# roam research: history

> the company, sourced and dated — founding, funding, product, community, and the quiet years.

## origins and founding (2008–2019)

localocracy, huffington post, the white house, five broke years — conaw spends a decade circling collective intelligence before roam exists in public.

- 2008 — localocracy: umass amherst anthropology students conor white-sullivan, adam white, and davis bucher found localocracy — 'everyone is an expert about something' — an online town common for verified-resident civic discussion. the obsession that becomes roam is already visible: structured deliberation, not another feed. (confirmed; sources: [umass start-up website bought by huffington post](https://dailycollegian.com/2011/10/umass-start-up-website-bought-by-huffington-post/), [huffington post acquires localocracy](https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/03/huffington-post-hits-37-million-monthly-visitors-1-billion-pageviews-acquires-localocracy/))
- 2009 — the ignite talk: a five-minute ignite amherst talk — twenty slides, 'the reckless confidence of a 21 year old' — lays out tech, media, and political power. conaw reposts it a decade later: 'still stand by most of this.' (confirmed; sources: [ignite amherst talk on tech, media, and political power](https://twitter.com/conaw/status/1265893478321385473))
- 2010-07-29 — tedxboston: localocracy: at tedxboston, conaw presents localocracy as civic infrastructure — the earliest surviving video of the founder's pitch style: earnest, fast, systems-level. (confirmed; sources: [tedxboston — conor white-sullivan — localocracy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb6PMb-cL5o))
- 2011-10-03 — the huffpost acquisition: aol's huffington post media group acquires localocracy. conaw is 23. he later describes the outcome as selling early and feeling 'like a fraud' — five broke years follow. (confirmed; sources: [huffington post acquires localocracy](https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/03/huffington-post-hits-37-million-monthly-visitors-1-billion-pageviews-acquires-localocracy/), [the conor mcgregor / 'i was broke' thread](https://threadreaderapp.com/user/Conaw))
- 2012 — the white house years: conaw writes for the obama white house blog on participatory democracy — the archived author page survives. the through-line from localocracy to roam: build the medium, change the reasoning. (reported; sources: [conor white-sullivan author archive](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/author/conor-white-sullivan))
- 2014 — the anthropology detour: between civic projects conaw spends roughly nine months embedded in evangelical communities — anthropological fieldwork on how belief systems organize. the religious-education themes in roam's cult framing start here. (reported; sources: [networked thought with conor white-sullivan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=polm57MvmRE))
- 2016 — meeting joshua brown: at 42 (the coding school), conaw meets joshua brown and shows him a prototype. brown becomes the co-founder — 'if had been no @localocracy there would be no @roamresearch,' but josh builds the thing. (reported; sources: [how i met my co-founder (origin thread)](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1176276601048199168.html))
- 2017 — conaw starts roam: conaw begins roam in clojurescript and datascript — a local-first, event-sourced architecture he will later describe candidly as 'changing the engine on an airplane in flight.' funding comes from ai-safety-community grants and contracts, not vc. (reported; sources: [the local-first architecture thread](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1380087612652675073), [roam wefunder campaign page](https://web.archive.org/web/20211229192736/https://wefunder.com/roam))
- 2018 — the white paper: 'we wrote this white paper in winter of 2017/2018': an online workspace for organizing and evaluating knowledge as a directed graph, built for 'collaborative reasoning, allowing groups to build shared mental maps.' co-authored with journalist richard meadows, who becomes roam's first investor. (confirmed; sources: [the roam research white paper (mirror)](https://heckler.roam.garden/@white-paper/), [the roam research white paper](https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/dZ72V0Ig6))
- 2018-07-18 — the first demos: the earliest dated public demo videos appear — a working product a full year before the public beta, while the company is still two people and a vision. (confirmed; sources: [roam demo, july 18 2018](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwI5mu39U3w))
- 2018-12-25 — 365 propositions: the '365 propositions' thread begins: hundreds of numbered daily propositions — 'the set of thinkable thoughts is vanishingly small,' on consent, communal living, attention. public thinking before the product, and the thread-as-publication form he will use for years. (confirmed; sources: [365 propositions](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1077392657494593537.html))
- 2019-02-23 — the evernote rant: the 45-tweet evernote rant — 'writing isn't just a tool for communication. first and foremost, writing is a tool for thinking' — becomes the white paper's own 'related twitter thread' citation and the mission's most-quoted line. (confirmed; sources: [why evernote is a terrible second brain](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1099181050045952006.html), [the roam research white paper (mirror)](https://heckler.roam.garden/@white-paper/))
- 2019-05-18 — the zettelkasten thread: the zettelkasten thread ties roam to luhmann — 'it's like the gtd for intellectual progress' — and opens the invite spigot. 'you can't put a deadline on insight though.' (confirmed; sources: [the zettelkasten thread](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1129788853189955584.html))
- 2019-09-05 — the origin thread: the origin thread: how he met josh, the prototype, the co-founder offer — 'just started bringing in users from the public a couple months ago.' (confirmed; sources: [how i met my co-founder (origin thread)](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1176276601048199168.html))

## breakout and the cult (2019–2020)

invite beta to public launch to full-blown #roamcult — the fastest belief a note-taking tool ever acquired.

- 2019-11-04 — hn finds roam: the first sizable hacker news thread on the roam beta — 123 points, mostly curiosity about what a 'tool for networked thought' even is. (confirmed; sources: [roam: tool for thinking](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21440289))
- 2019-12-17 — the forte interview: tiago forte interviews conaw — an hour of demo and debate on knowledge management and privacy. conor calls it 'first time i've publicly spoken about roam!' (confirmed; sources: [interview with conor white-sullivan, founder of roam](https://fortelabs.com/blog/interview-with-conor-white-sullivan-founder-of-roam/))
- 2020-01-10 — product hunt launch: product hunt launch: #2 product of the day, 363 upvotes — 'easy as a doc, powerful as a graph database.' (confirmed; sources: [roam research on product hunt](https://www.producthunt.com/products/roam-research))
- 2020-01-18 — the nat eliason post: nat eliason's 'roam: why i love it and how i use it' becomes the canonical onboarding document — 288 hn points — and drives a visible sign-up wave. his effortless output course follows: the biggest business the hype produced. (confirmed; sources: [roam: why i love it and how i use it](https://www.nateliason.com/blog/roam), [roam: why i love it and how i use it (discussion)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22104366), [effortless output in roam](https://www.effortlessoutput.com/))
- 2020-03-30 — obsidian's first beta: obsidian ships its first beta — local-first, plain markdown, free — and begins absorbing the pragmatists roam's price and cloud alienate. days later org-roam ports the idea into emacs: the clones arrive before the pricing does. (confirmed; sources: [obsidian — a private and flexible writing app](https://obsidian.md/about), [org-roam: rudimentary roam replica with org-mode](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767658))
- 2020-05 — the waitlist and the clones: a thomas frank video drives a sign-up surge; a data-loss incident follows; roam pauses sign-ups entirely — scarcity becomes distribution. logseq's first commits land the same month: free, open-source, local-first. (confirmed; sources: [roam to pause new sign-ups](https://francescod.medium.com/roam-to-pause-new-sign-ups-7169fbc342a3), [roam newsletter: gates reopening](https://roamresearch.substack.com/p/roam-newsletter-gates-reopening-the), [logseq/logseq](https://github.com/logseq/logseq))
- 2020-06 — pricing and the believer plan: pricing goes live: $15/mo, $165/yr, and the $500 five-year 'believer' plan — rob litterst calls it 'the cult packaging playbook,' jack baty pays it while 'twitchy,' and foam takes 699 hn points as the open-source answer. (confirmed; sources: [roam research's cult packaging strategy](https://goodbetterbest.substack.com/p/roam-research-the-cult-packaging), [so, i went with roam research and am a true believer](https://baty.net/posts/2020/06/went-with-roam-research/), [foam: open-source roam alternative](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23666950))
- 2020-07-27 — $1m arr in six weeks: roam reportedly reaches ~$1m arr six weeks after paid plans launch — community-reported, never officially published. (reported; sources: [roam reaches $1m arr in 6 weeks](https://www.indiehackers.com/post/roam-research-reaches-1m-arr-in-6-weeks-20faee74e6))
- 2020-11 — the roam book club: the roam book club: 1,700+ signups, ~200 simultaneous editors on how to take smart notes — multiplayer as community ritual and stress test. (reported; sources: [a book club like no other](https://world.hey.com/ashchedrin/a-book-club-like-no-other-bf65985f))

## the 200m seed (2020)

a ~$9m round at a ~$200m valuation makes roam the symbol of the tools-for-thought bubble — for believers and skeptics alike.

- 2020-09-11 — the $9m at $200m seed: sec form d confirms the round the information reported: roughly $9m at a ~$200m valuation — ~25x the median seed price. roam becomes the era's favorite example of both conviction and froth. (confirmed; sources: [roam research form d](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1824172/000182417220000001/0001824172-20-000001-index.htm), [a $200 million seed valuation for roam](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/a-200-million-seed-valuation-for-roam-shows-investor-frenzy-for-note-taking-apps), [roam research could be the future of note-taking](https://thehustle.co/09142020-roam-research))
- 2020-09-19 — the ecosystem blueprint: the post-raise thread: new backend, api and multiplayer, the roam fellowship (first fellow dhrumil mehta), and $2m for a roam fund — $1m balance sheet, $1m option pool. ecosystem-builder mode at full throttle. (confirmed; sources: [api, fellowship, and the roam fund](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1307107745397604354))
- 2021-01-23 — roamgames: roamgames: $10,000 every two weeks for three months to community builders 'whose public work pushes the frontier the farthest' — the cult economy formalized. (confirmed; sources: [roamgames announcement](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1352824113019056129.html))

## plateau and competition (2021–2023)

multiplayer, extensions, and mobile ship slowly while obsidian, logseq, and tana take the frontier — and the founder argues with his critics in public.

- 2021-04-08 — the architecture confession: the architecture thread admits the technical debt in public: the 2017 local-first, event-stream backend still underneath — 'like changing the engine on an airplane in flight.' (confirmed; sources: [the local-first architecture thread](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1380087612652675073))
- 2021-04-16 — the depot promise: roam depot 'this week, if god wills it, inshallah' — revenue share for plugin authors, a $10k e2ee bounty. the depot actually ships fifteen months later. (confirmed; sources: [roam depot and the e2ee bounty](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1371019347355783173.html))
- 2021-04-26 — the community round: the wefunder community round: $1,256,376 from 760 investors — customers as shareholders. the campaign page discloses crypto treasury and campus-buying plans under 'reasons not to invest.' (confirmed; sources: [roam wefunder campaign page](https://web.archive.org/web/20211229192736/https://wefunder.com/roam), [roam research crowdfunding campaign oversubscribed](https://www.businessinsider.com/roam-research-crowdfunding-campaign-oversubscribed-2021-4))
- 2021-05-06 — no roadmaps: 'why i said no to roadmaps': the map-of-questions doctrine — plus an acknowledged dead roadmap page. 'dangers of link-rot.' (confirmed; sources: [why i said no to roadmaps](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1390228109140574208.html))
- 2021-10-04 — the subreddit bans: the subreddit bans thread: conor explains banning critics from r/roamresearch in long form. founder-as-moderator becomes the controversy the product can't ship past. (confirmed; sources: [the subreddit bans thread](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1445301361994833920.html))
- 2021-12-29 — the ceo confessional: the ceo confessional — 29 tweets: 'three times i've written drafts of this thread in my roam, and three times i've failed to publish it.' 'the reddit revolutionaries were actually right.' (confirmed; sources: [the ceo confessional](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1476090219321380865.html))
- 2022-01-29 — encrypted graphs: encrypted graphs ship — e2e for new graphs — after community pressure including alexander rink's public encryption work. (confirmed; sources: [e2e-encryption for roam research](https://www.goedel.io/p/e2e-encryption-for-roam-research), [roam change log](https://roamdocs.fyi/help/change-log.md))
- 2022-02-12 — the fall of roam: dan shipper's 'the fall of roam' — the canonical departure essay by a former daily user: crufty links, slow velocity, weak mobile, 'well-documented community issues.' (confirmed; sources: [the fall of roam](https://every.to/superorganizers/the-fall-of-roam))
- 2022-07-15 — roam depot ships: roam depot finally launches — the extension marketplace, fifteen months after 'this week, inshallah.' (confirmed; sources: [roam change log](https://roamdocs.fyi/help/change-log.md), [roam-research/roam-depot](https://github.com/Roam-Research/roam-depot))
- 2022-10-13 — obsidian 1.0: obsidian 1.0 takes 1,329 hn points and 566 comments — larger than any roam thread ever. the market votes with its files. (confirmed; sources: [obsidian 1.0](https://obsidian.md/1.0), [why note-taking apps don't make us smarter](https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/25/23845590/note-taking-apps-ai-chat-distractions-notion-roam-mem-obsidian))
- 2023-02-08 — the 30-demos sprint: the 30-demos sprint with nikita prokopov: thirty tweet-sized demos of small improvements — the last public building-in-public burst. (confirmed; sources: [the 30-demos sprint with nikitonsky](https://threadreaderapp.com/user/Conaw))
- 2023-08-24 — the believer postmortems: casey newton's platformer postmortem — 'i waited for the insights to come. and waited. and waited.' — the definitive critical text by a believer. david pierce's same-titled verge piece follows two days later. (confirmed; sources: [why note-taking apps don't make us smarter](https://www.platformer.news/why-note-taking-apps-dont-make-us/), [why note-taking apps don't make us smarter](https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/25/23845590/note-taking-apps-ai-chat-distractions-notion-roam-mem-obsidian))

## the quiet years (2024–)

the product keeps running, the founder goes quiet, agents arrive, and the idea outlives the company that carried it.

- 2024-05-12 — the community postmortem: 'what comes after roam's renaissance?' on lesswrong: 'the hype was replaced by dramas, scandals, and rants' — and loyalists praising the 'lack of new features.' the post-peak community writes its own obituary. (reported; sources: [what comes after roam's renaissance?](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CoqFpaorNHsWxRzvz/what-comes-after-roam-s-renaissance))
- 2024-07-24 — the credential-stuffing attack: a credential-stuffing attack forces a password reset across the service — the quiet era's loudest incident. (confirmed; sources: [roam change log](https://roamdocs.fyi/help/change-log.md))
- 2025-02-03 — the successor's raise: tana — built in part by figures from the roam community — raises $25m with a 160k waitlist: the demand roam created, monetized by a successor. (confirmed; sources: [tana snaps up $25m with its ai-powered knowledge graph](https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/03/tana-snaps-up-25m-with-its-ai-powered-knowledge-graph-for-work-racking-up-a-160k-waitlist/), [tana — the all-in-one workspace with supertags](https://tana.inc/))
- 2025-05-18 — the privacy exchange: the fall-of-roam repost cycle on hn surfaces the privacy exchange: a commenter claims an employee name in his graph's access logs; roam's engineer and co-founder josh brown respond — strict no-access policy since 2021, e2e graphs since january 2022. (confirmed; sources: [the fall of roam (2022) repost](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44023423), [ghsa-q4ch-vxxv-mx3h — firebase storage exposure](https://github.com/Roam-Research/issues/security/advisories/GHSA-q4ch-vxxv-mx3h))
- 2026 — agents arrive: roam tools: roam tools — the official mcp server and cli — connects claude and cursor-style agents to a graph through the desktop app's local api: semantic search, extension-registered ai tools. the most substantive ai-era product line roam has shipped. (reported; sources: [roam-research/roam-tools](https://github.com/Roam-Research/roam-tools), [roam-tools changelog](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Roam-Research/roam-tools/master/CHANGELOG.md))
- 2026-04-04 — the idea reopens: karpathy's llm-wiki gist restates the thesis for agents: an llm-maintained, interlinked markdown wiki as 'a persistent, compounding artifact' — 'the wiki is the codebase.' the idea reopens with a machine holding the links. (confirmed; sources: [llm-wiki.md](https://gist.github.com/karpathy/442a6bf555914893e9891c11519de94f))

AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.

Canonical page: https://hraness.com/roam-research/history


Published by @ben in profile revision 1.
Original document: https://hraness.com/roam-research/history
Original credited author: Hraness
AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.

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'obsidian is the ide; the llm is the programmer; the wiki is the codebase.'","originalId":"src-karpathy-llm-wiki","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2026-04-04"},"publisher":"github gist","title":"llm-wiki.md","type":"primary","url":"https://gist.github.com/karpathy/442a6bf555914893e9891c11519de94f"},{"author":null,"id":"source-1d515c37bc5029e3bc20","note":"the acquisition that anchors conaw's pre-roam history: localocracy — 'everyone is an expert about something' — sold to aol's huffington post media group.","originalId":"src-localocracy-acquisition","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2011-10-03"},"publisher":"techcrunch","title":"huffington post acquires localocracy","type":"reporting","url":"https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/03/huffington-post-hits-37-million-monthly-visitors-1-billion-pageviews-acquires-localocracy/"},{"author":null,"id":"source-8f31f37975b2c680474a","note":"the student-paper record: umass amherst founders, ages, and lead engineer jay 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couple months ago.'","originalId":"src-conaw-origin-thread","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2019-09-05"},"publisher":"threadreader app","title":"how i met my co-founder (origin thread)","type":"archive","url":"https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1176276601048199168.html"},{"author":"conor white-sullivan","id":"source-d4d1bd555f5c7a731d75","note":"the readable export of the white paper — 'we wrote this white paper in winter of 2017/2018'; co-authored with journalist richard meadows, who became roam's first investor.","originalId":"src-whitepaper-mirror","published":{"precision":"year","text":"2018"},"publisher":"roam garden (mirror)","title":"the roam research white paper (mirror)","type":"archive","url":"https://heckler.roam.garden/@white-paper/"},{"author":"conor white-sullivan","id":"source-8c2e01b550dff7a79209","note":"the living thread-as-publication: hundreds of numbered daily propositions on thinking, consent, communal living, and the limits of thinkable thoughts — public thinking before the product.","originalId":"src-365-propositions","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2018-12-25"},"publisher":"threadreader app","title":"365 propositions","type":"archive","url":"https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1077392657494593537.html"},{"author":"conor white-sullivan","id":"source-439919c3214788640c82","note":"the 45-tweet thesis the white paper itself links as 'related twitter thread': 'writing isn't just a tool for communication. first and foremost, writing is a tool for thinking.'","originalId":"src-evernote-rant","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2019-02-23"},"publisher":"threadreader app","title":"why evernote is a terrible second brain","type":"archive","url":"https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1099181050045952006.html"},{"author":"conor white-sullivan","id":"source-0dcd4567f6bef69a9d28","note":"'the zettelkasten — it's like the gtd for intellectual progress' — the thread that tied roam to luhmann and opened invites, naming joshua brown as 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(cik 0001824172), form d filed september 11, 2020 — the hard anchor under the $200m story.","originalId":"src-sec-form-d","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2020-09-11"},"publisher":"sec edgar","title":"roam research form d","type":"primary","url":"https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1824172/000182417220000001/0001824172-20-000001-index.htm"},{"author":"trung t. phan","id":"source-53200aa61b2333774e76","note":"'roam research could be the future of note-taking': profitable, 11 staff, five yc rejections — the raise set beside notion's $2b and coda's $636m.","originalId":"src-hustle-roam","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2020-09-14"},"publisher":"the hustle","title":"roam research could be the future of note-taking","type":"reporting","url":"https://thehustle.co/09142020-roam-research"},{"author":"dan shipper","id":"source-0d00890920d27407944a","note":"the canonical departure essay by a former daily user: crufty links, slow velocity, weak mobile, 'well-documented community 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exposure","type":"primary","url":"https://github.com/Roam-Research/issues/security/advisories/GHSA-q4ch-vxxv-mx3h"},{"author":null,"id":"source-5f46af928494a7fef749","note":"the market's verdict: obsidian 1.0 took 1,329 hn points and 566 comments — larger than any roam thread ever.","originalId":"src-obsidian-1","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2022-10-13"},"publisher":"obsidian","title":"obsidian 1.0","type":"primary","url":"https://obsidian.md/1.0"},{"author":null,"id":"source-f1d6470ea002fbd3c489","note":"tana's $25m and a 160k waitlist — the demand roam created, monetized by a successor.","originalId":"src-tana-25m","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2025-02-03"},"publisher":"techcrunch","title":"tana snaps up $25m with its ai-powered knowledge graph","type":"reporting","url":"https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/03/tana-snaps-up-25m-with-its-ai-powered-knowledge-graph-for-work-racking-up-a-160k-waitlist/"},{"author":null,"id":"source-6a7b3a23e909e9a8bca7","note":"the fall-of-roam repost cycle plus the privacy exchange: a commenter claims an employee name in his graph's access logs; roam's engineer and co-founder josh brown respond — strict no-access policy since 2021, e2e graphs since january 2022.","originalId":"src-hn-fall-repost","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2025-05-18"},"publisher":"hacker news","title":"the fall of roam (2022) repost","type":"community","url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44023423"},{"author":"alexander rink","id":"source-0fee16710ad2d2ff5e41","note":"the community-built e2e pressure: media urls and firebase exposure documented, then roam shipped native encrypted graphs.","originalId":"src-rink-e2e","published":{"precision":"month","text":"2022-01"},"publisher":"goedel.io","title":"e2e-encryption for roam research","type":"community","url":"https://www.goedel.io/p/e2e-encryption-for-roam-research"},{"author":"nat eliason","id":"source-99dba43a1964f96c416a","note":"the biggest commercial artifact the hype produced: effortless output in roam — 4,400+ students self-reported, a course business built on one essay.","originalId":"src-effortless-output","published":{"precision":"year","text":"2020"},"publisher":"effortlessoutput.com","title":"effortless output in roam","type":"community","url":"https://www.effortlessoutput.com/"},{"author":"conor white-sullivan","id":"source-54aa117bfa17c6bb2e56","note":"the february 2023 shipping sprint with nikita prokopov: '30 tweet sized demos of small improvements and experiments' — the last public building-in-public burst.","originalId":"src-30-demos","published":{"precision":"day","text":"2023-02-08"},"publisher":"threadreader app","title":"the 30-demos sprint with nikitonsky","type":"archive","url":"https://threadreaderapp.com/user/Conaw"}]}
````