Today I walk with Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Superhuman, the company formerly known as Grammarly. Shishir co-founded Coda and sold it to Grammarly, built skippable ads at YouTube into a product that went from $0 to $1 billion in 18 months, and sits on the boards of Spotify and Walmart, and now he runs a company with over $700 million in revenue. He talks about why most people should not start a company, and why he gave up ownership of Coda without any startup pride.
We get into:
- Why the right startup idea should feel like a curse, and why he tells students not to keep a list of startup ideas
- The misspelled Vinod Khosla email that made $500,000 land in his account and moved his company to Silicon Valley in a week
- Joining YouTube when it lost money on every single view, and board meetings with Eric Schmidt about shutting it down
- The skip button every salesperson said would kill revenue, and how it went from $0 to $1 billion in 18 months
- Selling Coda to Grammarly, and why he needs a sense of purpose more than a sense of ownership
so much more!
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(00:00) Trailer
(01:07) Shishir Mehrotra, CEO, Superhuman
(01:32) Making the Lego robotics world championships four times with his daughters
(08:59) His dad only paid for majors where the books are 50 years old
(12:18) Why most people should not start a company
(14:47) The Vinod Khosla email that moved $500,000 in one afternoon
(20:15) Joining YouTube when it lost money on every view
(25:50) Board meetings with Eric Schmidt about shutting YouTube down
(35:20) The skip button that went from $0 to $1B in 18 months
(40:30) Susan Wojcicki and the 55/45 creator revenue split
(45:54) Sketching Coda on a notepad by his bed
(53:52) Why he sold Coda to Grammarly
(59:30) Purpose over ownership and zero startup pride
(1:01:45) The bundling theory he built with Daniel Ek at Spotify
(1:04:49) Superhuman's AI agents and 60% of auto-drafted emails sent
(1:09:37) Why AI will make teams bigger
(1:15:32) Outro
Follow Shishir
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishirmehrotra/
X: https://x.com/shishirmehrotra
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