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.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 The Art of Exceeding User Expectations

Rahul, the founder and CEO of Superhuman, emphasizes the importance of setting a higher bar for product quality than even the users demand. He shares his journey from programming at a young age to founding Superhuman, an AI-powered email client designed for teams. Rahul's strategy involves not just addressing complaints but surpassing personal standards and continuously raising them. He also highlights the value of focusing on user growth or revenue, as advised by James Linden of Heroku, to avoid mediocrity in either aspect. His narrative includes anecdotes from his time at the University of Cambridge and the inception of his previous company, Reportive, which was sold to LinkedIn.

05:00

🛠 Building a Minimally Valuable Product

The paragraph discusses the concept of creating a 'minimally valuable product' rather than just a 'minimally viable product'. Rahul explains how Superhuman differentiated itself in the email client industry by offering a product that was not only functional but also exceptionally fast. He shares insights on how to acquire customers through word-of-mouth and the importance of onboarding a limited number of customers to ensure quality and address issues promptly. Rahul's approach to product development focuses on creating joy for users, which in turn drives growth and customer retention.

10:02

📈 Measuring Product-Market Fit for Growth

Rahul introduces a method to measure product-market fit by gauging how disappointed users would be without the product, using a survey question developed by Sha Ellis. He explains that a score of over 40% very disappointed users indicates a good product-market fit. Rahul shares his experience at Superhuman, where they initially scored a 20% very disappointed rate, and how they improved this by segmenting their market and focusing on the needs of their most satisfied customers. This strategy led to a significant increase in their product-market fit score and contributed to the company's growth.

15:05

🔍 Refining the Product to Increase Market Fit

This section delves into the strategy of refining the product to increase the percentage of users who would be very disappointed without it. Rahul advises against focusing on feedback from users who are not disappointed, as it could dilute the product's unique value. Instead, he suggests concentrating on the main benefits that resonate with the very disappointed users and using this to understand and address the needs of the somewhat disappointed users. By doing so, Superhuman was able to convert users from being somewhat interested to becoming fanatics about the product, thereby increasing their product-market fit score significantly.

20:05

🌐 Creating Awareness and Driving Virality

Rahul outlines the three-pronged approach Superhuman used to create awareness and drive virality: press coverage, thought leadership, and viral marketing. He shares a personal anecdote of leveraging the acquisition and shutdown of Mailbox by Dropbox to generate PR for Superhuman. Additionally, he discusses the importance of thought leadership, as demonstrated by his widely-shared article on product-market fit, and the power of virality through Superhuman's unique email signature feature, which continues to drive a significant portion of their user growth.

Keywords

💡Product Market Fit

Product Market Fit refers to the congruence between a product and its target market, ensuring that the product not only meets the needs of the market but also generates a strong preference among its users. In the video, the concept is central to the discussion on how to build a successful product. The script mentions a metric for measuring Product Market Fit by gauging the percentage of users who would be 'very disappointed' without the product, using this as a benchmark to drive product development and market strategy.

💡Feedback

Feedback in this context is the input or responses received from users regarding a product's performance, features, or overall experience. The video emphasizes the importance of understanding and acting upon user feedback to improve and refine the product. It is highlighted that feedback should be used judiciously, focusing on enhancing the product's core benefits that resonate with its most satisfied users, rather than diluting the product's unique value proposition.

💡Incumbents

Incumbents are established companies or products that dominate a market. The script discusses the challenge of competing against incumbents in the email client industry, such as Gmail and Outlook, which hold a significant market share. The concept is used to illustrate the necessity for a startup to offer a 'minimally valuable product' that not only meets but exceeds the expectations set by these established players.

💡Viability

Viability in the context of startups refers to the ability of a product to be commercially successful and sustainable. The video script discusses the preference for creating a 'minimally valuable product' over a 'minimally viable product,' emphasizing the importance of offering substantial value to users from the outset to ensure the product's viability and growth potential.

💡Word of Mouth

Word of Mouth is a form of informal, person-to-person communication between users that serves as a powerful marketing tool. The script mentions that the company acquired many of its first customers through word of mouth, highlighting its effectiveness in building a customer base organically and authentically, which can lead to higher customer retention and satisfaction.

💡Onboarding

Onboarding in the business context refers to the process of integrating new customers or employees into a company or product. The video discusses a deliberate and systematic approach to onboarding new customers, focusing on a small number at a time to ensure that any issues they encounter are promptly addressed, which contributes to a positive user experience and product refinement.

💡AI Email

AI Email denotes an email system that incorporates artificial intelligence to enhance user experience, such as by improving sorting, prioritizing, or drafting emails. The script introduces Superhuman as an 'AI email reimagined for teams,' suggesting that the product leverages AI to offer a more efficient and team-oriented email management solution.

💡Viral Signature

A Viral Signature is a unique, shareable element, often a line of text or a visual, that users can add to their digital communications to promote a product or service. In the script, it is mentioned as a significant driver of traffic and new user acquisition for Superhuman, demonstrating the power of viral marketing strategies in spreading awareness and generating interest.

💡Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership is the status or role of an individual or organization that is recognized for their influence on a particular topic or industry. The video script discusses the importance of establishing thought leadership to build credibility and authority, which can drive awareness and interest in a company's products or services.

💡PR (Public Relations)

Public Relations involves the management of a company's image and relationship with the public, often through media outreach and storytelling. The script highlights the use of PR as a cost-effective strategy for gaining attention and creating awareness for a startup, by leveraging newsworthy events or industry developments to position the company as an authoritative voice.

💡Acquisition

In the context of business, Acquisition refers to the purchase of one company by another, often with the aim of expanding market presence or integrating new technologies or products. The script discusses the founder's experience with selling a company to LinkedIn and provides insights on how to ensure a successful acquisition, emphasizing the importance of maintaining product integrity and company culture post-acquisition.

Highlights

The secret to creating a great product is setting a higher bar than even your users demand.

Work until you surpass your own standards and aim to continually raise the bar higher than user expectations.

Rahul, the founder of Superhuman, emphasizes the importance of creating a product that saves time and increases efficiency in email communication.

Superhuman's customers include major companies like Netflix, Compass, Brex, Deal Notion, and Spotify.

Rahul's background includes programming from age 8, studying computer science at Cambridge, and founding Reportive before Superhuman.

Reportive was a Gmail extension that scaled to millions of users and was later sold to LinkedIn.

The importance of clarity in optimization goals for startups, whether it's user growth or revenue growth.

The advice from James Linden, co-founder and CEO of Heroku, on the importance of focusing on one clear objective for growth.

The development of Superhuman took 18 months to reach the MVP stage, emphasizing the need for a minimally valuable product, not just viable.

Superhuman's initial success was attributed to its speed, a feature that set it apart in the email client industry.

Acquiring the first 100 paying customers through word of mouth and investor networks, highlighting the power of initial user satisfaction.

The strategy of onboarding a limited number of customers weekly to ensure quality feedback and product improvement.

The concept of product market fit and its measurement through the percentage of users who would be very disappointed without the product.

Sha Ellis's method for determining product market fit by gauging user disappointment if they could no longer use the product.

Segmenting users based on their feedback to identify and focus on those who love the product, increasing the product market fit score.

The importance of not just acting on feedback from somewhat disappointed users, as it could dilute the product's unique value proposition.

Focusing on the main benefit loved by very disappointed users and using it to understand and satisfy the needs of somewhat disappointed users.

The journey to product market fit for Superhuman, which involved a long development process and a clear strategy for user feedback.

The use of PR, thought leadership, and viral marketing to make people aware of the product and its benefits.

Injecting the company into the press cycle by leveraging industry events to create awareness and interest in the product.

The power of thought leadership in establishing the company as an authority in its field and attracting users.

Viral marketing strategies like the Superhuman viral signature, which drives a significant portion of new users.

Transcripts

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 now that's hard to do

because it doesn't mean work until

people stop complaining it means work

until people stop complaining they stop

giving you feedback but also work until

you pass your own bar and figure out how

to set that bar even higher than users

are demanding once you get there and

again it's challenging you'll create a

thing that is so striking that is so

compelling that is so worthy of

attention that people can't help but

tell each other about 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 so if I were to summarize

it with just two if you can do those two

things you'll succeed number

one my name is Rahul and I'm the founder

and CEO of superhuman which is a

revolutionary AI email reimagined for

teams 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 our customers include the

likes of Netflix Compass brex deal

notion and Spotify and we're backed by

the likes of first round capital a16z

and

[Music]

ivp well I was born in England where I

grew up fortunately I was able to start

programming at the young age of 8 years

old 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 which I suppose

is cliche and then I started my last

company reportive reportive was the

first Gmail extension to scale to

millions of users a few years later I

then sold that company to LinkedIn a few

years after that I founded superhuman

and here we are today like I mentioned I

dropped out of my PhD and I networked my

way into the part of the University of

Cambridge that helps staff and students

create companies we would go to Angels

Venture Capital funds large technology

companies and raise money from them so

we could Grant it to startups so they

could actually get going and I was in my

early 20s it was the first real job I

ever had and no one told me how to do it

I needed every edge of I could get so I

imagined in my email something that

would help me sell something that would

tell me everything about my contacts

right there where they were what they

looked like what they did their recent

tweets and links to their social

profiles something that would help you

be personal a stuped effective and

ultimately brilliant with people and

with that Vision we built

reportive this was the summer of 2010 we

just gotten into Y combinator and I was

here with my co-founder Martin at the

time reportive was one of the largest

customers of Heroku which if folks

remember was how we used to host Ruby on

Rails application and I remember

trudging through San Francisco in the

pouring rain going to meet James londen

bound who was one of the co-founders and

the CEO of Heroku we were going to ask

him for advice and this was before Uber

and we didn't have the money to pay for

a taxi so we were literally walking

through the rain after half an hour of

trudging through the non-stop water we

finally arrived sat down with James and

we asked him for his advice he asked us

what our road map was and I described

the various things we were doing to grow

users the ways that we were planning to

monetize the features that we would sell

and he paused and he said listen be very

clear what you're optimizing for be

clear whether it's user growth or

whether it's Revenue growth and what you

actually need to show in order to raise

your next round of funding your series a

and I'm sharing the story because at the

time I thought well that's obvious

advice of course I'm going to be super

intentional and very deliberate about

what we do but it turns out I wasn't I

would vacillate and flip every few

months from optimizing for revenue and

flop back to optimizing for user growth

but of course the danger with that is

that you do both of the things

mediocrely instead of one of the things

excellently and it's almost always

better to do the latter than the former

but it came really close to the wire and

in retrospect I really wish that I'd

listen to James's advice so thank you

James for passing on that advice and

today I'm want to pass that on to

everyone who's watching

this 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

it took about 18 months to build our MVP

product about 18 months to get to that

first paying customer the MVP was let's

say a blazingly fast version of Gmail

now of course it didn't have all of the

features and functionality of Gmail but

what it did have was blazingly fast I

think a lots of Founders go for

minimally viable products when in fact

they should go for minimally valuable

products one of the things that sets

superhuman apart and this is somewhat

rare when building a startup but it's

actually my preferred strategy is most

people aren't using a product by a

competing startup the email client

industry is actually pretty interesting

unlike many Industries it's mostly

dominated by incumbents so the vast

majority of people don't use a third

party email client of course they use

either gmail which has north of a

billion users or Outlook so 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

and in the early days for us that was

speed it was blazingly shockingly fast

fast and the way that I would explain

this to investors imagine your Tesla

imagine 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 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 and this is a

strategy that actually has all kinds of

hidden advantages then you need a

minimally valuable

product 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 in fact I

think almost all of them are still with

us today our first onboarding it was

with Austin P Smith he's the founder of

a calendar company called hoe and 2

minutes into the onboarding he had this

big grin on his face and I remember

thinking gosh I wonder what he's feeling

so I asked him and he said to me Rahul

this is really fast and at that

point I knew we had something I also

knew what it was people were going to

care

about we updated our product as quickly

as possible to reflect the needs of our

customers

we deliberately onboarded only four to

five new customers every week so that we

had the bandwidth to fix the issues that

they found and I think that most

companies get this Bron 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 because

the demand for these new applications is

so high but guess what these tens of

thousands of customers will quickly

report thousands of bugs and your

company will soon be overwhelmed and if

you don't fix those things quickly which

frankly no startup can those customers

will quickly become disappointed and

they'll churn out of the product and

they'll tell other people about their

experience that is the very definition

of a net detractor and that is the worst

possible outcome I saw this happen to so

many other companies and in my

experience it's much much better to do

what we did systematically and

deliberately on board people on a

measured Pace every week focus on fixing

whatever problems they find and on

making them exceptionally happy that's

the way to building a robust product

that creates Joy over time and that Joy

is ultimately the flywheel for verality

and explosive growth 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 in the

early days of superhuman we were famous

for doing onetoone conci Edge VIP

onboarding for all of our new customers

in fact I did the first many hundreds of

those myself I would travel to people's

offices bring a gift sit down with folks

often for an hour or two at a time to

watch them use our product to see how

they did their email and Gmail and to

teach them how to do their email twice

as fast inside of superhuman now we did

that for many reasons first of all was

to learn how people were doing their

email today second of all was to find

what bugs they encounter so we could fix

them on time and avoid the trouble that

I articulated earlier in this

conversation and third of all was so

that we could focus our engineering

product and design

[Music]

dollars our journey to product Market

fit was long

but it ended up with something rather

special we started in the summer of 2015

like any other software company by

writing code in the summer of 2016 we

were still writing code and in the

summer of 2017 we was still writing code

now I felt this intense incredible

pressure to launch after all my last

company reportive had launched scaled

and been acquired andless L time and yet

here we still were 2 years in and we

still hadn't launched but no matter how

deeply and how intensely I felt this

pressure I couldn't just say that to the

team I couldn't just say that I did not

believe that we had products Market fit

that a launch would go very badly I

needed a plan so I searched high and low

I spoke with everybody I could find I

read everything until I found Sha Ellis

now Shan ran early growth at Dropbox log

me in Eventbrite he coins the term

growth hacker and sha found a leading

indicator of product Market fit one that

is benchmarked and predictive simply ask

your users how would you feel if you

could no longer use the product and

measure the percent that answer very

disappointed you're going to give them

three options very disappointed

somewhat disappointed and not

disappointed measure the percent that

pick very disappointed sha found that

the companies that struggled to grow

almost always got less than 40% very

disappointed whereas the companies that

grew most easily well they almost always

got more than 40% very disappointed in

other words if more than 40% of your

users would be very disappointed without

your product you have early product

Market fit this metric is much more

objective than a feeling it predicts

success better than net promoter score

it is not only the best metric to

measure products Market fit and the best

way to define products Market fit it

lets you create your very own product

Market fit engine and with that engine

you can generate a road map that will

carry you from not having product Market

fit to having products Market fit and

that's how weed as at superhuman and the

best part is that we've written this up

as the Superhuman products Market fit

engine and anyone can use this I've

worked with hundreds of companies that

have successfully used this to get from

a product Market fit score of 20 which

can be scary you can be thinking what

are we going to do to a products Market

fit score that is well past 40% and

stays well past

40% the product Market fit score metric

is most useful for two things number one

letting you know how far or close you

are to products Market fit and are you

making progress and number two helping

you actually get there but the magic of

it is in the second it's when you really

use it to get yourself to products

Market fit essentially you want to

increase the percentage of your users

who would be very disappointed without

your product now the first thing to do

is remember that you you can actually

change your Market before you change

your product and that is significantly

easier in fact you can do it in minutes

when we first did this for superhuman

our product Market fit score was

20% but I had a plan step one is

segmenting you take all the users who've

answered this survey and there's a few

other questions in the survey and you

see who are the kind of people who love

the product to do that you go through

the survey results and you look at the

job titles or the roles or the companies

or the industries of everyone who said

they'd be very disappointed without your

product you then Analyze That for the

somewhat disappointed users and also for

the not disappointed users and then you

focus only on people who have the job

titles or the industries of the very

disappointed users and that means you

end up discarding a lot but not all of

the somewhat disappointed users and the

not disappointed users and in the case

of superhuman that led our very

disappointed score to go from 20% to 32%

and that's simply by changing the

definition of who we said our marketers

a jump of 12% well now the question

becomes we've evolved the market but how

do we evolve our product to get to 40%

and Beyond we can boil this question

down to how do we increase the segment

of users who would be very disappoint

disappointed without our product and you

can turn that question into who do we

listen to and what do we build it can be

very tempting to focus on the feedback

from what the not disappointed users are

saying but this is a grave mistake

because even if you build everything

that they're asking for they are so far

away from falling in love with your

products that even if you built those

things they would still not be very

disappointed without your product so it

would be a mistake to orient around

their feedback equally and this can be

pretty counterintuitive it is also a

mistake to overly rotate around what the

very disappointed users are saying they

already love your product if you build

more of the things they're asking for

they're not going to fall in love with

your product more and the people who are

somewhat disappointed are unlikely to

start loving your product cuz it's

probably something else holding those

somewhat disappointed users back so what

you do is you take the survey results of

the people who love your products those

who would be very disappointed without

it and you analyze their answers to the

question what is the main benefit of

this product for you in the early days

of superhuman that would be speed

keyboard shortcuts the design the

Aesthetics how much time we're saving

them and then you use that to segment

the somewhat disappointed users now

here's where it gets really interesting

and this is one of the core insights we

had in developing this algorithm if you

just blindly act on the feedback from

the somewhat disappointed users you'll

end up with a muddied product that lacks

coherence and lacks Vision this is

because the feedback from your somewhat

disappointed users will be pulling you

in all kinds of different directions

they all have different ideas of what

your product could or should be which

may or may not line up with your vision

and they certainly don't line up with

each each other how do we figure this

out we use the main benefit of your

product the one that really resonates

with the users who love your product to

segment the somewhat disappointed users

into two groups group number one will be

the group for whom the main benefit does

not resonate and again I cannot stress

this enough politely ignore their

feedback because the main benefit

doesn't resonate so even if you built

everything that they asked for they

still wouldn't fall in love with your

product it wouldn't increase the number

of people who'd be very disappointed

without your product well that leaves

group two and this is the somewhat

disappointed users for whom the main

benefit is the same as the very

disappointed users for these folks

they're fully aligned but there is

something and I would wager something

very small that is holding them back

from falling in love with your products

go all in on these people build

everything that they're asking for fall

in love with those people because when

you do they'll fall in love with your

product and the results at superhuman

speak for themselves 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 increase the

product Market fit scored thereafter now

at this point there are two types of

team and two very easy mistakes to fall

into do not overly rotate around what

your very disappointed users want

because although it's very important 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 I found that vision-driven teams

tend to make that mistake but equally

don't overly rotate around what the

somewhat disappointed users want even if

it's the subset For Whom the main

benefit resonates because if you only do

that you're not going to maintain your

lead as to what makes the product

special someone else might Leap Frog You

by doing your special thing even better

than you do it and so it's really

important to go into any planning cycle

planning to spend half your time on what

the very disappointed users love the

main benefit in our case more speed more

shortcuts more productivity more time

saving more focus more design more

Aesthetics and the other half of your

time focused on what what's holding that

special subset of somewhat disappointed

users behind 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 into the long tail of

course now we've built all of those

things and in doing so not only have we

maintained our lead at what makes

superhuman special but we've

systematically been able to increase the

set of people who would be very

disappointed without superum by

converting those people who only

somewhat loved the product into Fanatics

who love the product and spread it

virally and the numbers speak for

themselves after we got from 20% to 32%

by changing the market a quarter later

we got to 48% a quarter after that we

got to 56% a quarter after that we got

to 60% within three quarters of running

the Superhuman products Market fit

engine we got our products Market fit

score from 20% to 60% 60% of superhuman

users would be very disappointed without

the product now I'm not saying this is a

silver bullet but the framework does

work 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 so if I

were to summarize it with just two if

you can do those two things you'll

succeed number one and I'm going to

quote Paul Graham here make something

people want and number two make people

realize they want it making people

realize what they want is a piffy way of

saying you have to make people aware of

your product you have to make people

aware of their problem that was

something we had to face you then have

to make people realize that the problem

that they have is severe enough that

they ought to pay for it taking email

and superhuman as an example like I said

there's a billion professionals and we

spend 3 hours a day reading and writing

email that's 3 billion hours every

single day is that a problem well if you

sit down and you think about it for more

than just a few minutes absolutely but

so many of us took it for granted that

that's quote unquote what work is well

what if it didn't have to be what if you

could either be twice as fast in those 3

hours or use those hours to do something

else whatever makes the most sense for

you so that's what we call problem

agitation it can be difficult to make

people aware of a new problem now this

depends on what your company is but for

us we took a three pronged approach to

this the first was injecting ourselves

into the new cycle so PR the second was

thought leadership and the third was

virality so let's take each of those in

turn injecting ourselves into the press

cycle this is one of one of my top tips

for a Founder who's looking to create

awareness for their company before

perhaps you can afford a PR agency or

before you can buy any advertising your

industry will have something interesting

going on at least one or two things a

year and your job is to figure out how

you can attach yourself to that story an

example for us early in the history of

the company was in 2016 when Dropbox

acquired mailbox Unfortunately they

didn't last long at Dropbox and they

were shuttered I think less than 6

months later even though Dropbox had

paid $100 million to acquire them that

was going to be a newsworthy event and I

realized that as a Founder who had

created an email company that had sold

it to LinkedIn I had a very

authoritative stance and opinion on this

topic I know firsthand what it's like to

sell your company and like I mentioned

reportive survived to this day 14 years

later so I also figured out how to make

a startup acquisition durable so I wrote

all of that down and I have something

like 12 I think it is tips on how not

just to survive acquisition but love it

and make it successful now when I heard

the news that a mailbox was going to be

shut down I stopped everything else I

was doing and I just sat down and for 2

days I wrote my piece on how to avoid an

acquisition failing and how to make it

very successful I wrote this article and

then I got it syndicated into a top 10

medium publication qz.com and a few

other places also and that article alone

drove 10 of thousands of signups on our

website and the product wasn't available

it was just a wait list but that's how

you can start start to get awareness

going the second piece is thought

leadership we've talked a bunch about

products Market fit that piece on first

round review is now the most widely

shared and read entrepreneurship article

I think of all time it's become default

reading for a founder and the default

way to measure and grow products Market

fit and then the third piece was

verality it is still the case today 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 that's how you make people

realize they want it