Topic
12 facts from 1 episode, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
Undated
Superhuman organizes seven game design principles across five factors: goals, emotions, controls, toys and flow.
“So there are seven principles that we think of when it comes to what makes a good game at Superhuman. And those seven principles, we think of them across roughly five different factors. Things like goals, emotions, controls, toys, and flow.”
Undated
Superhuman co-founder and CTO Erwin (called comrade) was the first employee hired at Reportive and was recruited by Rahul Vohra to join Superhuman.
“co-founder and CTO comrade Erwin, who was, by the way, the first employee that we hired at Reportive to join me at Superhuman.”
Undated
Rahul Vohra pitched Superhuman as bringing programmer-grade tools such as fast response times, instant search, command palettes and keyboard shortcuts to everyone.
“Hundred millisecond response times, instantaneous search, command palettes, keyboard shortcuts, beautiful layouts, typography as a first class citizen”
Undated
Superhuman spent nearly two years building a way to download, store and index email in the browser so search could run locally and on the Gmail server at once.
“we spent, no joke, this took nearly two years of time to figure out how to download, store and index the email in the browser”
Undated
Superhuman's native app uses Electron, but Rahul Vohra says Electron alone does not provide fast local full-text search.
“We do use Electron. Now, Electron by itself doesn't solve the problem. Electron by itself doesn't give you an easy way to do a full text search locally.”
Undated
To align text on a sub-pixel grid, Superhuman reverse engineered Chrome's font layout engine and built its own layout framework in CSS.
“We dove into the Chrome source code, reverse engineered the font layout engine, and then built our own layout framework, actually entirely in CSS, because we wanted this thing to be super fast as well.”
Undated
Superhuman users can run the Command K command baseline to overlay the sub-pixel grid on which the interface is laid out.
“It will actually turn on a sub pixel grid and you can see everything layout on that on that frame.”
Undated
Superhuman was building a streaks feature that counts consecutive weeks of reaching Inbox Zero, with an achievements area showing statistics such as emails archived and sent.
“We are working on a streaks feature that should be out either next week or the week after just a few final polishing touches to put on it.”
Undated
Superhuman tested the streaks idea with about three rounds of emailing users their own usage statistics, written as SQL scripts, before building the feature.
“We did about three rounds of this switching up the stats that we would email, analyzing the sentiments, really digging in deep with the customers.”
Undated
Superhuman took about nine months to realize that reaching Inbox Zero is among the most emotionally resonant moments for users.
“Inbox Zero, we fairly quickly learned, I would say it took us about nine months to reach this realization, is one of the most emotionally resonant moments in someone's interaction with their inbox.”
Undated
Rahul Vohra says he could not reach Inbox Zero himself before Superhuman invented Split Inbox, which took years to build.
“So before we'd invented Split Inbox, which took years to get to, it was an impossibility for me to actually hit Inbox Zero.”
Undated
Rahul Vohra said Superhuman's waitlist exceeded 350,000 people at the time of recording.
“We do have a big waitlist. It's more than 350,000 people at this point.”
Episodes