Rahul Vohra - Using Emotion to Design Great Products - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP.1]

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
This episode of Founder's Field Guide is brought to you by Microsoft for Startups. Microsoft for Startups is a global program dedicated to helping enterprise-ready B2B startups successfully scale their companies.
The program has been around for a couple of years, but I recently became intrigued when former Invest Like the Best guest, Jeff Ma, took over. Microsoft for Startups provides companies access to technology, including Azure Cloud and GitHub, coupled with a streamlined path to selling alongside Microsoft and their global partner ecosystem.
Microsoft for Startups has a very compelling approach to working with startups and driving their long-term business value. If you're a founder running a B2B company targeting the enterprise, you should definitely check them out at startups.microsoft.com. To hear more about the program, stay tuned at the end of the episode to hear from me and current program member, Abnormal Security. This episode is also brought to you by Vanta. Does your startup need a SOC 2 report to close big deals, or do you already have a SOC 2 report and want to make it easier to maintain? Vanta has built software that makes it easier to both get and renew your SOC 2 With Vanta's continuous monitoring solution, you avoid hosting auditors on-site and taking screenshots to prove that you're compliant, so you can focus on building your business. Vanta partners with audit firms who file your SOC 2 report directly inside of Vanta at a fraction of the normal cost. Hundreds of companies, including more than 100 Y Combinator businesses, are leveraging Vanta's today to streamline compliance and focus on building their businesses. Founder's Field Guide listeners can redeem a $1,000 off coupon at vanta.com forward slash Patrick. That's vanta.com forward slash Patrick.
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Founder's Field Guide. Founder's Field Guide is a series of conversations with founders, CEOs, and operators building great businesses. I believe we are all builders in our own way, and this series is dedicated to stories and lessons from builders of all types. You can find more episodes at investforfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:56)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:21)
Today's episode represents a new chapter for Invest Like the Best and so it requires a longer introduction than normal. Starting today, I'll be bringing you two episodes per week on the same feed. On Tuesdays, I'll focus on investors and on Thursdays, I'll host builders, founders, CEOs and operators from all different fields. We call this new Thursday series Founders Field Guide. There's nothing more interesting to me than how great businesses get built and how investors can identify those businesses at the right time. We've already recorded with founders building companies in food, technology, infrastructure, shipping, collectibles and many more categories. The goal each week will be to have a builder share what they've done, how they've done it and what they've learned along the way.
We view this as a critical next step in furthering our mission to capture and openly share the world's best knowledge on business and investing.
On to the kickoff episode with Rahul Vohra.
Rahul is the founder and CEO of Superhuman, an extremely popular product for managing your email. Rahul describes himself as a computer scientist, gamer, entrepreneur and designer. You'll see quickly why it's the intersection of these areas that sets Superhuman apart. We discuss why emotion matters when building products and how other entrepreneurs can learn from his experience. Please enjoy the very first episode of Founder's Field Guide and stay tuned in future weeks as we host leaders from Nike, Cisco, Twitch and so many more. Listen in as we explore the worlds of cannabis, baking, not that kind, manufacturing, hardware, software and many other topics. Now let's dive in.
Rahul, thank you so much for doing this with me today. There's a whole range of issues that I think we'll talk about for the first time with you giving your background and experience. And I thought a fun place to dive in would be with this idea of game design and emotion in software or digital products. Why are you interested in this concept? And what have you learned building Superhuman?

**Rahul Vohra** (4:15)
Well, at Superhuman, we build software like it is a game. And that has been core to why people fall in love with it.
But most software companies don't do this. Most software companies worry about what users want or what they need. But if you think about it, nobody needs a game to exist. There are no requirements. So when you make a game, you don't worry about what users want or what they need. You obsess over how they feel. And when your product is a game, people don't just use it, they play it. They find it fun. They tell their friends. They fall in love with it.