Superhuman's secret to success | Rahul Vohra (CEO and founder)

Rahul Vohra · 1h 25m · youtube.com ↗

24 korrents from this recording

Rahul Vohra did not write this page.

Every claim below is a statement made in this recording, quoted word for word and linked to the second it was said, so you can hear it rather than take our word for it. The wording comes from the transcript published alongside the recording; the sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording.

0:10:12 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Referral growth is driven by whales — single users who invite fifty or a hundred people — not by many users each inviting a few.

Their wordswe've definitely found that there are whales to use the gaming terminology that one person is going to be responsible for inviting 25, 50, 100 people

Interesting
5 min later
0:15:25 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Everything a company can build is either solution deepening or market widening, and doing one means not doing the other.

Their wordsyou can classify anything that you build in a company into one of two categories. Solution deepening and market widening. Now solution deepening means making your product better for its existing users but not making it available to more users. Whereas market widening means making your product available to more users but not making the product itself any better.

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2 min later
0:17:35 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
A company that looks to its users as though it has stopped shipping is usually widening its market, and grinding through that is worth it.

Their wordsBut this is the hard part. When you're when you're doing that market widening, you're not solution deepening. And so your perceived product velocity may decrease. You can avoid some of these things with some smart technology decisions, but mostly you just have to grind through it and it is worth it to get to the other side.

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2 min later
0:19:21 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
A company deserves everyone in it, the chief executive included, to spend as much time as possible in their zone of genius — which is an org design problem.

Their wordsAnd number two, the superhuman opportunity deserves everyone who works at the company to spend as much time as possible in their zone of genius. And so that includes me as well as everybody else. So what I did is I hired a really great president. I went from eight direct reports to two.

Interesting
1 min later
0:20:46 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Your calendar records what you thought you were going to do; only a log of every task switch records what you actually did.

Their wordsSo, this is a technique that I call the switch log. And it's born out of the observation that your calendar says what you thought you were going to do, but it's really only your trail of work that describes what you actually did.

Interesting
2 min later
0:22:45 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The right way to work is to do whatever feels right for as long as it feels right, and read your time back at the end of the week — not to obey a timetable.

Their wordsWhat I'm saying is do what feels right for as long as as it feels right to do. Then at the end of the week you can see where your time is going.

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16 min later
0:38:21 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Wondering whether your product will ever be a thing is a dangerous thought, because there is no point at which you would stop second-guessing yourself.

Their wordsBut the idea that is this never going to be a thing. I think that's a dangerous thought. We we can't start thinking that way because at what point do you stop second guessing yourself?

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4 min later
0:42:22 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Launch-early advice does not survive contact with mission-critical software: email is not something you can ship half-baked.

Their wordsAnd that's why when you have a missionritical product like email where you are interfacing with customers with candidates with investors it turns out to really matter. Email is mission critical. So it's not something where you can simply launch with a halfbaked product.

Interesting
2 min later
0:43:52 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The best-known brands each stand for one clear thing, so a startup has to occupy a position that is unique, still available, and a reinforcement of its product strategy.

Their wordsAnd it struck me how the most well-known brands have stood for one clear thing. Like they have a clear position. And so in order for superhuman to be memorable, I believed that we needed to occupy a clear position that was unique and which was available and which reinforced our product strategy.

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1 min later
0:44:37 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Speed was an available brand position because almost no software has ever been sold on the value proposition of being fast.

Their wordsI then asked myself, is the position of speed unique? and is it available? And the answer was overwhelmingly yes because almost no software was being sold or has ever been sold on the value proposition of speed.

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1 min later
0:45:21 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Incumbents structurally cannot compete on speed, because the scale and entrenched architecture that make them incumbents are what make them slow.

Their wordsI knew that our competition was not going to be startups. It was incumbents. And I also knew that incumbents generally struggle with speed because by definition they have massive scale and usually entrenched architecture.

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5 min later
0:50:23 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
What creates real virality is not viral mechanics but word of mouth, and word of mouth is a thing you can only get by building a brand.

Their wordswhat is it that creates true virality? It's not viral mechanics. It's word of mouth. It is brand that this is how you can kickstart a brand.

Interesting
3 min later
0:53:15 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Product-market fit can be measured, optimised and numerically increased, and an algorithm can write the roadmap that increases it.

Their wordswhich is number one, you can measure product market fit. Number two, you can optimize product market fit. Number three, you can systematically even numerically increase product market fit. And number four, you can even have an algorithm write your road map for you.

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1 min later
0:54:04 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Reaching product-market fit requires deliberately not acting on the feedback of many of your early users, at the same time as listening intensely.

Their wordsAnd I'd say the second thing is to get to products market fit, you have to deliberately not act on the feedback of many of your early users. And this is at the same time as listening to people intensely and building what people want, right?

Interesting
2 min later
0:55:38 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The share of users who would be very disappointed to lose your product predicts success far better than net promoter score, and forty percent is the line.

Their wordsWhat he found is that the companies that struggled to grow almost always had less than 40% very disappointed. Whereas the companies that grew the fastest almost always had more than 40% very disappointed. And this question, this metric is way more predictive of success than something for example like net promoter score.

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1 min later
0:56:12 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Ignore both the users who love your product and the ones who are indifferent to it; the only feedback that raises product-market fit comes from the somewhat disappointed.

Their wordsAnd the trick here is not to act too much on the feedback that the very disappointed people are giving you because they already love your product. Also, not to act at all really on the feedback that the not disappointed people are giving you because they're so far from loving your product that they are essentially a lost cause. but to focus on the segment of the somewhat disappointed people.

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3 min later
0:59:11 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Changing how you run a survey invalidates every number you collected before it: you are starting a new baseline, not continuing the old one.

Their wordsThe key thing is, and this applies to any survey methodology, if you're going to change the method of surveying, all of your old numbers are invalidated. So, it's just a new baseline going forwards.

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1 min later
0:59:56 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Business software should be built the way games are built, because products made like games are the ones people fall in love with and tell their friends about.

Their wordsWell, I strongly believe that we should make business software like we make games because when we make products like we make games, people find them fun. They tell their friends. They fall in love with them.

Interesting
2 min later
1:02:02 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Rewards undermine intrinsic motivation, which is why gamification does not work; where it appears to work, the underlying experience was already designed as a game.

Their wordsAnd that's the problem with rewards is they just massively undermine intrinsic motivation. And that's why gamification doesn't work. And when gamification does work, it's because the underlying experience was already designed like a game.

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1 min later
1:03:24 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
The best games are constructed out of toys, so a feature should be fun to play with before it is ever attached to a goal.

Their wordsAnd as it turns out the best games are constructed out of toys. Why? Because then they are fun on both levels. the toy and the game itself.

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3 min later
1:05:56 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Pricing cannot be worked out before positioning: what you are able to charge follows from where you have decided to sit in the market.

Their wordsI always say the same thing when it comes to pricing, which is before you figure out pricing, you must first figure out positioning.

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2 min later
1:08:04 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
A best-in-class product should be priced at the point where customers say it is starting to get expensive, not at the point where they would call it a bargain.

Their wordsBut the price point that supports our best-in-class best-in- position is actually the third one. it starts to feel expensive, but then you sit down and you think about the time that you spend in email, the ROI, and you still buy it anyway.

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7 min later
1:15:24 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
Which AI features users will love is genuinely unpredictable, and the ones a founder is most confident about are the ones that get used least.

Their wordsbasically everything I thought would work out well, people use it less than I thought they did. And everything where I was like, I don't know, but let's build the thing. People love that.

Interesting
4 min later
1:19:28 · watch on youtube.com↗

Our reading
An important decision needs one reason that on its own supports it; a collection of weak reasons means you have not yet found your reason.

Their wordsAnd the idea here is that for important decisions, you should be able to identify one one reason that on its own supports the decision. And it's based on the observation that all too often we rely on a collection of weak reasons to justify decisions.

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