My First Million: #135 with Rahul Vohra (Superhuman Founder) - Why He Started Superhuman and The Ideas He'd Like To See Built

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

Our guest today is the email God Rahul Vora, founder of Superhuman, and actually a different

startup that both me and Sam really love before this, I believe you started Reportive.

That's right?

I did, yeah.

I actually want to talk about that.

I think that was an awesome startup.

I think he probably only knows 10% of what he's getting into with this podcast, but he

seems game, and he's a brown guy with a British accent, so I already feel good.

I already feel like I'm in good hands, so here we go.

Explain to people who don't know what Reportive is.

Let's start with Reportive.

Explain to people who don't know what Reportive is, what it was, and then me and Sam will talk

about it a little bit.

Sure.

Reportive was the first Gmail extension to scale to millions of users.

I started it way back in 2010.

This is almost a decade ago now, and there, right inside your inbox, it would show you

everything about your contacts just over on the right-hand side.

When somebody emailed you, you could see what they look like, where they work, their job

title, and even links to their social media like their recent tweets.

If you can imagine being the kind of person for whom interacting with other people is

important, maybe, of course, you're a founder like you, or maybe you're a recruiter, or

perhaps you're a salesperson, or maybe you work in BD, or maybe it's just really important

to deal with people.

It turns out there's a lot of folks like that as well.

This thing sort of became this beloved, crucial tool, first starting in Silicon Valley and

then spreading to millions of users across the world, ultimately ended up selling it

to LinkedIn back in 2012.

In 2011, so I know a lot about you.

You were kind of like someone I looked up to, and I've known a lot about you since

two years ago.

I know.

I fell from grace.

You stopped looking up to me.

No, but I know a bunch of cool stuff about you.

In 2011, I was a junior in college, and I found report of, and I was like, I don't think

people understand if you're listening now, and you don't, if you're a little bit younger,

younger than I am at least, you don't realize that this idea of seeing people's information

on the right side of your Gmail, and their picture, and their LinkedIn, that's common

now.

It's special, but back then, report of was the first one to do that, and it was so special,

and so I invented this thing, this process called stock and talk.

The idea was I was going to use it to help me get a job at a company.

I made this spreadsheet where I would put someone's first name, their last name, and

then their URL, like at airbnb.com, and I would put Brian, and then Chesky, and then

at airbnb.com.

It would give me like 100 possible combinations of what the name or his email could be, and

then I would put it in Gmail, and I would highlight each one, and report of would tell

me which email is his, because it would show the social profiles related to each email.

I ended up emailing the founders of airbnb, an interview there, using report of, and so

I was obsessed with report of.

I followed it like crazy.

I think you started it with a guy named Sam, and a guy named Martin, right?

That's right.

You do know a lot.

Yes, and so I like friended you guys on social media, because I wanted to work for you guys,

and then you sold it to LinkedIn for, the rumor was 15 million, I don't know what the

truth is, but I was all about it.

It was a fun tool, and I really, really fondly look upon those times.

Silicon Valley was very different back then, of course, we're talking a decade ago.

I remember thinking at the time, this is like, when presidents are like kind of important

ambassadors, they go to an event, and they kind of have that person behind them or the

earpiece that's sort of like the whisperer, which is like, this is Julie Magni, she's

the representative from Columbia, ask her about her son, Roger.

That's what Reportive was to me, was like, I could make everything sound personal, and

I could feel, you would feel like I knew you, even though I was just getting it fed to me

by my sort of earpiece on the right side, which was Reportive.

That was fundamentally the idea, and I think had I continued to run that company, one day

we would have made those earpieces, we would be bringing that kind of intelligence to

everybody everywhere.

I think the fundamental reason was we were tired, and this is one of the lessons that

I learned.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.