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
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
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!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the 20 Minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'm so excited for this |
| 0:04.4 | episode today. Why? Well, we use this tool for all of our research here at the 20 minute VC. It's what |
| 0:09.4 | allows us to have the linkage and the cross-references between one guest and what they say about a |
| 0:14.3 | specific topic and how we cross-reference that to another question we use in another episode. That has probably given it away in terms of the company, |
| 0:21.1 | so I'm so thrilled to welcome Connor White Sullivan, co-founder and CEO at Rome Research. The tool |
| 0:25.9 | taking over our industry, providing a seamless note-taking tool for networked thought. As I said, |
| 0:30.5 | I really do just love the tool. Prior to founding Rome, though, Connor founded two prior businesses |
| 0:34.6 | and also worked at HuffPost as a co-founder of HuffPost Labs, |
| 0:38.0 | where he reported directly to Ariana Huffington and HuffPost CTO. |
| 0:41.9 | I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Jeff Morris Jr. |
| 0:44.2 | For some amazing questions suggestions today. |
| 0:46.1 | I really do appreciate that, Jeff, and Mejito is on me to thank you. |
| 0:49.3 | But before we move into the show today, I'm sure you've heard about it, but my word, I just |
| 0:52.7 | love this product, Carter. Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, track cap tables and get |
| 0:58.9 | valuations. Go to carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% off. More than 800,000 employees |
| 1:05.5 | and shareholders use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity, and Carter now |
| 1:10.2 | offers fund administration |
| 1:11.3 | so you can see real-time data in the Carter platform and work with Carter's team of experienced fund |
| 1:16.4 | accountants. Simply go to Carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% off. And speaking of teams there, |
| 1:23.1 | did you know there will be 1.4 million job openings for developers in 2020 and that's where my friends |
| 1:28.4 | at Terminal come in. Terminal is a remote teams engine for fast-growing companies, connecting you with |
| 1:33.1 | global talent to deliver the product building powerhouse your business needs to grow. They provide |
... |
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