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

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
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**Shaan Puri** (0:47)
Our guest today is the email god, Rahul Vohra, founder of Superhuman, and actually a different startup that both me and Sam really loved before this, I believe you started Rapportive, that's right?

**Rahul Vohra** (0:59)
I did, yeah.

**Shaan Puri** (0:59)
I actually kinda wanna 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 Rapportive is. Let's start with Rapportive. Explain to people who don't know what Rapportive is, what it was, and then me and Sam will talk about it a little bit.

**Rahul Vohra** (1:21)
Sure. So Rapportive 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. So 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.
So 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

**Sam Parr** (2:16)
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.

**Rahul Vohra** (2:23)
I know, I fell from grace, you stopped looking up to me.

**Sam Parr** (2:26)
No, but I know a bunch of cool stuff about you. In 2011, I was a junior in college, and I found Rapportive, 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, in their picture, in their LinkedIn, that's common now, that's not special. But back then, Rapportive was the first one to do that, and it was so special, and so I invented this thing, this process called Stock and Talk.
And the idea was I was gonna 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, and they were to give me 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 Rapportive 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 Rapportive, and so I was obsessed with Rapportive. I followed it like crazy. I think you started it with a guy named Sam and a guy named Martin, right?

**Rahul Vohra** (3:29)
That's right, you do know a lot.

**Sam Parr** (3:30)
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.

**Rahul Vohra** (3:41)
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.