The storyHow they got there
Superhuman made the waitlist the product. Rahul Vohra's insight was that most SaaS companies lose users in the first week because onboarding fails. His solution: don't let anyone in until a human has walked them through the product one-on-one.
Every new user had a 30-minute onboarding call with a Superhuman team member before getting access. This wasn't scalable — and that was the point. Each cohort of users was carefully tuned before the next was admitted. NPS scores were tracked obsessively. Users who rated the product under a 7 were personally contacted.
The waitlist itself became a status signal. Being on the Superhuman waitlist meant you cared about your inbox. Getting off it meant you'd made it. Early users tweeted about the onboarding experience, the keyboard shortcuts, the speed. Every tweet added hundreds to the waitlist.
Channel MixWhere the growth actually came from
Most case studies hand-wave channels. Here's the rough allocation — not in dollars spent, but in users acquired — across the routes that actually mattered.