Roots is a social platform and event infrastructure connecting founders, talent, investors, and enterprises.
San Francisco's advantage is its network. Roots gives you that network wherever you live.
of the top-20 most valuable U.S. unicorns have an immigrant founder.
of California unicorn employees are not based in California.
of the top-100 most valuable U.S. unicorns have a foreign-born founder — ≈77% of value (~$1.5T).
of all U.S. unicorn founders were born outside the United States.
East Lansing, MI 
St. Louis, MO 
Moweaqua, IL 
St. Louis, MO 
St. Louis, MO 
New Lisbon, WI 
Evanston, IL 
Thailand · Kentucky · Oregon 
Columbia, MO 
Madison, WI Event infra to host events from small to massive, leveraging data enrichment and AI for prospecting and matchmaking.
Enriched data on places, affinities, history, and connection strength.
Search your network and networks shared with you in plain language.
Join groups and forums of alumni, industry, hometown, backers, or affinities.
Vetted candidates, and industry groups of executives who work with startups.
Keep lists, notes and contact details for your network in Roots.
Add affinities/origins and import networks enriched by proprietary data
Query a shared network with AI to source talent and partners, build a CRM, find emails
Meet people IRL and online with shared roots
Facilitate events, make intros, participate in communities, and share knowledge and networks
Roots is built by Redbud VC — the early-stage fund founded in Columbia, Missouri, by the team behind EquipmentShare. Redbud's LPs include operators from Square, Meta, Zapier, and Veterans United. Our process is fast, founder-first, and built from thousands of conversations with builders who have outsider roots.
Includes leaders from
Roots gives founders anywhere the kind of network SF founders have.
Sources: PitchBook-NVCA, Crunchbase, Forbes, Capgemini/Phoenix MI, U.S. BEA & Census, Redbud VC research · 2024–26
Roots is built by Redbud VC — the early-stage fund founded in Columbia, Missouri, by the team behind EquipmentShare.
Roots is for founders, operators, talent, investors, enterprise partners, and community builders who want introductions to people they can work with.
Yes. Roots is available on iOS and Android and on the web at roots.build. Everything works in both places. The app adds event notifications, intro requests, and community discussions on your phone.
Roots is a reviewed network for founders, builders, investors, enterprise partners, ecosystem builders, and vetted service providers. The platform connects people based on their roots — geography, alumni network, culture, industry, and lived experience — and helps members reach customers, talent, and capital through warm introductions.
LinkedIn connects you based on where you've worked. Roots also uses where you grew up, studied, and lived. Suggestions are based on those shared places. AI fills in details about your contacts, so you can search them for co-founders, customers, hires, and investors instead of browsing a feed.
Not immediately. New accounts are reviewed before they get full access. We review accounts to keep the network useful. The more context you give us about your roots and what you're building, the better we can evaluate your fit.
Yes. Roots does not sell member data to third parties. Your network data is used only to enrich connections and enable search within the platform according to your sharing preferences.
You control exactly what you share and with whom. Network sharing is opt-in: you choose which communities and members get access to your connections.
Members can request warm introductions through trusted mutual connections, with context that helps both sides show up prepared.
Yes. Enterprise partners can find startups to partner with, invest in, recruit from, or learn from while they are still early.
Yes. Roots is designed for communities around alumni networks, industries, backgrounds, regions, and shared lived experience.
You tell us your roots and what you're building, and we review it. Once you're approved you can bring your network in, search it, and start asking for introductions.
It's about time
networks are open-sourced.
