Superhuman's secret to success: Ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every new user, obsessing over every detail, and positioning around a single attribute: speed

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Superhuman's secret to success: Ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every new user, obsessing over every detail, and positioning around a single attribute: speed | Rahul Vohra (CEO)

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Superhuman's secret to success: Ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every new user, obsessing over every detail, and positioning around a single attribute: speed | Rahul Vohra (CEO)

The art of making everyday tools feel extraordinary

Mar 23, 2025

Transcript

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Rahul Vohra is the founder and CEO of Superhuman. Prior to Superhuman, Rahul founded Rapportive, the first Gmail plug-in to scale to millions of users, which he sold to LinkedIn in 2012. He is also a prominent angel investor, and his fund has invested $50 million in over 120 companies, including Placer, Supabase, Mercury, Zip, ClassDojo, and Writer.

What you’ll learn:

The unexpected insight about virality Rahul gained from LinkedIn’s head of growth.
Why Rahul restructured his entire executive team to spend 60% to 70% of his time on product, design, and marketing instead of the typical CEO responsibilities.
The counterintuitive approach to finding product-market fit using a methodical system inspired by Sean Ellis, and how this algorithmically determines your roadmap.
How manually onboarding every user (Superhuman had 20 full-time people doing this at peak) created superfans and allowed engineers to focus on product rather than onboarding flows.
The “Single Decisive Reason” framework for making better decisions by avoiding collections of weak justifications.
How Superhuman’s AI features have evolved to create a truly intelligent email experience that works while you sleep.

Some takeaways:

The secret to true virality isn’t viral mechanics but word of mouth. LinkedIn’s head of growth revealed to Rahul that no app has sustained a viral factor above 1 for long periods—even Facebook peaked at 0.7. What drives growth is when users spontaneously tell others about products they love.
Ignore feedback from users who don’t love your product’s core value—focus on the “somewhat disappointed” users for whom your main benefit resonates.
Tracking his time revealed that Rahul was spending only 6% to 7% on product, design, and marketing—areas where he excels. By hiring a president to handle operations and restructuring his role, he increased this to 60% to 70%, dramatically accelerating Superhuman’s product velocity.
Manual onboarding scaled further than you’d think. At its peak, Superhuman had only 20 people manually onboarding new users, creating superfans who drove word-of-mouth growth while allowing engineering resources to focus on product rather than self-service flows.
Typography matters more than you think. After testing 15 different fonts and finding none adequate, Rahul spent six months perfecting Superhuman’s typography, selecting and modifying Adelle Sans because it’s beautiful, conveys any sentiment appropriately, optimizes reading speed, and makes email addresses look natural.
Before setting pricing, establish positioning—Superhuman chose $30 a month by asking at what price the product “starts to feel expensive but isn’t out of the question.”
The “Single Decisive Reason” framework prevents justifying decisions with collections of weak reasons. Learned from Reid Hoffman, this approach asks: “If only one reason were true and you’re still advocating for this decision, what would it be?” This creates clarity and prevents rationalization.
Superhuman’s “Write with AI” feature is used 37 times per week per user—far more than expected—while features Rahul anticipated would be popular have seen less adoption, highlighting the challenge of predicting which AI capabilities will resonate.
When selling to enterprise, understand that user needs (like calendar integration for Outlook users) and institutional requirements (like security controls) create a multi-threaded sale with different stakeholders. Superhuman spent a year piloting with a major consulting firm before full deployment.
Most B2B software slows down because companies shift from “solution deepening” (improving product) to “market widening” (expanding platform support).
Hiring a president freed Rahul to focus on his “zone of genius.” This operational leader manages the executive team and serves as a thought partner on strategy—effectively functioning as a “grown-up co-founder” for a 10-year-old company where the original co-founders have departed.
Working with a TM meditation coach transformed Rahul’s performance. After four years of practice (30 minutes in the morning and afternoon), he experiences increased focus, creativity, and expressiveness that has become essential to his effectiveness as a founder.