How Superhuman Took Over Silicon Valley Email

Convincing people of things is possibly the hardest thing we have to do as founders. Right? And there are so many different audiences. There's investors. There's future co founders. There's your earliest users. There's the press. There's the industry you sell to in general. And I think each one is its own fun little puzzle. The best, most awesome thing you can do is basically have some form of narrative that sounds like this train is leaving the station, and if you don't join now, I don't know that you will be able to join. The market doesn't care. Candidates and investors are looking for the storyline of differentiation, sometimes just for differentiation because they're in the business of finding different things. Remember, you have the right not to serve. They used to have a survey. It would be like, what mobile phone do you have? They'd say Android. And I said, well, you can't have Superhuman. And people get confused, like, why? Isn't it my decision whether or not I buy? And I'm like, no, it's my decision whether or not I sell. Most founders think product market fit is something you feel. Raul Voora tried to turn it into a system. Before founding Superhuman, Raul built Reportive, one of the earliest successful Gmail plugins. But with Superhuman, he approached the problem differently. Instead of chasing growth immediately, he spent years refining the product, onboarding users manually, charging premium pricing from day one, and obsessing over every interaction. The result was not just a productivity app, but a product that developed a kind of cult following inside Silicon Valley. In this conversation, Raul breaks down the frameworks behind that process, from game design principles and onboarding psychology to the product market fit engine that helps Superhuman grow. Raul, as I said, is the founder and CEO of Superhuman, but also previously to that reportive. He, started out with a CS degree at Cambridge. His, LinkedIn still says PhD on leave. Still on leave. I'm not sure if he ever if he's ever plans on going back. He started his career as a game designer working on a game called Runescape, which was an early MMORPG. Any Runescape fans in the house here? Woah. A lot more than I expected. Love that. He then founded a company called Reportive that was acquired by LinkedIn in 2012, and then after that founded Superhuman in 2014. Curious, how many people here use Superhuman as their primary email client? Me too. It's a lifesaver and very important to my day to day life. I can't live without it. But in July 2025, Superhuman was acquired by what was then called Grammarly, who then renamed the company to Superhuman, where he continues, as the head of Superhuman Mail. Why I'm excited to have Rahul here is that Rahul is one of the clearest product thinkers that I know. And the story of Superhuman is full of what I would consider highly opinionated and often …