788 - 大卫·瓦加斯（RoamJS）：打造游牧生活方式

大家怎么了？

What is going on, everyone?

感谢大家收听本期《前瞻型创始人》。

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of forward thinking founders.

我很感激你们能关注我，至少在这期节目的接下来十五分钟里。

I am very grateful to have your attention, at least for the next fifteen minutes of this episode.

《前瞻型创始人》是一档播客，我会采访早期种子轮和种子阶段的创始人，聊聊他们的产品、他们想为世界打造什么，以及我们为何深入探讨他们如何分配时间、他们的愿景和创业故事等方方面面。

Forward thinking founders is a podcast where I interview a pre seed and seed stage founders about their products, what they want to build into the world, and why we dive into how they spend their time, what's their vision, what's the origin stories, all these things.

这样你们就能全面了解明天将要发生什么。

So you can learn all about what's coming tomorrow.

由于这些公司尚未达到关键规模，大多数还没有实现产品市场契合。

As these companies haven't hit critical scale yet, most of them haven't hit product market fit.

这些都只是早期阶段的公司，核心问题是：它们未来可能成为什么？

These are just early stage companies and the big question is what can this be?

而在本播客中，我们会揭示这一点。

And in this podcast, we bring that out.

那么，我希望你们能享受今天这期节目的时光。

So with that, I really hope you enjoy your time listening to today's episode.

我已经做了200多期了，如果你喜欢这期，也可以听听其他几期，比如和Amadi Kund、Austin、All Red、Leah Culver的访谈，都非常精彩。

And I've already done 200 plus so if you like this one, listen to some of the other ones like with Amadi Kund, Austin, all red, Leah Culver, we've great interviews.

快去听听吧。

So check it out.

享受这个代码库吧。

Enjoy the repository.

那么，现在让我们进入今天的节目。

And for now, let's get into today's episode.

我们开始吧。

Here we go.

好的，大家最近怎么样？

All right, how's it going, everyone?

欢迎来到另一期《前瞻型创始人》节目，在这里我们与创始人探讨他们的公司、对未来的愿景，以及这两者如何交汇。

Welcome to another episode of forward thinking founders where we talk to founders about their companies, their visions for the future and how the two collide.

今天非常高兴能与RoamJS的创始人兼创作者大卫·瓦加斯对话。

Today, very excited to be talking to David Vargas, who's the founder and creator of RoamJS.

欢迎来到节目。

Welcome to the show.

最近怎么样？

How's it going?

嘿，老兄。

Hey, man.

谢谢你的邀请。

Thank you for having me.

很高兴能来这里。

Glad to be here.

非常高兴你能来参加。

Excited to have you on.

我期待了解更多你正在做的事情。

I'm looking forward to learning more about what you are working on.

那些没听说过RoamJS的人，它是什么？

People that haven't heard of RoamJS, what is that?

你正在做什么？

What are you working on?

是的，Roam Research 是一款笔记应用。

Yeah, so Roam Research is a note taking app.

你可以把它想象成 Notion、Evernote 或 Obsidian 这样的工具。

You can think of it similar to Notion or Evernote or Obsidian.

这个领域有很多这类思维工具应用。

There's a bunch of these tools for thought apps in this space.

但 Roam 是最早允许用户在其基础上开发扩展的工具之一。

But Roam was one of the first ones to enable people building extensions on top of it.

所以你可以把 Roam 扩展理解为类似于 Chrome 浏览器扩展，只不过它是专门为 Roam 设计的。

So you can think of Roam extensions as similar to being Chrome, like Chrome extensions, but except it's specific to Roam.

就像在 Chrome 网上应用店中，你会去找一个与你首选应用集成或提供额外功能的扩展，然后点击安装；你也可以前往 RoamJS——目前最大、最全面的 Roam 扩展库，选择一个符合你需求的集成或额外功能，添加到你的 Roam 图谱中。

So just like in the Chrome Play Store, you would go and find an extension that integrates with your app of choice or does some extra feature and you just like click install now, you can go to RoamJS, which is currently the largest or most extensive library of Roam extensions, and pick a an integration or extra set of functionality, functionality specific to you that you would want to add to your Roam graph.

所以对你来说，你能对Roam做哪些自定义？或者你具体做过些什么？

So for, for you, I mean, what are some examples of things you could you could to Roam customize or what, you know, what have you done?

我自己是个Roam用户，我觉得我大概算是二级水平，满分十分的话。

I myself, I'm a Roam user, I would say I'm like, level maybe two out of 10.

我知道一些基础功能，可能比基础多一点点，但绝对称不上专家。

So like, I know the basics, I know maybe a little more than the basics, but like, I'm sure not an expert here.

那么，这个在Roam之上叠加的额外功能层，到底能做些什么呢？

So like, what are some of the things you can do with this like, extra layer on top of Roam?

是的，一些例子包括与Google日历的集成。

Yeah, so some examples include a Google Calendar integration.

如果你希望在每日笔记页面自动同步当天的日程，可以安装一个Google日历扩展，点击安装后就能导入你的Google日历事件。

So if you want to on your daily note page, be able to automatically ingest your events for today, there is a Google Calendar extension that you can then hit install and import, and it'll import your Google Calendar events.

其中一个高级扩展叫静态网站扩展，你可以把你的知识图谱内容用作个人网站的CMS，我的个人网站现在就是这么运行的——用我的Roam图谱作为内容，或者图谱的一个子集，然后点击一个按钮，UI上会显示‘部署’选项。

One of the premium extensions is called the static site extension, where you can take the contents of your web of your own graph and basically use it as a CMS for your own personal website, which is how like my my personal websites currently run now is using the Roam my Roam graph as content or a sub sub subset of that RoamGraph and then hitting a button that overlays a, like, UI button that says deploy.

我可以直接从Roam图谱中点击一个按钮，把我的图谱内容部署到我的公开网站上。

And I can just straight from the RoamGraph, click a button and deploy the contents from my own graph onto my public website.

还有介于两者之间的各种功能。

And there's like everything in between.

此外，还有一些用户可以从网站上找到的集成UI元素。

So there's also some integration UI elements that that any user could find from the site.

你是怎么决定花时间来做这个的呢？

How did you even like decide to spend spend your time creating this?

RoamJS的起源是什么？为什么选择在Roam之上开发，而不是做别的东西呢？

Like what's the origin story for RoamJS and like why, why work on top of Roam versus do something else, you know, for this specific project?

是的，我在2020年8月辞去了工作，因为我希望拥有更多的公众影响力，也能更直接地与终端用户产生联系。

Yeah, so I left my job in August 2020 on a desire to want to have more of a public presence and also to be able to work on things that connect to end users more directly.

这让我开始思考一个问题：如何完全专注于开源项目，同时还能赚钱并实现长期可持续发展？

So this led me down the road of trying to answer this question of like, how can you work exclusively on open source projects, but still make money and be sustainable long term?

于是我开始捣鼓各种不同的项目。

The so I started hacking on a bunch of different projects.

当时我已经是Roam的用户了。

I was a Roam user at the time.

这让我开始做一些 Roam 扩展。

So that led me to doing some like Roam extensions.

我做的那些用户最多、最有活力的项目，都是我开发的 Roam 扩展。

And the projects that I worked on that had the most users or had the most momentum were the Roam extensions I was creating.

所以我先发布了一个，然后又发布了一个，接着给自己定了每周发布两个的计划。

So I released like one, then another one, then I put myself on a schedule for leasing two a week.

然后我想为它们找个家，让人们能看到相关的扩展，这最终逐渐演变成了 RoamJS。

And then that then I wanted a home to house all of them so that people can like see related extensions and that inevitably iterated towards becoming RoamJS.

但我仍然把 RoamJS 看作是我自己的一个实验或游乐场，用来测试不同的想法：一个完全专注于开源内容的人，如何利用它来谋生？

But I still view RoamJS as sort of like a an experiment or a playground for myself of testing different ideas on, how somebody who's exclusively making or working on open source content, how can they use that to make a make a living?

所以，你的意思是，这其实是个实验、游乐场或者试验场，对吧？

So, I mean, you just said that this is kind of, you know, you're an experiment or playground or test ground.

在我们开始录音之前，我们就聊过，你对构建大量东西、多元化发展、尝试各种事情都很感兴趣。

And we were talking about before, before we started recording how you are like interested in building lots of stuff and diversifying and doing doing all sorts of stuff.

你一般是怎么决定把时间花在哪些事情上的呢？

Like how do you kind of think about what you wanna spend time in general?

就像你刚才解释的关于RoamJS，你知道，你为什么想做这个。

Like you just explained for RoamJS, you know, why you wanted to work on this.

但当你展望其他潜在的创意项目时，你是如何决定该投入时间和精力去构建什么的呢？

But as you kind of look at other potential creative endeavors, like how do you decide what to work on or spend your time investing and building something?

是的，这其中有两个因素。

Yeah, there's sort of two factors.

一个是我的个人兴趣，或者我遇到的问题。

One is where my own interests or problems I like run into lie.

另一个是那些知道我在做什么的人，他们是否感兴趣并愿意使用？

And then the second is what other people who know what I'm working on, are they interested in using?

所以就像我说的，我开始做Roam相关的东西，是因为我自己在用Roam，而其他人喜欢我做的东西，也想用。

So like I said, I started working on Roam stuff because I used Roam and other people liked what I was building and they wanted to be able to use it.

当我开发Roam时，网站上有一个我称为“待办列表”的页面，我会在那里列出一堆为RoamJS构思的项目点子，人们可以去资助某个具体的想法，这样就能让它排到前面，我会优先处理队列中排在最前的那个。

As I built Roam, there was this page on the website that I called the queue, where I would, like, list a bunch of project ideas that I had for RoamJS, and people can go and fund a particular project idea, and that would, like, move it up the queue So that I would prioritize whichever was on the queue and do that one next.

那个模块，就是我在RoamJS上做的那个页面，再次说明了我是在RoamJS的语境下测试这个想法。

That like module, that little yeah, that page that I had for RoamJS, it was again me testing out that idea in the context of RoamJS.

现在我想把它拆分成一个独立的产品，因为已经有几个人联系我，表达了对类似产品的兴趣。

And now I want to split that out into its own product now that I've had a couple people reach out to me expressing interest for something like that.

所以这完全是每周根据人们的兴趣方向和我自己的障碍来推进——如果我在某个领域遇到了问题，并想为自己解决，我就可以去做，然后再看看其他人是否也会感兴趣。

So it's very much, you know, week by week, filling out like where, like what people, like, where, where my conversations with others are heading and like, where my own, like, roadblocks are hitting, like, I want to, if I'm experiencing a problem in that area and want to, like, solve that for myself, I can and then see if other people would be interested as well.

这完全是在观察市场动态，同时也关注自己的兴趣。

Totally kind of reading the market and kind of your own your own interest as well.

而且说到这个，如果你展望五年、十年后的职业生涯，继续打造不同的项目，你知道，你觉得自己会处在什么样的位置？当然，现在很难预测，因为未来有太多不确定性。

And I guess, on that note, like, if you were to kind of look out five years, ten years in your career building different projects, you know, and just different things that you're doing, where you see kind of yourself in like, five years, ten years, obviously, it's really hard to know when you just, you know, there's so much going on.

但如果你必须猜测或展望一下，十年或二十年后，你觉得自己和你的项目或公司会发展到什么地步？

But like, if you had to guess, or you had to, like, project, where do you see you and your projects or companies being you know, in a decade or two?

是的。

Yeah.

你熟悉彼得·蒂尔吗？

Are you familiar with Peter levels?

当然。

Of course.

是的

Yeah.

彼得·莱弗尔斯在我心中就像一个标志性的偶像，是我希望达到的目标。

So Peter levels is very much like a like an icon or like a like an idol figure in my head of like where I would want to be.

他有一些非常鲜明的特点，比如你去他的推特个人主页看看，他会列出八个目前仍在运营并为他赚钱的应用程序。

So the some like very distinguishing properties about him is the fact that he has if you go like, go to his Twitter profile, he has like eight, like, apps that he has currently live and making money for him.

他前几天发了一条推文，说他已经发布了大约70个网页应用，但只有四到五个为他带来了收入。

He had a tweet the other day where he said that he's, like, released, like, 70 different web apps and only, four or five of them have made money for him.

这种理念就是不断尝试大量项目，直到找到真正契合目标市场的产品。

And sort of just this idea of like taking like a bunch of shots on goal until you see ones that click with with your target target market.

我希望能达到这样的境界，而目前他提到，自己通过这些累计项目每年收入约300万美元，这太惊人了。

So that's what I'm hoping to get to is and right now, I think he's saying that he's making around like 3,000,000 a year off like cumulative office projects, which is incredible.

所以我希望成为他的开源版本——拥有自己的项目组合，帮助我养活自己、支付房租等等。

And so I sort of want to be like the open source version of that where, like, yeah, I have my own like, portfolio of projects that are helping me like be able to, know, feed myself pay rent, etc, etc.

但同时，这些项目也能为它们所服务的各个市场中的用户带来帮助。

But also then are like helping people in whatever markets like those apps service.

为了帮你达成目标。

In order to kind of help you get there.

对了，Pete，我记得我刚发现Peter的时候，我就想，这家伙太厉害了，他打造的一切。

And yeah, Pete, I remember when I first discovered Peter, I'm just like, wow, this guy is such a badass, like everything that he's built.

他的那种态度，你知道的，为了达到你自己的目标，你肯定需要一些帮助，对吧？

And it's just like attitude on everything, you know, in order to kind of get to whatever that is for you, you'll need some help, right?

你需要客户，或者投资者，又或者只是路上的一些帮助。

You know, you'll need customers or maybe investors, you know, maybe just help help along the way.

所以我想问你，前瞻型创始人社区能如何帮助你实现这个目标？

So my question for you is how can the forward thinking founders community help you kind of on your journey to get there?

你在招人帮忙吗？

Are you hiring for help?

你在寻找投资者、客户还是合作伙伴？

Are you looking for investors, looking for customers or partners?

我们能怎么帮你？

You know, how can we assist?

是的，我认为最重要的是用户，因为我一直在运营。

Yeah, I think the biggest thing would be users because I operate.

所以特别是对于 RoamJS，我现在所做的一切都不是我自己的想法。

And so like, especially with RoamJS, like I'm at a point where none of the ideas that I'm working for working on are my own.

它们都是基于用户给我的反馈生成的。

They've all been generated based on feedback that users have given me.

我看到这种模式正在演变为我未来项目的一种思维方式。

And I see this evolving very much into, like, my future projects or this sort of mindset evolving into my future product projects.

因此，要获得反馈，首先需要用户。

And so in order to get feedback, need users first.

所以，我接下来正在做的产品叫《Work in Public》，我希望能很快推出。

And so, like, the next product I'm working on is called Work in Public that I'm hoping to launch relatively soon.

我非常希望能找到一些用户来使用它。

I would want like, I definitely would appreciate like getting being able to find users for that.

至于我未来做的其他项目，我也希望找到那些愿意使用并帮助我完善它的人。

And then, you know, whatever other project that I work on in the future looking for people who would be interested in, in using and trying to train it up.

如果有人想了解更多关于RoamJS的信息，或者想在互联网上关注你、找到你，他们该怎么操作？

And if someone wants to learn more about RoamJS or just follow you kind of on the internet or find you online, how can they find you?

你有网站或社交媒体账号吗？

Do you have a website, social media?

RoamJS在互联网上有官方存在吗？

Does RoamJS have an internet presence?

他们怎么才能找到你在网上正在做的项目呢？

You know, how can they kind of find what you're working on on the internet?

是的。

Yeah.

关于RoamJS，你可以访问roomjs.com找到它。

So RoamJS, you can find it at roomjs.com.

至于想更多了解我，我主要在Twitter上活跃。

And then to find out more about me, I'm mostly present on Twitter.

我的Twitter账号是twitter.com/dvargas92495。

So that's twitter.com/dvargas92495.

好的。

All right.

非常感谢你来参加这个播客。

Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.

我真的很感激。

I really appreciate it.

是的。

Yeah.

谢谢你的邀请。

Thanks for having me.