Design principles: making AI products people love

Rahul argues that core product design principles haven't changed: great UI, onboarding, and treating software like a game.

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Episode notes

Rahul Vohra is the Founder and CEO of Superhuman Mail.

Rahul sold his company to Grammarly in July of 2025, which had just acquired Coda in 2024. Following the acquisitions, the combined companies rebranded to Superhuman in October of 2025.

And it’s quietly one of the most underrated businesses that no one is talking about, with over $700 million ARR and 40 million Daily Active Users. Grammarly spent 15+ years building integrations with over a million other products, that they’re now layering more AI products on top of.

We talk about Rahul’s journey building Superhuman, go inside the acquisition, all the lessons he’s learned from selling two companies, why you should design your product like a video game, and we also re-visit his famous quantitative guide to finding PMF.

Thanks to Todd Goldberg, Ed Sim, Shomik Ghosh, Ryan Hoover, and Rahul’s brother Gaurav Vohra for helping brainstorm topics for this conversation.

Thank you to Hanover Park for supporting this episode! Upgrade your fund admin to the 21st century https://www.hanoverpark.com/Turner

Timestamps:

(2:42) Inside the Superhuman acquisition

(11:09) Grammarly: $700M ARR, 40M DAUs

(18:53) How to sequence your product roadmap

(24:43) Vision for the new Superhuman

(32:43) Build your product like a video game

(38:24) Designing Karamja island in Runescape

(41:10) Build products like toys and games

(44:53) Starting a Machine Learning PhD in 2006

(48:49) Dropping out to start his first company