Superhuman's $30M onboarding secret & a surprise challenge

I am starting this every Monday. Time to put your marketing spidey-sense to the test.

Anthropic just ran a weeklong Claude Café pop-up in NYC's West Village. Over 5,000 people showed up for free coffee, "thinking" caps, and a "zero slop zone." It generated 10 million social impressions.
Now Perplexity has opened an actual café in Seoul (Café Curious), and Cursor (AI coding platform) did a San Francisco pop-up.

AI companies are going IRL. Hard.

What happens next week?

A) OpenAI opens a ChatGPT coffee truck in London or Tokyo
B) Google does something defensive (opens Gemini lounges or acquires a café chain)
C) A non-AI brand hijacks the trend (Notion? Canva? Figma?)
D) The trend dies because everyone realizes it's expensive AF

Reply with your prediction. Closest guess gets crowned Friday + a shoutout in next week's email.

Last week's winner: No one (because this is week 1, but we're pretending we've been doing this forever).

Superhuman (the $30/month email app) has a 1-hour onboarding call.

Yes, for an email app.

Most companies would say "that doesn't scale."
Superhuman says "that's exactly why it works!”

They're not teaching you the product. They're teaching you their philosophy about email.

By the end of the call, you don't just know HOW to use Superhuman.
You know WHY speed in email matters.

You've internalized their belief system.

You don't need 1-hour calls. But you need to teach the philosophy, not just the product.

Bad onboarding: "Here's how Morning Brew writes emails."

Good onboarding: "Here's why Morning Brew's tactic works. Now here's how to adapt it to your audience."

When people believe what you believe, they don't churn.

See you tomorrow,
Pavan

P.S. Seriously, what's your prediction? Even if you're wildly wrong, I want to hear it. The best predictions come from people who pay attention to patterns, not people who play it safe.

Philosophy is invisible. You can't screenshot belief.