Ask Root, Episode 1: Jesse Answers Your Questions

We get a lot of questions about Root. What it is, how it works, why we built it the way we did, and where it's headed. So we started Ask Root, a series where our founder Jesse answers them directly.

This post covers everything from the first episode, in his words. You can watch the full episode on YouTube, and if you've got a question you want answered next, drop it in the comments over there.

Question: Why did you make Root?

I made Root because I grew up a massive gamer. I played tons of MMOs, so voice communication platforms were literally my home. Every single day I went on and stayed on, 24/7.

Back then we were using platforms like Ventrilo and TeamSpeak, and today we use newer ones. But the truth is, in the last 20 years, nothing has changed. All of these platforms offer the same basic tools: voice and text chat.

Being part of an MMO, I knew that to be successful you need so much more than that. Imagine you're part of an MMO guild. Every week you're recruiting new members, planning and hosting raids, and tracking loot for everyone in the guild so each person gets a fair shot. You're doing all of these things beyond just voice and text chat.

So to me, I fundamentally believe it's the responsibility of a communication platform to give you all of those tools for success. Not just the raw and basic chatting services, but everything you need to win, no matter what your community is trying to achieve.

Question: How is Root different from other platforms?

If I take a step back, there's a big philosophical difference. I think the others started off saying, "We are a gaming voice platform, and we are delivering you this fixed box, this fixed solution. Here you go. If it meets your needs, great. If it doesn't, then oh well."

From the beginning, Root took the complete opposite approach. We knew every community is different. So from the first line of code we wrote, we thought about it in every layer of the technology: how do we make it as easy as possible for people to come onto our platform, make it their own, and make it unique to them?

The way we did that is by building a highly integrated app model into Root, where any developer or user can take an idea for any tool they need and easily build it in. From the start, Root was designed to be built on top of, not handed over as a fixed solution. It is a tool to build with.

Question: Why does Root sell user data?

We do not sell user data. We never have, and we never will.

Everything about that has been a rumor spread on Twitter and YouTube, from people commenting on our older privacy policies that we were using as placeholders because we weren't officially in open beta yet.

But all you need to know is that we never did that, and we never will.

Question: Why is Root closed source?

The truth is, we believe we're building something extremely powerful and innovative. The team has spent years pouring in tons of passion to make this technology possible, to the point that even major companies haven't tried something like this.

Ultimately, this technology is what gives us our edge, and we need to make sure our competitors can't just come in and rip us off.

Question: What are Root Apps?

Root apps are our primary way to let a community fully customize their experience. These are full blown graphical applications. Think buttons, dropdowns, lists, animations, and everything you'd expect of a running app, embedded directly into your community for any need you have.

On Root, those are expressed as different types of channels. Just like you're used to text channels and voice channels, on Root you also have app channels. Any app that someone makes, or that you find on the platform, is just represented as a different channel type.

Look at this right now: if I go into my channel list and click suggestions, this whole graphical experience, with all of these pending suggestions and the ability to upvote and add comments, is a complete custom experience built outside of Root. But it just shows up as an app channel. So I can switch between a text channel and an app channel in a single click.

With that power, you could truly do anything on the platform. If you're a developer, you can build anything you want. If you're a community leader, you can go into our app store and add any tool. Need a calendar? Click and add the calendar. Need a raid planner? Click and add the raid planner. Any experience you can think of can be made and added onto Root.

Question: How does Root make money?

First things first, we do not charge for things like animated profile pictures, emojis, or colors. Our rule is simple: we only charge for things that actually cost us money. For example, high quality streaming and the app hosting platform.

And our job is to make sure that when a developer builds something great, they can make money from it.

Question: Why is it called Root?

I see every day online that people think Root stems from a tree, or something more organic. We definitely thought about that in the early days, but that wasn't the direction we were going.

On a computer, the root user is like the super user, so they have ultimate control. They can customize anything and change anything they want. We wanted a name that represents exactly that: when you're in a community, you can do anything you want and customize anything.

Question: Can I self-host my own community?

Today you can't self-host, but it's not because we don't think it's a good idea. We actually really want you to be able to.

In the early days, we wanted to make the experience as easy as possible for someone who isn't technical to get started and be successful. And as a small team, we needed to start somewhere. So we started with the route of, let us help you, host it, and manage it for you.

But down the road, like I said, Root is all about customization and root access. So we're thinking deeply about how we enable all of those experiences in the future.

Question: What is your favorite Root feature?

Besides apps, of course, the thing I'm most proud of is what I call the system tray. This is basically the idea that we can allow extreme multitasking on our platform.

On Root, you could be in a community hanging out with your friends, and when another friend DMs you, you could have a conversation side by side, in your DMs and in your community, without ever losing context or needing to jump around.

Question: Why can't I use Root from my browser?

Today, Root is available everywhere. On desktop, you can download it for Windows, Mac, or Linux. On mobile, you can download it for iOS or Android.

On the desktop side, the reason we didn't start with the browser is that we wanted to make Root as performant as possible. Many other communication platforms use Electron, which is known for bad performance and bad memory usage. By being fully native, Root can optimize memory usage far more than any cross platform technology. That's why we started there.

That said, we fully intend to make a browser version for users who can't download, or don't want to download, software to their computers.

Question: What is one Root App you'd love to see?

This is something I've been thinking about for a long time, and I think it's fully possible to do as a Root app, so I'm excited to try it in the future.

Today, when you think about a community online, it's very much a 2D space. People are typing messages, you're in a flat UI, and it's all very flat. But even in that flat world, it's still vibrant. There's so much going on. People are typing, people are talking, you're hopping around different channels. So I always thought it was interesting: could you represent all of that in a whole new visualization? Could you elevate it to a 3D world?

I always had this idea of transforming an online community into a 3D town. Think SimCity. Every text channel and voice channel becomes a building, and every member is a little 3D figure walking around doing things. When a new member joins, that could be a taxi driving into town and the member hopping out to roam around. When someone starts typing in a channel, their mini figure heads over to that building and you see 3D chat bubbles appear over their head. You could do fun things too, like if you ban a member, maybe the police come and drive them out of town.

You could take all of this live data and visualize it in a complete 3D space, giving you a completely different perspective on what's happening. I think this is really cool because it would be the first time you could moderate a community in 3D. You're no longer restricted to seeing text messages in one channel. In 3D, you can see all of the messages and everything people are doing at once, and moderate in a much richer world.

I feel like there's a whole untouched world in taking 2D spaces and making them 3D, and it's a really fun use of the app platform.

Question: What else is on the roadmap for 2026?

We can't share all of our secrets yet. But I can share a couple: apps on mobile, third party apps, community discovery, and Root Sudo.

That's a wrap on the first episode of Ask Root. Thanks to everyone who sent questions, especially the ones that pushed us to explain ourselves clearly.

Want your question answered in the next episode? Head to the YouTube video and leave it in the comments. It might be the one we open with. See you in Episode 2.