Three Lessons from Roam Research
Be Polarizing, Be Petty, and Be Prolific
A week ago, Conor White-Sullivan, the co-founder and CEO of Roam Research announced he was baptized into the Mormon Church. I wanted to congratulate and celebrate Conor for this moment, by writing a blog post about three lessons I learned from him and Roam.
Be Polarizing
For startups, it is better to be loved by some and hated by most than for everyone to sort of like you. The most common case is indifference โ no one even knows you exist.
Conor was polarizing both intentionally and unintentionally. This drove a huge amount of awareness and, eventually, adoption for Roam.
Conor beefing with Tiago Forte (how I originally found out about Roam):
Conor calling out Notion and Notionโs CEO, Ivan.
Conor calling Obsidian a โcheap knockoffโ.
Conor calling out me and Athens when we announced we got into YC.
Every time Conor called out me and Athens, we got a boost in traffic and usage, so I definitely saw it as a good thing. Furthermore, while blasting me on Twitter, Conor would be DMing me advice on Clojure libraries and architecture often at the exact same time.
In addition to beefing with people to intentionally create controversy, Conor is polarizing by unapologetically posting unhinged Tweets. Nothing is sacred for Conor โ religion, politics, drugs, conspiracy theories, etc. I donโt agree with his object-level takes, but I respect the disagreeableness.
I donโt think I am too polarizing on social media, nowhere near as close as Conor. That said, I recall that one of my nicknames at university was โPolarizing Jeff Tang.โ I did some user research with one of my upperclassmen friends to find out why:
Be Petty
From the examples above, you can already tell that Conor can be pretty petty. Iโd like to reflect on how I was petty.
If you didnโt know, I started Athens after interviewing at Roam, in large part because I wanted some sort of revenge on Conor.
Basically, Conor kept on showing up late or not at all to our interviews and then some time later would email/DM me to rescheduleโฆ
Even though I knew Conor was probably just disorganized and very ADHD โ hence, why heโs a note-taking app founder โ I still took it personally because I thought my time deserved more respect. I also didnโt believe that someone who ran an interview process that way would be able to build a company and scale themself.
โBe Pettyโ is a cynical framing. Positive reframes might be: have a โchip on your shoulderโ or an โunderdog mentalityโ.
Conor definitely has a fighter spirit and an underdog mentality as an Irish-Bostonian. I think most founders have something to prove to themselves and to others, including myself.
You know what they say โ Men will literally make a note-taking app startup instead of going to therapy.
Be Prolific
I think the golden era of Roam, Athens, and note-taking culture was in 2020, when Athens got started. I feel like Roam and Athens and everyone was building in public and feeding off of each other. The energy was electric and to this day one of the most energetic periods of my life, despite being trapped at home with my parents in a world that was unraveling from COVID.
Conor wrote threads and even threads of threads about Roam, the nature of knowledge and thinking, and collective intelligence. He made a lot of sense and no sense at all โ but the crazy genius vibes were there.
As an aside, I think one of my favorite threads of Conorโs, though, is his thread on programming languages. I recommend reading it some time.
Be prolific โ this was the greatest lesson I learned from Conor.
Athens came to life because I was building in public, shipping weekly, and posting all our updates and product demos on Twitter. It was the funnest period of my life.
Athens stopped being fun when we turned inward and stopped building in public (and also because I burnt out as underpaid open-source maintainers do).
I am having a lot of fun again thinking in public with this newsletter.
Iโll probably stop building in public again at some point. It can be a lot of meta-work, and really is only worth it as an entrepreneur if your audience is your customers. Itโs important to not let meta-work get in the way of real work. (This one goes out to the productivity nerds still configuring every template, keybinding, color scheme, plugin, and workflow of their text editors and note-taking apps.)
But if itโs useful and it gives you energy, which it does for me, then Iโll keep building in public until that changes.
Conclusion
In summary, here are actionable tips for these lessons:
Be Polarizing
Get into fights with internet strangers.
Free associate your thoughts on the internet using your real name and profile picture on topics such as politics, drugs, religion, race, and gender.
Be Petty
Get revenge on a company by interviewing there, getting rejected, and then creating an open-source competitor.
Keep a list of rejections of companies that didnโt hire you, investors that passed on you, people that didnโt follow you back, and dates that ghosted you. Print their faces out and stick it on your walls. Vow to make them regret it.
Build a (note-taking app) startup instead of going to therapy. Avoid relationships and emotional development at all costs.
Be Prolific
Tweet unhinged threads and rants, especially at the end of long benders.
Write newsletters and threads every week.
Post daily on Instagram and TikTok too. The kids need to know you exist.
The above was mostly a joke.
But this part is serious: I am where I am today because of Roam and the lessons I learned.
Thank you Conor, and god bless.
Great post! Was cool getting a glimpse behind-the-scenes of the Athens-Roam drama โย reminds me of the "disagreeable giver" archetype from Adam Grant's book.
I've also been thinking about meta-work getting in the way of real work myself recently (https://kzhai.substack.com/p/062-i-havent-been-taking-real-risks). I think the optimal strat is to lead a life where you're having so much fun that there's no room to wallow in the meta-work.
Anyway, hyped that you're feeling that Athens-era energy again!