In the Room with Rahul Vohra, CEO of Superhuman
On this week’s episode of The Room Podcast, we have the pleasure of sitting down with Rahul Vohra, the CEO and Founder of Superhuman, the company disrupting the email experience as we know it. With advanced features such as read statuses, automated phrases, and the ability to snooze emails for later, Superhuman provides the ultimate email experience.
Rahul grew up in the UK and from an early age, discovered his passion for programming. Both of his parents were doctors so he was often picked up from school after hours. He would spend that time in the library reading books on programming. When he was home, Rahul spent countless hours coding fun games and apps in the evenings, which gave him an intuitive understanding of user experience and interaction design. By the time he went to study Computer Science at the University of Cambridge, Rahul had already spent 10,000 hours programming.
Rahul was always passionate about entrepreneurship and knew that he wanted to become a founder. His first venture that raised some funding was mo.jo, a platform that helps organizations crowdsource ideas. While mo.jo failed to gain the traction Rahul was hoping for, he was undeterred; moving on to his next project and in 2010 founded Rapportive. Rapportive was a company that provided users with information about the people who were emailing them. Two years into building that business, he sold Rapportive to LinkedIn and ultimately went on to start Superhuman in 2014 where he still is today.
In today’s episode, we explore insights and themes such as a founder’s secret super power , patience, a tactical “how-to” for salvaging a dying m&a process, and Superhuman’s vision for AI.
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
Let’s open the door.
Key Theme 1: Patience: A Secret SuperPower Every Founder Needs to Have
When discussing the choice of selling Rapportive to Linkedin versus taking an offer to raise a Series A, Rahul shares a nuanced reason why he believed selling was the better choice. In this case, not only did he and his investors have a reasonable cash out ($15 million) but he also gained some invaluable time. Rahul reveals that he saw the acquisition of Rapportive by LinkedIn as a strategic decision because “making that money is so important not because it lets you buy things, but because it grants you an unusual degree of patience that in turn enables you to take on ideas that are really large, really scary, and which take a great deal of time. I think a good example of that is Superhuman”.
Rahul’s sale of Rapportive allowed him to tackle creating an email client, and it has been nearly a decade since doing so without any significant liquidity events. His success is a testament to the importance of patience in entrepreneurship, where there are often ups and downs and critical decision-making moments. Aspiring founders can learn from Rahul’s experience and prioritize cultivating patience in various aspects of life, including their finances, family, and personal moments as they embark on their own entrepreneurial journey. This mindset can help them navigate the challenges of building a business and increase their chances of long-term success.
Theme 2: A tactical “how- to” for salvaging a dying m&a process
Rahul’s journey has not always been up and to the right. He shares that during the process of selling Rapportive to LinkedIn, LinkedIn tried to back out of the deal last minute. To salvage this M&A process, Rahul’s strategy was to focus on showing Linkedin that “they’d be crazy not to acquire us.” To do this, Rahul employed a combination of tactics. He started drip feeding exciting updates about the new things they were building and worked on monetizing the platform. Then, Rahul leveraged the fact that the no shop clause was ending, which prohibits the company being acquired from engaging with other potential buyers. He explains that “the combination of all of those things was enough to get the deal done at a massive premium for a company that made no money with just a few weeks left of runway.”
Rahul offers valuable tactical insights into the critical juncture of whether a deal will go through or not and highlights how entrepreneurs can strategically use different levers to increase the chances of success.
Theme 3: Superhuman’s vision for AI.
Rahul echoes a common sentiment that “AI will completely change how we work, and so it is an area of very heavy investment[ for Superhuman].” In fact, Superhuman recently released its first AI feature, Superhuman AI, an autocorrect tool that can detect and correct mistakes at superhuman speed.
When it comes to integrating large language models, Rahul advises starting with existing models rather than creating your own. By doing so, you can get the product into the hands of users and gather valuable feedback sooner, which can then provide direction on how to improve integration in a way that is more effective for your product. Rahul reveals that this is the approach that Superhuman and other application companies are taking.
For entrepreneurs looking to integrate AI into their product, starting with an existing large language model like GPT and integrating it into the application layer can be a great first step. This approach allows for a focused effort on how to improve the model over time.
We cannot wait to try out this new feature and are so excited to see Superhuman revolutionize the email experience.
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Room Podcast! We hope you enjoyed learning about Rahul’s inspirational journey in founding Superhuman.
Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
In the meantime, catch up on all our latest episodes, available now on all podcast streaming platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify
