How I Built $825M Email Revolution Called Superhuman | Rahul Vohra

Rahul Vohra, founder and CEO of Superhuman, discusses the importance of setting a high bar for product quality to create something users love and share. He emphasizes focusing on user feedback, but also surpassing users' expectations to drive word-of-mouth growth. Rahul shares his journey from founding Reportive to creating Superhuman, highlighting lessons learned about product-market fit. He introduces the concept of a "product-market fit engine," which involves segmenting users and focusing on those who find the product's main benefits compelling. Rahul also stresses the importance of PR, thought leadership, and virality in making users aware of their needs and the product's value.

• To create a product that users love and share, set a higher bar than users expect.
• It requires working until users stop complaining and giving feedback.
• Go beyond user expectations and set an even higher bar for yourself.
• Achieving this creates a product that is striking, compelling, and worthy of attention.

"The secret to making a great product that users love and share with their friends is to have a higher bar than even your users."

• Emphasizes the importance of setting a higher standard than what users expect.

"Work until people stop complaining, they stop giving you feedback, but also work until you pass your own bar."

• Highlights the need to meet and exceed both user expectations and personal standards.

• Simplify success into two main principles for founders.
• Focus on creating a compelling product and maintaining high standards.

"I have so many tips for Founders who want to be successful and there are many Frameworks out there but I also like to keep it really simple."

• Stresses the importance of simplicity in advice for founders.

• Rahul is the founder and CEO of Superhuman, an AI-driven email platform.
• Superhuman aims to make email management faster and more efficient.
• The platform helps users get to their inbox twice as fast, reply sooner, and save time.

"My name is Rahul and I'm the founder and CEO of Superhuman which is a revolutionary AI email reimagined for teams."

• Introduces Rahul and his role at Superhuman.

"You can get to your inbox twice as fast as before, reply one to 2 days sooner and save more than 4 hours every single week."

• Describes the key benefits of using Superhuman.

• Born in England, started programming at the age of 8.
• Studied computer science at Cambridge and started a PhD before dropping out.
• Founded Reportive, the first Gmail extension to scale to millions of users, later sold to LinkedIn.
• Founded Superhuman after Reportive.

"I was born in England where I grew up fortunately I was able to start programming at the young age of 8 years old."

• Details Rahul's early interest in programming.

"I then went to University in Cambridge where I studied computer science and then I started a PhD I then dropped out of that PhD."

• Discusses Rahul's academic journey and decision to leave his PhD.

"I founded superhuman and here we are today."

• Summarizes the founding of Superhuman.

• Worked at the University of Cambridge to help staff and students create companies.
• Networked with Angels, Venture Capital funds, and large technology companies to raise money for startups.
• Created Reportive to help with email communication and networking.

"I networked my way into the part of the University of Cambridge that helps staff and students create companies."

• Describes Rahul's early career and networking efforts.

"I imagined in my email something that would help me sell something that would tell me everything about my contacts."

• Explains the inspiration behind creating Reportive.

• Reportive was one of the largest customers of Heroku.
• Faced challenges such as walking through rain to meet potential advisors.
• Received crucial advice from James Lindenbaum of Heroku about focusing on either user growth or revenue growth.

"Reportive was the first Gmail extension to scale to millions of users a few years later I then sold that company to LinkedIn."

• Highlights the success and eventual sale of Reportive.

"He asked us what our road map was and I described the various things we were doing to grow users."

• Recounts the advice received from James Lindenbaum.

"Be very clear what you're optimizing for be clear whether it's user growth or whether it's Revenue growth."

• Emphasizes the importance of focusing on a single growth metric.

• Identified email as a major problem and spent 18 months building the MVP.
• Focused on creating a blazingly fast version of Gmail.
• Advocates for creating minimally valuable products rather than just minimally viable ones.

"When coming up with the idea for superhuman I wanted to find the biggest possible problem and email is a way bigger problem than most people realize."

• Explains the motivation behind creating Superhuman.

"It took about 18 months to build our MVP product about 18 months to get to that first paying customer."

• Describes the time and effort invested in building the MVP.

"I think a lots of Founders go for minimally viable products when in fact they should go for minimally valuable products."

• Suggests focusing on creating valuable products rather than just viable ones.

• Superhuman stands out in the email client industry dominated by incumbents like Gmail and Outlook.
• The product must be exceptional to compete, with speed being a key differentiator.
• Investors are encouraged to imagine the product's impact, likening it to the speed and efficiency of a Tesla.

"The email client industry is actually pretty interesting unlike many Industries it's mostly dominated by incumbents."

• Discusses the competitive landscape of the email client industry.

"You can't just come out with an email client that kind of works and on top of that it also has to do something really very special."

• Stresses the need for exceptional features to compete in the market.

"In the early days for us that was speed it was blazingly shockingly fast."

• Identifies speed as a key differentiator for Superhuman.

"Imagine your Tesla imagine."

• Uses an analogy to explain the product's impact and efficiency.

• The analogy of experiencing the rapid acceleration of a high-performance car is used to describe the initial use of the Superhuman email service.
• The importance of creating a product that feels significantly different and superior to existing options is emphasized.

"What it feels like to smash that pedal to the metal and to feel this car accelerate to 60 mph in whatever it is 3 seconds or less, are you ever going to go back to having a regular car? And of course, they would say absolutely not. And I said, well, that's how it feels using Superhuman for the first time."

• This quote illustrates the transformative experience intended for users of Superhuman, likening it to the thrill of driving a high-performance car.

• Differentiates between minimally viable products (MVP) and minimally valuable products (MVP) in competitive industries.
• Highlights the necessity of creating a product that offers significant value from the outset when competing against established incumbents.

"If you're in an industry where the other products are genuinely startups, perhaps a minimally viable product is fine. But if you're in a startup where you're going up against incumbents, then you need a minimally valuable product."

• This quote underscores the strategic approach of focusing on creating a product that provides substantial value to stand out in a competitive market.

• Initial customers were acquired primarily through word of mouth and the network of investors.
• Emphasizes the importance of retaining early customers by addressing their needs and feedback promptly.

"We acquired almost all of our first 100 paying customers through word of mouth and through the network of our investors, and many of them are still with us today."

• This quote highlights the role of personal networks and word of mouth in the early stages of customer acquisition and the importance of customer retention.

• Onboarded a limited number of new customers weekly to manage feedback and improve the product iteratively.
• Focused on fixing issues and making customers exceptionally happy to build a robust product and foster positive word of mouth.

"We deliberately onboarded only four to five new customers every week so that we had the bandwidth to fix the issues that they found."

• This quote illustrates the strategic approach of controlled onboarding to ensure quality and customer satisfaction.

• Rapidly acquiring a large number of users can overwhelm a startup with feedback and bugs, leading to customer dissatisfaction and churn.
• Advocates for a measured approach to growth to avoid becoming a net detractor.

"Imagine you've created a new email app or a new calendar app and then you launch. Well, you'll quickly and somewhat easily get tens of thousands of customers...but guess what? These tens of thousands of customers will quickly report thousands of bugs and your company will soon be overwhelmed."

• This quote warns against the dangers of rapid scaling without the capacity to address user feedback effectively.

• Maintaining a higher standard for the product than even the users to ensure a superior experience.
• Early days involved one-to-one VIP onboarding sessions to learn from users and improve the product.

"The secret to making a great product that users love and share with their friends is to have a higher bar than even your users."

• This quote emphasizes the importance of setting high standards for product quality to exceed user expectations.

• Conducted personalized onboarding sessions to understand user behavior, identify bugs, and gather feedback.
• Used these sessions to refine the product and ensure a seamless user experience.

"In the early days of Superhuman, we were famous for doing one-to-one VIP onboarding for all of our new customers. In fact, I did the first many hundreds of those myself."

• This quote highlights the commitment to personalized onboarding to gather valuable insights and improve the product.

• The journey to product-market fit was long and involved continuous development and refinement over several years.
• Despite pressure to launch, the focus remained on achieving product-market fit before going to market.

"Our journey to product-market fit was long, but it ended up with something rather special. We started in the summer of 2015 by writing code, and by the summer of 2017, we were still writing code."

• This quote reflects the dedication to achieving product-market fit through persistent development and refinement.

• Introduced the concept of measuring product-market fit through user feedback on how disappointed they would be if they could no longer use the product.
• A benchmark of more than 40% of users being very disappointed indicates early product-market fit.

"Simply ask your users how would you feel if you could no longer use the product and measure the percent that answer very disappointed...if more than 40% of your users would be very disappointed without your product, you have early product-market fit."

• This quote presents a practical method for measuring product-market fit and its significance in predicting a product's success.

• Developed a systematic approach to achieving product-market fit, which can be used by other companies.
• This approach involves continuous user feedback, iterative improvements, and maintaining high standards for product quality.

"We've written this up as the Superhuman product-market fit engine, and anyone can use this. I've worked with hundreds of companies that have successfully used this."

• This quote emphasizes the replicable nature of the product-market fit engine and its applicability to other startups seeking to achieve product-market fit.

• Definition and Importance: The product market fit score measures how many users would be very disappointed without your product.
• Utility: It helps gauge how close or far you are from achieving product-market fit and tracks your progress.

"The product market fit score metric is most useful for two things: number one, letting you know how far or close you are to product-market fit and are you making progress, and number two, helping you actually get there."

• Objective: Aim to increase the percentage of users who would be very disappointed without your product.

"Essentially, you want to increase the percentage of your users who would be very disappointed without your product."

• First Step: Change your market before changing your product, as it is significantly easier and quicker.

"You can actually change your market before you change your product, and that is significantly easier. In fact, you can do it in minutes."

• Example: Superhuman's product-market fit score improved from 20% to 32% by redefining their market.

"When we first did this for Superhuman, our product-market fit score was 20%. By changing the definition of who we said our market is, that led our very disappointed score to go from 20% to 32%."

• Process: Segment users based on their job titles, roles, companies, or industries to identify who loves the product.
• Analysis: Compare the segments of very disappointed, somewhat disappointed, and not disappointed users.

"You take all the users who've answered this survey... and you see who are the kind of people who love the product. You then analyze that for the somewhat disappointed users and also for the not disappointed users."

• Focus: Concentrate on users with job titles or industries of the very disappointed users, discarding the rest.

"Focus only on people who have the job titles or the industries of the very disappointed users."

• Goal: Increase the segment of users who would be very disappointed without your product.
• Key Question: Determine who to listen to and what to build.

"The question becomes, we've evolved the market, but how do we evolve our product to get to 40% and beyond?"

• Avoiding Mistakes: Do not overly focus on feedback from not disappointed users or very disappointed users.

"It can be very tempting to focus on the feedback from what the not disappointed users are saying, but this is a grave mistake."

• Very Disappointed Users: Analyze their answers to the question about the main benefit of the product.

"You take the survey results of the people who love your product... and you analyze their answers to the question, 'What is the main benefit of this product for you?'"

• Segmentation: Use the main benefit to segment somewhat disappointed users into two groups.

"Use the main benefit of your product... to segment the somewhat disappointed users into two groups."

• Group 1: Users for whom the main benefit does not resonate; ignore their feedback.

"Politely ignore their feedback because the main benefit doesn't resonate."

• Group 2: Users for whom the main benefit resonates; focus on addressing their small issues.

"Go all in on these people, build everything that they're asking for... because when you do, they'll fall in love with your product."

• Superhuman's Success: By changing the market and following the algorithm, Superhuman rapidly increased its product-market fit score.

"By changing the market, we got from a very disappointed score, a product-market fit score of 20% to 32%, and then by following this algorithm, we rapidly increased the product-market fit score thereafter."

• Vision-Driven Teams: They may focus too much on what very disappointed users want, potentially allowing competitors to overtake them.

"Do not overly rotate around what your very disappointed users want... if you only build the things they're asking for, you won't increase the set of people, the percentage of people who love your product, and a competitor may overtake you."

• Importance of balancing focus on both very satisfied users and somewhat disappointed users.
• Ensuring continuous improvement on core features that make the product special.
• Addressing the needs of somewhat disappointed users to convert them into highly satisfied users.

"It's really important to go into any planning cycle planning to spend half your time on what the very disappointed users love... and the other half of your time focused on what's holding that special subset of somewhat disappointed users behind."

• Emphasizes the need to balance efforts between enhancing core strengths and addressing user pain points.

• Initial user feedback highlighted the lack of a mobile app, poor search functionality, handling of attachments, and lack of integrations.
• Systematic improvements on these aspects to enhance user satisfaction and product adoption.

"When we initially did that products Market fit survey it was things like we didn't have a mobile app, we didn't have good enough search, we didn't properly handle attachments, we didn't have integrations with CRMs, read receipts, and so on."

• Identifies specific user issues that were addressed to improve the product and user experience.

• Significant improvement in product-market fit score from 20% to 60% within three quarters.
• Continuous improvement and user feedback integration as key drivers for achieving higher product-market fit.

"Within three quarters of running the Superhuman products Market fit engine we got our products Market fit score from 20% to 60%."

• Demonstrates the effectiveness of the product-market fit framework in improving user satisfaction and adoption.

• Make something people want and make people realize they want it.
• Importance of awareness and problem recognition in driving product adoption.

"Number one, and I'm going to quote Paul Graham here, make something people want, and number two, make people realize they want it."

• Highlights the foundational principles for creating a successful product and business.

• The necessity of making people aware of their problems and the severity of these problems.
• Using examples from email usage to illustrate problem recognition and potential solutions.

"You have to make people aware of your product. You have to make people aware of their problem... so many of us took it for granted that that's quote unquote what work is."

• Emphasizes the role of problem awareness in driving user interest and product adoption.

• Leveraging industry events and news to gain attention and drive signups.
• Example of writing an article following Dropbox's acquisition of Mailbox to drive awareness.

"An example for us early in the history of the company was in 2016 when Dropbox acquired Mailbox... I wrote my piece on how to avoid an acquisition failing and how to make it very successful."

• Demonstrates the effectiveness of timely and relevant content in driving awareness and engagement.

• Sharing insights and strategies on product-market fit and other entrepreneurial topics.
• Establishing authority and becoming a go-to resource for founders.

"We've talked a bunch about products Market fit... it's become default reading for a founder and the default way to measure and grow products Market fit."

• Shows the impact of thought leadership in establishing credibility and driving user interest.

• Utilizing viral mechanisms such as email signatures and referrals to drive traffic and new user signups.
• Significant portion of site traffic and new users attributed to viral strategies.

"More than 30% of our site traffic still comes from the scent via superhuman viral signature and more than 30% of our new users still comes from our invitations and referrals."

• Highlights the power of viral marketing in sustaining user growth and engagement.