How Superhuman Used a Four-Question Survey to Measure and Achieve Product-Market Fit

Product-market fit is usually presented as a vague, magical concept that at the same time is the determinant of a product's success. Building Postulate from scratch, I knew that hitting PMF had to be my first priority before going for growth or scaling or anything else, yet the rule of thumb "you'll know when you're there" was thoroughly unhelpful for a first-time founder like me.

Rahul Vohra, CEO of Superhuman, instead has a rigorous and data-driven way to measure and strive for product-market fit. I found out about it when my friend sent me his article "How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit" recently. It's not long, and absolutely worth a read on its own, but for my own understanding and reference I've created my own condensed version of his methodology in this post.

Superhuman's PMF strategy centers around a four-question survey sent to users/beta testers. "You start to get directionally correct results around 40 respondents," Vohra writes. Here are the four questions, and what to make of them:

1. How disappointed would you feel if you could no longer use Superhuman?

Possible choices: very, somewhat, or not disappointed.



This is the main metric for measuring PMF. If 40% of users say they would be very disappointed, you've hit PMF. This is based off of research from Sean Ellis, who led growth at Dropbox, Eventbrite, and other successful startups.

This metric also helps you segment potential users. Understand what personas most consistently derive value from your product, then isolate their responses and feedback. Immediately, this should bump the "very disappointed" rate up towards 40%.

2. What type of people do you think would most benefit from Superhuman?

"Happy users will almost always describe themselves, not other people, using the words that matter most to them," Vohra writes. Responses to this question help you build your ideal customer persona, and even refine marketing copy based on what language resonates.

3. What is the main benefit you receive from Superhuman? / 4. How can we improve Superhuman for you?

Lastly, these two questions outline what should go on your roadmap for upping the "very disappointed" percentage and hitting PMF.



A word cloud for the benefits users get from Superhuman, for example, reveals that keyboard shortcuts and speed are the main sources of value. This provides another line of segmentation: those who would not be "very disappointed" to lose access, but do value the main benefit of speed, must have small things holding them back from loving Superhuman entirely. Addressing these small things is the surest way to convert "somewhat disappointed" users to "very disappointed" ones.

What those small things are come up in answers to the last question. In Superhuman's case, the need for a mobile app was the obvious thing to address.

By conducting rigorous data-based analysis and basing product decisions around the insights generated, Superhuman were able to up their "very disappointed" percentage above and beyond the 40% PMF benchmark.