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

Summary

Rahul, the founder and CEO of Superhuman, shares the secret to creating a product users love: setting a higher bar than user expectations. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on either user growth or revenue, and not oscillating between the two. Superhuman's journey to product-market fit involved building a minimally valuable product with a unique selling point—speed—and using a customer feedback-driven approach to refine it. The company also leveraged PR, thought leadership, and viral marketing to raise awareness and drive user acquisition.

Takeaways

• 🛑 The key to creating a great product is to exceed user expectations, not just to stop complaints but to continuously raise the quality bar.
• 🚀 Rahul, the founder of Superhuman, emphasizes the importance of speed and efficiency in their revolutionary AI email product for teams.
• 🌟 To achieve success, focus on two main things: creating something people want and making them realize they want it.
• 💡 The idea for Superhuman was born from identifying a significant problem—email—and the need for a better solution.
• 🔍 It took 18 months to build the MVP for Superhuman, highlighting the importance of patience and thoroughness in product development.
• 🛠️ Founders should aim for 'minimally valuable products' rather than just 'minimally viable products' to stand out against established competitors.
• 🔥 Superhuman gained its first customers primarily through word-of-mouth and a strong network, showing the power of initial user satisfaction.
• 📈 The company's growth strategy involved a deliberate pace of onboarding new customers to ensure quality and address issues promptly.
• 🤔 The concept of 'product-market fit' is crucial, and Superhuman used a specific metric to measure how indispensable their product was to users.
• 📊 Segmenting users based on their feedback and focusing on those who love the product can help refine and improve the product offering.
• 📝 Thought leadership and PR are powerful tools for raising awareness and establishing a company's authority in its field.

Q & A

What is the key to creating a product that users love and share with others according to Rahul?

The key is to set a higher bar than even your users demand. This involves working until you surpass user expectations and your own standards, and continually raising the bar.

What is Superhuman and how does it aim to revolutionize email for teams?

Superhuman is an AI-powered email client designed for teams. It promises to allow users to access their inbox twice as fast, reply one to two days sooner, and save over four hours every week.

What is the background of Rahul, the founder and CEO of Superhuman?

Rahul was born in England and started programming at the age of 8. He studied computer science at the University of Cambridge and began a PhD, which he later dropped out of to start his first company, Rapportive.

What was the first company Rahul founded and what was its significance?

Rahul's first company was Rapportive, the first Gmail extension to scale to millions of users. It was later sold to LinkedIn.

What advice did James Lindenborn, co-founder and CEO of Heroku, give to Rahul that influenced his approach to business?

James advised Rahul to be clear about what he is optimizing for, whether it's user growth or revenue growth, and to focus on what needs to be shown to raise the next round of funding.

What is the difference between a 'minimally viable product' and a 'minimally valuable product' according to the script?

A 'minimally viable product' is the basic version of a product with just enough features to be usable. A 'minimally valuable product', on the other hand, has features that provide significant value to the user, setting it apart from competitors.

How did Superhuman acquire its first 100 paying customers?

Superhuman acquired its first 100 paying customers primarily through word of mouth and the network of its investors.

What strategy did Superhuman use to ensure a robust product development process?

Superhuman deliberately onboarded only four to five new customers every week, allowing them to fix issues promptly and make customers exceptionally happy, thus building a robust product.

What metric did Sha Ellis introduce to measure product-market fit, and how is it used?

Sha Ellis introduced the metric of asking users how they would feel if they could no longer use the product, with options ranging from 'not disappointed' to 'very disappointed'. A score of over 40% 'very disappointed' indicates product-market fit.

How did Superhuman increase its product-market fit score from 20% to 60% within three quarters?

Superhuman segmented its users to focus on those who loved the product, ignored feedback from those who did not resonate with the main benefit, and addressed the specific issues holding back the 'somewhat disappointed' users, thus converting them into fanatics.

What three-pronged approach did Superhuman take to make people realize they want the product?

Superhuman used PR to inject itself into the news cycle, thought leadership to educate and influence, and virality through its signature feature and referral program to spread awareness.