Founder Who Sold Startup to LinkedIn Built $825 Million Brand After Health Scare
Rahul Vohra sold Rapportive to LinkedIn for $15 million in 2012, but the stress of the deal landed him in the hospital. He later built Superhuman, an email startup valued at $825 million and acquired by Grammarly, after adopting transcendental meditation and a healthier approach to entrepreneurship.
Rahul Vohra was 27 years old and on the verge of selling his first startup to LinkedIn when the pressure of running a company sent him to the hospital. The deal eventually closed, making him a millionaire, but the experience reshaped how he approached his next venture — an email startup valued at $825 million that was later acquired by Grammarly.
Vohra co-founded Rapportive, a browser plug-in and email service, in 2009. The five-person team joined Y Combinator's summer 2010 cohort and soon attracted acquisition interest from LinkedIn. From the outside, it looked like a perfect Silicon Valley success story. In reality, the company was running out of money, and Vohra was stretching himself thin.
«I didn't think I was stressed, but I think that's just because when you're stressed all the time, you don't even notice it anymore,» Vohra told Fortune.
One morning in 2011, months before the deal closed, Vohra woke at 3 a.m. with intense nausea. He ignored it and went to work. By lunchtime, the pain was unbearable. On a four-block walk to a pharmacy near his San Francisco office, he collapsed outside a McDonald's. A co-founder brought him painkillers, and Vohra returned to work. He did not go to the hospital until the next day.
Tests revealed that two years of eating brownies and pizza, never exercising, and constant entrepreneurial pressure had caused gastrointestinal reflux disease. A nurse told him his insides looked like those of someone 10 to 20 years older. She advised him to re-examine his life.
LinkedIn acquired Rapportive in February 2012 for a reported $15 million. Vohra, who was raised in Birmingham, England, spent a week in the hospital and a month recovering with family. He unplugged from work, reconnected with narrative video games like The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy, and developed a bond with his aunt and uncle's dog.
During that time, he took up transcendental meditation in the Raj tradition of India. Several industry friends recommended Laurent Valosek, a wellness coach and CEO of the Peak Leadership Institute. Valosek taught Vohra one-on-one over several hours-long sessions. They still meet in person every two or three months.
«When I did finally get back into work, all of the games that the VCs were playing... just suddenly didn't faze me at all,» Vohra said. «I had this new source of grit and resilience.»
He now starts every morning with a 30-minute meditation session — 20 minutes repeating his mantra and 10 minutes lying flat. Around 3:30 p.m., he steps into a meditation room at the office for another brief session. He credits the practice with boosting his mental state, creativity, and happiness.
Rapportive generated only 14 cents in revenue over its 20-month history, but early investors made 20 times their money, and the founders became millionaires. Vohra says he still had more to give. In 2014, he launched Superhuman, an email startup that grew into a brand valued at $825 million and was acquired by Grammarly.
This time, there were no trips to the hospital. Vohra, now 42, says he hopes his story shows other founders that there is another path. He finds it sad and dismaying when young entrepreneurs run themselves into the ground, wearing exhaustion as a badge of honor.
«They're doing what I did plus stupid hours,» he said. «I hope that when people read this, that they see that there is another path.»
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