

The other big thing it does to enable you to avoid repeating yourself is
document embedding: where one line of a document or whole sub-document is
referenced and looks like it's _embedded_ in the middle of some other
document. Interacting with an embedded document works the same as editing any
section (you can still tell it's linked, there are read only modes etc) and
the edits actually go _through_ into the original document. Combined with
fine-grained sub-document references (e.g. a paragraph or a single todo
checkbox) this allows you to create things like temporary daily task lists
where when you check off items they actually get marked completed _in their
related project where you created them_ , and you don't have to manually
synchronize any edits. It's like you get to have your cake and eat it too. For
example: do you want to organize your tasks along with the project they're
related to, or do you want to organize them in the order you want to do them
today? YES.

Not having to repeat myself is by far the best feature for me, and back-
references combined with sub-document embedding both enable that to a very
large degree. I despise having to maintain the same collection or list in
multiple places, or the friction of renaming a document because now you have
to fix all the references to it, or even keeping the name of a file in sync
with the document header. These are things that I find pure files on disk
grates on me enough to abandon the affair.

~~~
robenkleene
Thanks for this great explanation! This definitely helps me see the advantages
of those specific features. Just to be clear, I think Roam is a great and
interesting product, I didn’t mean to diminish it. Frankly, I’m just thankful
they’ve rejuvenated the note-taking conversation.

But there’s a separate point I’m still trying to make: What surprises me is
that there’s not a separate, parallel conversation happening about the
features that can easily by applied to plain text. E.g., the fact that default
Markdown supports simple Wiki links like `[A Link](a-link.md)` appears to be
lost on an extraordinary number of users of Markdown. These days I come across
someone asking for “Markdown with Wiki support” literally almost daily, now
that Roam has popularized the feature.

To put it another way: If people were already managing their notes in Markdown
Wikis, and then Roam came along and added some additional valuable features
that are more difficult to add to plain text, like back links and
transclusion, then that would make sense. But what we have is people lamenting
that Markdown doesn’t support Wiki links, when in reality, it already has its
own form of them...

~~~
devin
This conversation is absolutely happening. Athens, for instance, is a clone of
roam that is open source. It reminds me, however, of the conversation that
happened about IRC vs Slack.

~~~
slifin
Athen looks like the first clone I've seen that understands the stack that
makes roam viable

I hope they do well

------
vincvinc
1) How come this one app in particular seems to permeate all the media I
consume (even though there is no way to try the app out right now)? In the
same week, several podcasts and friends recommended it to me, and now HN.
Kudos to whoever organized this launch.

2) I decided this year my personal notes are too long-term and important to me
to keep entrusting to every new cloud startup that pops up.

Right now my notes are mostly in markdown files, synced by Dropbox. More
developed thoughts that need to link to each-other I do in Trello (I like
their UX and how it helps me think).

I'm looking for a system that has these features, but:

\- where I will always be in control of the data (open source?)

\- syncs & backups reliably

\- seamless on mobile

~~~
pcmaffey
1) because VCs invested in it

2) I highly recommend Ulysses for this, which has the best writing experience
IMO, can open /save external .md files like a txt editor, and is polished and
mature across devices.

~~~
submeta
+1 for Ulysses. It‘s got all the features I was asking for: markdown, tagging,
folders, offline, beautiful UI, a go-to-anywhere (omnisearch), saved searches,
and the company has a history of over ten years (not VC backed).

Been using all kinds of writing apps / tools since the 90s: AskSam,
Netmanage‘s ECCOPro, IdeaMatrix on my Blackberry, Emacs+Org, my various own
tools, Evernote, Joplin, Notion and a dozen other tools.

In the end I settled with simple, plain markdown text, some Python + bash
scripts, and a nice markdown editor like iA Writer or Ulysses, which is the
current editor I am using. Its target audience seem to be writers of all sorts
producing large texts. But it is actually a pretty good Zettelkasten tool as
well.

Re RoamResearch: I would never entrust my personal data / notes into an online
only service (that was just created!) I am old enough to know that products
come and go, the most important thing is my personal data.

------
shivekkhurana
=Meta=

With the rise of this new breed of knowledge management apps, I have started a
repo. to track tools, open-source projects and pros-cons of the Zettlekasten
methodology.

It's slightly opinionated and I try to update it regularly. If you'd like to
stay updated in this space, you can check it out at
[https://github.com/krimlabs/z](https://github.com/krimlabs/z)

~~~
slightwinder
Slight rant: Those tools are not new, it's just a new wave of old methods.
Roam for example is just a personal wiki, which were

Another rant: There is no Zettlekasten methodology. This is just a cargo-cult.
It's also called Luhmanns Zettelkasten, after a famous scientist and write who
was using his notebox with some system. Zettelkasten is just the german word
for notebox and there are several well known in history, which all did not use
Luhmanns system.

------
iamben
I wish more of these note taking apps were fully encrypted. I know RR can
encrypt parts of notes, but it's not the same.

It's probably paranoia, but if I'm journaling my life, business ideas,
thoughts on contacts - I just want it to be encrypted on my devices before it
goes into the cloud. I want each device to sync and decrypt locally.

~~~
fastball
For an online-first service (where all your notes aren't living on your device
at one time necessarily), encryption makes it impossible to do a full-text
search of your content.

~~~
Terretta
“Encryption makes it impossible to do a full text search of your content”
(where all notes aren’t necessarily on your device at one time)?

And yet Apple Photos does full image library search for your friends’ faces,
while not having to have all photos on your device.

Two common ways to do this: (a) bring each piece of content to the client
device just long enough to add it to an on-device index, (b) let the clients
update and re-sync an encrypted global index as content is added locally.

As Apple puts it:

 _”One of the best things about Photos is how it protects your privacy. iOS
and iPadOS are designed to take advantage of the powerful processor built into
every iPhone and iPad. So when you search your photos, for instance, all the
face recognition and scene and object detection are done completely on your
device.”_

With Photos, Apple scans and builds the index locally on device, per method
(a). If you enable iCloud Photos, it will also sync the index of fingerprints
to labels in (b) style so your names, favorites, and key photos match across
devices.

Apple’s quite tickled at making this available to you as a dev:

 _”On-device intelligence: Apple uses machine learning to enhance your
experience — and your privacy — by using on-device processing so other people
don’t see your data. We’ve used it for on-device image and scene recognition
in Photos, predictive text in keyboards, and more. For example, the A13 Bionic
chip and the Neural Engine in iPhone can recognize patterns, make predictions,
and learn from experience, similar to the way you do. So your device can
create personalized experiences without having to analyze personal information
on Apple servers. Developers can use our frameworks, such as Create ML and
Core ML, to create powerful new app experiences that don’t require your data
to leave your device. That means apps can analyze user sentiment, classify
scenes, translate text, recognize handwriting, predict text, tag music, and
more without putting your privacy at risk.”_

~~~
fastball
Fair point.

Impossible was too strong. Very, very difficult is more accurate. Tagging
faces is much easier than FTS as well, as photos don't change (or you assume
they don't change in terms of "who is in this photo"), where as your notes
might be changing quite frequently.

Also you're gonna have 1-5 faces per photo max, where as with FTS you're gonna
need to store a lot more than that per "note".

------
ThalesX
My antivirus went red.

>> We blocked this phishing page for your protection:

>> [https://thetwentyminutevc.com/](https://thetwentyminutevc.com/)

------
karl11
Roam Research is awesome. The lack of pretension around structure and
hierarchy of your data is so refreshing. I have used Notion extensively and
still think Notion is superior as a place to house canonical unstructured data
for groups. But for individuals, RR is A+. Coming from nvALT + Drafts which I
still use on mobile and then copy into Roam later.

------
pdepip
For me, the biggest problem with all of these note taking systems is they are
clunky. If I want to quickly write something down, or find a piece of
information, I have to page through tabs in chrome which totally ruins my
focus.

To solve this, I built [https://mmap.it](https://mmap.it) \- a short cut
driven note taking tool that allows you to save and search without context
switching.

