The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: How Roam Research Analyse Product Design, Team-Building, The Future of Collaboration Tools & Applying Tesla Go-To-Market To Roam with Conor White-Sullivan, Founder & CEO @ Roam Research

16 snips

May 8, 2020

Conor White-Sullivan, Founder & CEO of Roam Research, shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting how high school wrestling shaped his resilience. He discusses Roam's unique product philosophy, emphasizing that it’s not just about taking better notes but fostering deeper connections. Conor also reveals his hiring criteria centered on grit and self-directed learning, explaining the benefits of living with his team. Finally, he analyzes the trends in collaboration tools, pondering whether the future lies in bundling or unbundling these essential resources.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Origins of Roam

Roam Research stems from White-Sullivan's long-standing interest in collective intelligence and group wisdom.
His initial venture aimed to crowdsource policy proposals for local governments.

INSIGHT

Roam's Purpose

Roam Research focuses on improving thinking, not just note-taking.
It allows users to build a network of thoughts, facilitating collaboration with their past and future selves.

ADVICE

Product Design Philosophy

Design products with "low floors and high ceilings," like Excel.
Make it easy to start, but allow for increasing complexity and power as users learn.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Conor White-Sullivan is the Founder & CEO @ Roam Research, the tool taking over our industry providing a seamless note-taking tool for networked thought. Prior to founding Roam, Conor founded 2 prior businesses and also worked at HuffPost as a Co-Founder of HuffPost Labs where he reported directly to Arianna Huffington and HuffPost CTO.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Conor's high school wrestling career taught him "how to win"? What was the founding story with Roam? How does Conor think about when to stay true to the vision and persist vs when to give up?

2.) How does Conor think about the product design philosophy they have @ Roam? Conor has said before, "Roam is not about taking better notes", what is Roam about then? How does Conor think about the importance of adding challenge to a product? What does he mean when he discusses the importance of "low floors and high ceilings" with regards to product design?

3.) How would Conor analyse his own hiring and team-building philosophy? Why are the two most important traits, "girt and autodidacts"?How does Conor really stress these two characteristics in an interview process? Why does Conor choose to live with the team? What are the benefits of this?

4.) Does Conor believe we are in a phase of bundling or unbundling when it comes to collaboration tools? Does Conor believe we will see large players acquire and consolidate over the coming months? Why does Conor compare Roam more to Google than other collaboration tools?

5.) How does Conor think about go-to-market today? What were some of Conor's biggest takeaways for bootstrapping for years with revenue from customers? Why is Conor borrowing from the Tesla GTM? What does that really mean in practice?

Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

Conor's Fave Book: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Conor and on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.