
Roam Research reaches $1m ARR in 6 weeks - r_singh
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/roam-research-reaches-1m-arr-in-6-weeks-20faee74e6
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vishnuks
If anyone is looking for a free alternative to Roam for personal use, checkout
Obsidian.md. It supports importing from Roam, has backlinks, graph view,
custom themes and most importantly is super fast since it's a desktop
application. It's built by the makers of Dynalist.

[https://obsidian.md/](https://obsidian.md/)

~~~
raihansaputra
Was on Dynalist, moved to Roam, and jumped to Obsidian without knowing it was
the Dynalist team. Still on the transition; Obisdian's focus on document vs
outline means I have to shape my notes more towards paragraphs instead of
pointers and bullet points. Liking it so far, but still wishing I can have it
on web instead of an app; I don't really care about offline capability, I need
the backlink capability, and I like having multiple note views. That's most of
it.

~~~
rpdillon
I was curious about your call-out about personal use, so I checked out the
license. It reads as though 'personal use at work' might not be permitted
without purchasing a license.

> If you use OBSIDIAN for work-related activities in a company with two (2) or
> more employees, you must obtain a commercial license.

[https://obsidian.md/eula](https://obsidian.md/eula)

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kanjus
Zettlr is an open-source alternative [0]. It’s surprisingly feature-rich for a
one-person project.

I’ve tried Obsidian, Roam Research, and others, but Zettlr is simply a much
more complete piece of software.

In addition, the developer’s perspective on their work and complete belief in
open-source, privacy, open standards, etc., is really heart-warming [1].

[0]: [https://www.zettlr.com/](https://www.zettlr.com/)

[1]: [https://www.zettlr.com/post/why-zettlr-open-
source](https://www.zettlr.com/post/why-zettlr-open-source)

~~~
sriku
I have settled on Zettlr too and the tipping point was Zotero support. Since
I'm still settling into it, I'm curious about Obsidian too.

Ultimately, it's not the tool itself, but the consistency with which I use it
that had impact.

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sawaruna
I keep trying to use Roam and Obsidian (rather than a more simple note taking
app like Notable,) but I find that my more complex thoughts on topics, i.e the
ones I would want to use this kind of software to record, is more often than
not about external content such as PDFs or webpages. I know you can simply
link files or urls inside markdown, but the integration seems a bit
simplistic. I suppose some people will just copy and paste highlights, or
extract notations, but something like Zotero seems hard to beat for my usage.

~~~
skinnymuch
I’ve used Devonthink over things like Zotero because it seems to be focused on
Professional research. Like I don’t care about the writer of a pdf or site
enough for it to be the 2nd default column.

~~~
sawaruna
Devonthink looks cool, but can you explain why it's functionally better? Or is
it just a better layout?

~~~
skinnymuch
I don’t know. I’m not an academic. I’m gathering notes, web pages, mostly. I
also gather videos and such. I assumed Zotero sort of things wouldn’t
accommodate all that.

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devin
Keep hating on it or bringing up open source alternatives, but Roam is going
places.

I don’t know how long the momentum keeps up, but it’s clear to me that Roam
has captured a market segment that’s been mostly ignored by the bigger players
who’ve focused on creating project management software.

It may not be for you or your company, but it is clearly resonating.

~~~
emptysongglass
I would argue that the people signing up to Roam have a short-term outlook on
their data when they shovel their words into a blackbox. Notes are the maybe
_the_ most important thing to have a fungible, exportable standard behind.

~~~
Hates_
You can export all your notes as Markdown or JSON. Obsidian, for instance,
even has a plugin to faciliate importing your Roam notes if you choose to
migrate.

~~~
emptysongglass
Unless something has changed, you're left with a bunch of unlinked Markdown
notes. Those connections have to be relinked from scratch in whatever program
the exportee then chooses. It sounds like Obsidian is offering a bespoke
method of recreating these links, is that right?

~~~
Hates_
Yes, Obsidian has a few options specifically geared towards importing Roam
markdown: [https://i.imgur.com/eDtRXSX.png](https://i.imgur.com/eDtRXSX.png)

Any existing use of [[link]] style ones will work natively.

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spzb
How can it be annual recurring revenue when they've only been going for six
weeks and they have a 30 day free trial? Surely you need to know what their
churn rate is going to be before you can consider it to be recurring?

~~~
dageshi
It's a 2 week trial I believd

~~~
spzb
It's a bit confusing. Their T&Cs say 14 days, but their sign up page says
"you'll be charged after 31 days"

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onyva
I stopped using it once I discovered org-roam. It’s not a perfect replica, but
manipulating text in a text editor is basic. Web based solutions can not
compete, neither with speed nor the flexibility of an open source project, at
least in Emacs’ ecosystem with org and everything else.

Most importantly offline first approach. My notes are stored on a NextCloud
share so many backups and notes are searchable with ripgrep when looking for
stuff not interlinked or tagged.

Also roam research used to mess up quite often until they built client side
caching. Still very annoying and frustrating to have to look at the dot
turning green or staying brown. Could have improved but they should offer a
complete offline solution IMHO, at least for editing markdown in 3rd party
tools and re syncing.

~~~
daffy
What's the main attraction of org-roam over org? I had a look at it, but
didn't quite understand how to use it. Seemed as if it wanted one file per
note.

~~~
onyva
It’s up to you. Make it work according to how you prefer to organize your
notes. I dont follow the Zettelkasten system. I create notes per category or
tag under which i can look for backlinks into related material. But otherwise
I just use is to store everything, including lecture notes, vocabulary and
full text of articles or lectures I consider important.

There’s a graph server that might be helpful but I never used it.

Another advantage being able to ripgrep through content for dirty searches.

The more content is there (not just links and pointers) the more likely it is
you’ll surprise yourself finding links between different domains you’re
interested in.

For me, word definitions in Arabic for example, tie into terminology used in
articles I read in other languages, because I can use “aliases” to refer back
to them.

~~~
onyva
The only thing missing for me is the ability to embed content. Ie have a
paragraph embedded into the flow of other documents, which I can view or edit
in either places.

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MildlySerious
Another case of a blog post without explanation, context or link to the
product in question. I really wish this practice wasn't as common as it is.

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jbotz
I've been using Roam for about 6 months. The compelling thing about it is its
simplicity... it hits a sweet spot of giving you some of that "Zettelkasten
magic" without you having to learn much of anything. Just go ahead and note
down some stuff on the "Daily Notes", and it becomes immediately useful.

The downside is that it's a bit too simple... After a while you'll probably
want more features and I haven't seen them adding much in those six months.
We'll have to see where it goes... they have a _lot_ of competition! Seems
there's more Zettelkasten software out there than there are Zettel in the
average Kasten!

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dageshi
I am one of their paid customers.

Genuinely Roam is the note taking app I've been looking for all my life, it
lets me dump the contents of my mind in a way that I know I'll be able to re-
establish context easily when I come back to the notes.

I'm happy to support them purely out of a wish to see how they can keep
improving it.

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sawaruna
Considering the constant hype I encounter for this online, not so surprising.
Perhaps the clear lead from the plethora[0] of similar software? Though
Obsidian seems to be getting more popular.

I recall reading about some privacy policies issues a while back [1], I wonder
if anything has changed.

[0]
[https://www.notion.so/db13644f08144495ad9877f217a161a1?v=ff6...](https://www.notion.so/db13644f08144495ad9877f217a161a1?v=ff6777802811416ba08dc114e0b11837)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21849239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21849239)

~~~
Overtonwindow
Obsidian has just been better, more thought out it seems, more intuitive.

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brailsafe
At the very least it's inspiring that people are willing to pay up front for
this. To me, it seems like a powerful system, but one that could be built into
my favourite note taking app Bear for example. I'm probably not so in need of
this that I'd pay for it ln an ongoing basis, and so it probably wouldn't
occur to me to charge like that for it.

~~~
wastedhours
I love Bear, and would pay them more than twice as much as I do if they had an
Android app as well.

~~~
brailsafe
I'd love an Android app, and would probably pay recurring for it. Don't take
many notes on my phone, but just having read access would be something.

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jyriand
This is great news and inspiring. Must be one of the most popular web
applications that is written in clojurescript(at least that's what I assumed
it is written in, purely based on how to html looks like)

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skummetmaelk
Isn't this just a skin over org-mode?

