20VC: Superhuman’s Rahul Vohra on How 1-1 Customer Onboarding Can Scale Efficiently to $100M ARR, Why Gamification Does Not Work But Game Design Does & What Game Design Means For The Next Generation Of Product Managers
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2020
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rahul Vohra is the Founder & CEO @ Superhuman, the startup that has rebuilt the inbox from the ground up creating the fastest email experience ever made. To date, Rahul has raised over $56m with Superhuman from some of the best in the business including a16z, First Round, Box Group and then 2 of my favourites in Jeff Morris Jr @ Chapter One and Ed and Elliot @ Boldstart. Prior to founding Superhuman, Rahul was the Founder @ Rapportive, a company later acquired by LinkedIn in 2014. If that was not enough, Rahul is also an investor having co-founded a new firm with Todd Goldberg just last year.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Rahul made his way from making the first plugin for Gmail with Rapportive to changing how we think about email today with Superhuman?
2.) Why does Rahul believe game design is worth doing? What is the difference between game design and gamification? What does it take to create a game? What is the truth on game design?
3.) What are the core 5 factors that make up effective game design? How can products incorporate goals to make the user feel emotion when engaging? What emotions does one want the user to feel? How can they be tested? What controls should be placed around the UX? Why are controls so fundamental?
4.) What is the difference between a toy and a game? How can one effectively incorporate toys into their product? How has Superhuman done this effectively to date? Hw can designers create a system of flow in the user experience? What works? What does not work?
5.) Did Rahul intentionally create an entirely new category when it comes to onboarding? Why does Rahul pushback on people that suggest 1-1 onboarding is not scalable? What does the unit economics look like? How does this scale to $100M ARR?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Rahul’s Fave Book: The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the 20 minute VCM Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings, and I always love to hear your |
| 0:04.2 | thoughts and feedback on the show, and you can do that on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996 with two bees. |
| 0:09.5 | But to our episode today, and his episode last year was the most downloaded of the year by far. |
| 0:14.4 | He's created a product that's changed much of how we work today, and so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome back a friend and phenomenal founder in the form of Rahul Vora, founder and CEO at Superhuman, the startup that has rebuilt the inbox from |
| 0:25.7 | the ground up, creating the fastest email experience ever made. To date, Rahul has raised over $54 million |
| 0:31.9 | with Superhuman from some of the best in the business, including Andresen Horace, first round, |
| 0:36.9 | box group, and then two of my |
| 0:38.1 | favourites in Jeff Morris Jr. at Chapter 1 and Ed and Elliot at Boldstart. And prior to founding |
| 0:43.3 | Superhuman, Rahul was the founder of Reportive, a company later acquired by LinkedIn in 2014. |
| 0:49.0 | And if that was not enough, Rahul was also an investor, having co-founded a new firm with Todd Goldberg just last year. |
| 0:54.4 | But before we move into the show today, I'm sure you've heard about it, but my word, this is a product I love, Carter. |
| 0:59.5 | Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, track cap tables and get valuations. |
| 1:05.4 | Go to carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% off. |
| 1:09.8 | More than 800,000 employees and shareholders use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars |
| 1:14.6 | in equity and Carter now offers fund administration. |
| 1:17.5 | So you can see real-time data in the Carter platform and work with Carter's team of |
| 1:21.4 | experienced fund accountants. |
| 1:23.0 | Simply go to Carter.com forward slash 20VC to get 10% off. And speaking of equity for amazing team members, |
| 1:30.0 | you have to check out Switch, a great startup initiative to send laid off talent amid the coronavirus |
| 1:34.8 | crisis directly to vetted top startups still hungry to hire. Switch is free for all parties. |
| 1:40.7 | It's just here to help. It's a free platform by the team behind Wanted. The big |
| 1:44.5 | idea was to create a shortcut between companies firing and the startups that are still really |
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