I remember when this startup came out, all the VCs, angel investors and tech founders were singing songs of praises (and raises) about how this was going to disrupt email and gating the product an 'exclusive' access to a waitlist.
I find it sus when VCs have to keep overhyping their portfolio companies, especially when they don't even make money.
Anyway, I checked it out and found that this really isn't novel at all (a meeting to use an email client? really?). Just classic marketing and hype to get you to use the product.
It took literally _5 years_ for me to get through the waitlist. I signed up in 2016 and got an automated email “from” the founder in May 2021 excitedly inviting me to fill out a questionnaire in order to gain access… Asking me to do work after waiting 5 years seemed crazy so I ignored it and got another automated email “from” the founder nudging me to take the questionnaire a few weeks later. Strangest set of interactions I’ve ever had with a product. I have no idea whether their product is good or bad and I stopped caring many years ago.
It's classic productivity app bias. You start using a new app and because of the newness placebo, you get a boost in performance. You post about how amazing and cool it is, tell all your friends, then you get that crash back to baseline. At best, it just becomes a regular part of your routine. More commonly you dump it for the next cool productivity tool.
I'm doubtful it's a 'productivity' issue so much as a 'status' issue. The product is positioned as a brand, not a tech.
It's actually a confusing thing in marketing.
Products that are sold for aesthetic reasons - i.e. fashion - well that's obviously aspirational.
But most products that are sold even on the basis of features - those features are never used. It's the features themselves that are aspirational.
There's a late night infomercial on right now selling hoodies. They make it green, call it the 'tactical hoodie' and use the most ridiculous, masculine/alpha, quasi military language to describe it. All the 'zippers' and 'pockets' and 'the peak on the hood to keep your night vision' etc..
It's just a basic green hoodie ... but described as though it's for Special Forces Operators i.e. aspirational marketing.
FYI that products are sold aspirationally doesn't mean they are bad, they can be good, even better, just that you're probably going to end up paying a hefty margin.
Good example of this kind of positioning:
"You sent a critical email, but didn't hear back. Why? Your message was buried by countless more that arrived later. With Superhuman, you can get back to the top of their inbox. When you send an email, just choose a time — for example, Monday at 8:55 am — and we'll deliver it precisely then. When your contact starts their day, they'll see your message first. No matter when you work, send at the perfect moment. "
It's a ridiculously mundane feature, sadly one that took forever to appear on most clients, but it's now universally available, called out as some amazing thing and contextualized in the locus of the problem i.e. "Your message gets read first!". Smart but a bit hapless.
I cannot think any productivity tool that has sticked only sake of productivity. It is always productivity + something where tool shines. Eg using vim at server through ssh.
So many startups these days seem to only have other startups as their customers, and they're almost always due to connections between their investors. Just trading VC money back and forth.
This is why I especially like B2B2C companies. (Companies that sell to other companies a product that customer company somehow packages or delivers to the end user) In this model, there is, at the very least, a “C” somewhere down the chain where value is transferred from a consumer.
I briefly worked at one such company. The vibe was from some sort of alternate reality, it was truly bizarre. I couldn't deal with it and quit after about a month.
I have to disagree with you. The guy built a niche product, an email program that offered productivity benefits just for those dealing with hundreds of emails a day. Maybe the top 1-2% of email users would find it useful.
But this presents some big problems for his go to market plan. If he opens it up to everyone with no restrictions he will face tremendous churn. Plus 98% won't see any value at all and will bash the product online perhaps discouraging those who would benefit from even trying it.
By forcing people to answer questions that allow him to only allow those who would potentially benefit from signing up for the trial he eliminates all those problems. As a result from what I can see his users are fanatical in their praise.
You might ask how does he earn a profit on the top 2% of email users? The overall market is so large that even a tiny sliver of those users who willing pay for the product is a pretty large market.
Proponents never call it a niche product, though. They talk like it’s the one productivity tool to rule them all. Such attitude is the problem, not the business’s success.
Funnily I am the one who always said - why do you need Superhuman if you have multiple inboxes in gmail and filters + shortcuts to cater for probably 80% of the functionality free.
But the OP of the comment has a very good point:
>he will face tremendous churn
The pricing didn't reflect the value for mass market. They started with SV execs. Them slowly improved and decreased pricing and released for `privileged mass market` later down the road.
"f he opens it up to everyone with no restrictions he will face tremendous churn. Plus 98% won't see any value at all and will bash the product online perhaps discouraging those who would benefit from even trying it."
Yeah that's not a valid excuse.
There are innumerable product categories where such problems exist.
Every product you could imagine is more useful for one group than another.
He is creating a MLM-ish exclusivity club, a bit like with Clubhouse (VC's were early participants, bringing in people who wanted to be in that circle).
And: "The overall market is so large that even a tiny sliver of those users who willing pay for the product is a pretty large market. " is one of the biggest pitch fallacies. Tons of young entrepreneurs use this justification in their pitches. There can be reality to it or not.
The obvious 'hustle' is blatantly apparent right in the name: "Superhuman"
He's literally making a direct appeal to the egos of successful people, who think they are a bit better than everyone else.
It's a hustle to sell something into the most lucrative market of 'monthly revenue' from people who can afford it.
It's a bit like Forbes magazine or something.
I'm sure it has some neat features and it may not even be priced wrong - but the marketing is cheezy.
It's also an example of how so many smart people lack self awareness, how people think they are immune to advertising, even people who design marketing overrate their ability to resist influence. The Ego is the great deluder, it's almost impossible for the Ego to reject incoming information that embellishes it.
I think tech people are among the worst of this - because you have high performing, very intelligent people, probably prone to thinking they are 'better' (in some ways maybe they are), but it's also an industry 'the furthest away' from marketing and communications, with basically no bridge of intuition. The language of tech is completely unhelpful in terms of understanding the language of communications.
It seems like it's pretty standard advice that it's better to have 100 customers who absolutely love your product and never churn than 10K customers who have a slightly positive impression of it and 10% of them churn out every month.
I think the years long waiting list and manual selection of who you let in could be an attempt to game these metrics. (I'm not saying that's a valid excuse for doing it, because after 3 (2?) years, the need for such gaming suggests to me that the product isn't in the first category. It might still be OK and a viable business, but it's probably not going to turn into gmail.
"It seems like it's pretty standard advice that it's better to have 100 customers who absolutely love your product and never churn than 10K customers who have a slightly positive impression of it and 10% of them churn out every month."
??? What, no.
Do the math on what you just said.
You'd have to charge 100x the price to have only the 'beloved customers'.
'Churn' is a normal part of business. 100x the customer based, for 10x churn? I think most people would take that.
'Years long waiting list' - is mostly rubb hype, a marketing tactic.
You are not going to be on the waiting list, if they think you are important.
My 'wait' was maybe 3 months, probably because I have 'some banking' elements on my profile. If I was a founder, probably 1 month.
It's a matter of who they think is willing to pay - and - a 'scarcity' tactic that feeds right into the egos of the kinds of people who would want that product.
Their tactics may be reasonable - it could be optimal for them ...
... but my issue is - they are not rational tactics in a competitive market.
Someone could 'copy the whole thing' and give it away for $1 a month.
'Churn' is not hugely relevant.
Which makes me believe that the features are just not that valuable.
They are trying to be a premium brand product in software.
I think 10% layoff is probably just an excuse to cut some fluff and R&D during a downturn. They can harvest cash a little bit before expanding.
Genuine counter-argument: it makes sense to cast a wide net then to filter your customers to try to build a small and loyal customer base.
The truly genuine way of doing this, though, is to advertise the product as such and let people decide to sign up on their own will (e.g. « here is a new email system dedicated to power users. »)
I found the waitlist and onboarding process off-putting, to the point where I just didn’t want to even use it.
I remember getting as far as, “ok, now you need to go through the onboarding process”. I asked if I could skip but they insisted I schedule time with them, so I just didn’t bother.
This was probably one of the weirdest experiences I had with a SaaS product.
Anyway, I wish them well and I hope they pull through the whatever-is-about-to-happen with minimal damage.
I agree: A waitlist on a pure SaaS product is absurd. The only reason why I can think they have it: To require 1:1 onboarding that gives their sales team an opportunity to upsell you. That said, they could have decoupled the two.
I find it sus when VCs have to keep overhyping their portfolio companies, especially when they don't even make money.
Anyway, I checked it out and found that this really isn't novel at all (a meeting to use an email client? really?). Just classic marketing and hype to get you to use the product.