Roam Research

A note-taking tool for networked thought, actively used by many EA researchers.

We have previously made a grant to Roam Research. Since then, a large number of researchers and other employees at organizations working in priority areas have started using Roam and seem to have benefited a lot from it. We received a large number of positive testimonials, and I’ve also found the product to be well-designed.

Despite that, our general sense is that Roam should try to attract external funding after this round, and we are not planning to recommend future grants to Roam (mostly due to it being well-suited to seeking more broader funding).

Workflowy, but with much more power to organize your thoughts and collaborate with others.

Roam is a web application which automates the Zettelkasten method, a note-taking / document-drafting process based on physical index cards. While it is difficult to start using the system, those who do often find it extremely helpful, including a researcher at MIRI who claims that the method doubled his research productivity.

On my inside view, if Roam succeeds, an experienced user of the note-taking app Workflowy will get at least as much value switching to Roam as they got from using Workflowy in the first place. (Many EAs, myself included, see Workflowy as an integral part of our intellectual process, and I think Roam might become even more integral than Workflowy. See also Sarah Constantin’s review of Roam, which describes Roam as being potentially as “profound a mental prosthetic as hypertext”, and her more recent endorsement of Roam.)

Over the course of the last year, I’ve had intermittent conversations with Conor White-Sullivan, Roam’s CEO, about the app. I started out in a position of skepticism: I doubted that Roam would ever have active users, let alone succeed at its stated mission. After a recent update call with Conor about his LTF Fund application, I was encouraged enough by Roam’s most recent progress, and sufficiently convinced of the possible upsides of its possible success, that I decided to recommend a grant to Roam.

Since then, Roam has developed enough as a product that I’ve personally switched from Workflowy to Roam and now recommend Roam to my friends. Roam’s progress on its product, combined with its growing base of active users, has led me to feel significantly more optimistic about Roam succeeding at its mission.

(This funding will support Roam’s general operating costs, including expenses for Conor, one employee, and several contractors.)

Potential conflict of interest: Conor is a friend of mine, and I was once his housemate for a few months.