Superhuman is the fastest email experience in the world. Our customers get through their inbox twice as fast as before, reply to their important email sooner, and save 3 hours or more every single week. This is a story of blood, sweat, and prompts — and how we built Superhuman AI.
It took Instagram two and a half years to reach 100M monthly active users. It took TikTok an impressive nine months. In late November, ChatGPT launched. And just two short months later, ChatGPT reached 100M MAUs, making it the fastest growing consumer app in history.
By February, it was clear that the way we work was on the cusp of a huge transformation. We saw that large language models could write articles, edit text, research any topic, summarize long documents, and translate between all languages. We naturally wondered whether LLMs could be useful when reading and writing email. If so, we could save customers huge swathes of time, and free them up to be more creative, strategic, and impactful. And of course, it wasn’t just us wondering. LLM features rapidly became our top user request, eclipsing the next most requested features by orders of magnitude.
The opportunity was here, and the demand was clear. But how should we get started? None of us were familiar with the technology. And what should we build first? We had so many options to choose from. And how would we even prioritize it? Like every other company, we had way more to build than fit on our roadmap.
How we prioritized AI
We tackled prioritization first. At Superhuman, we have historically used two ways to prioritize features: how valuable the feature is for users, and how valuable the feature is for the business. These measures usually make prioritization easy. But here, they were coming up dry. We couldn’t answer how valuable the features would be for users; we didn’t know how well they would actually work, nor did we know how they would feel in practice. Similarly, we couldn’t answer how valuable the features would be for the business; we didn’t know what revenue they could make, nor could we predict what growth they would bring.
Instead, we took a philosophical stance. We stated our core belief: LLMs would change everything. It wouldn’t happen overnight, and it may not be obvious how, but they would change the way we work forever. We could either let the market lead and then quickly follow, or we could lead and blaze our own trail.
Which is better? Following quickly, or blazing your own trail?
It may seem counterintuitive, but it is usually better to follow quickly. Apple were not the first to sell retina screens, nor were they the first to build FaceID, but they did those things so well that we call them retina screens and FaceID. And when startups enter new markets, fast followers usually outcompete first movers. Pioneers have arrows in their backs for a reason!
Despite the received wisdom, we decided that we must nevertheless lead. Our customers deserve the fastest email experience in the world, and it is our duty to push that envelope. We had to figure out how to build AI alongside everything else.
In early February, I had hired our first President, Paul Teyssier. Paul is a brilliant leader and operator, and this is exactly the kind of decision that we brought him in to drive.
After some discussions, Paul and I came up with a new mode of operation: theta mode. This was designed to contrast with our standard mode, which we would call alpha mode.
Alpha mode is the default, and almost all projects should use it. In alpha mode, the project team has very high autonomy. The team operates with minimal executive involvement, defines their own goals and metrics, and is accountable for their own progress and outcomes.
Theta mode is the exception, and should be used sparingly. In theta mode, an executive is embedded directly into the project team. The executive takes on individual contributor responsibilities, and provides daily support, guidance, and feedback to ensure that the team succeeds. We expect projects in theta mode to run much faster.
(You might be wondering: why alpha and theta? They are both types of brainwave. Alpha waves are observed when the brain is working coherently. Theta waves are observed when the brain is thinking about the future.)
We created an AI team that ran in theta mode, staffed with one designer, one marketer, and several engineers. I was the embedded executive, and helped with product, design, engineering, and marketing. We worked incredibly hard, pulled out every stop, and operated independently of almost all company processes. In other words, we recreated the first year of Superhuman!