Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career: Inside Linear: Building with taste, craft, and focus | Karri Saarinen (co-founder, designer, CEO)

00:00:00 - 00:30:00

Karri Saarinen, co-founder and CEO of Linear, discusses the importance of design in the tech industry and how it has evolved over time. Linear focuses on craft, quality, and opinionated software, with a unique hiring process. They emphasize the value of early feedback and balancing perfection with quick releases. The podcast also highlights the importance of giving project teams ownership and space to improve features, and the role of design as a differentiator in a crowded market.

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00:30:00 - 01:00:00

In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, Karri Saarinen, co-founder, designer, and CEO of Linear, discusses the importance of building a strong brand and the gradual process of creating a brand over time. The podcast also explores the value of providing good defaults and opinions in software design, as well as the unique approach of prioritizing understanding customers and their problems over relying heavily on data and metrics. Additionally, the episode highlights the significance of focusing on core activities and avoiding distractions in building products and companies.

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01:00:00 - 01:30:00

The podcast discusses how Linear, a company, aims to create a more manageable and collaborative work environment by encouraging employees to take on broader responsibilities. They also have a unique hiring process that includes a paid work trial to assess candidates' fit and problem-solving abilities. The podcast emphasizes the importance of problem-solving skills and the ability to work quickly in a startup environment. The CEO reflects on the challenges of leadership and the need to handle diverse tasks while staying focused.

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01:30:00 - 01:39:46

In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, the hosts discuss various topics including learning about financials and legal matters, a new feature called 'asks' that integrates with Slack, and recommendations for books and movies. They also share their recent experience with installing hue lights in their home offices and mention their favorite life mottos and valuable lessons from their parents. Additionally, they recommend trying a Finnish dish called salmon soup.

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My belief is that like any domain or industry, the more it

matters, the more the design matters, what happens is like

whenever there's like a new paradigm, I don't know, it's

like the mobile or the web or something. The first iterations

of those products existing there, they don't have to be like

super well designed necessarily because they are the first. But

then like as as you built the hundred, like 1000, like

different email clients, any email client now has to be like

pretty good to be be even considered like reason of like

an email client, it's like that the bar is so high. So I think

like today, it's almost like a very basic thing now, pretty

much from the very beginning, you need like pretty high level

design to people to even like pay attention or consider you

seriously.

Today, my guest is Kari Saranen. Kari was the founding

designer coinbase principal designer at Airbnb, co founder

of two previous startups. And most recently is the co founder

and CEO of linear, which I am fairly confident is the fastest

growing and most beloved issue tracking tool in the world, and

something that a growing number of product teams are using to

build their own product. Kari and his team are building their

company and their product in a really unique way, with a huge

focus on craft and quality, no AB tests, no metrics based goals

instead a focus on taste and opinions, also no durable cross

functional teams, instead teams assemble around a project and

then disperse once it's done. Also, they have just one product

manager as the head of product. And that's it. In our

conversation, Kari shares how he built a culture around quality

and craft, how he makes tradeoffs, and how he

operationalizes quality and thoughtfulness, where design can

be differentiator and competing against incumbents. We talk

about something called the linear method of building product,

which is big on building opinionated software, working in

consistent cycles amongst other principles. We also get into

linear is unique hiring approach, which involves a paid

work trial where candidates work alongside a team for a number

of days, instead of just having an interview. Also, a glimpse into

how linear got their first 10 customers, found product market

fit and scaled their growth engine. There is so much Golden's

episode, I'm very excited for you to hear it. With that, I bring

you Kari Saranen after a short word from our sponsors. This

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Kari, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Lenny. It's great to be here.

Maybe to start set a little context. Can you just explain

what is linear? What does linear do? And then share maybe a few

stats of just the scale of linear at this point.

So linear is the project and issue tracking system that

software companies and technical teams love to use. We help

like software companies to build software. We started 2019.

Today, some of the top growth companies like Block, Versailles,

Ramp, Retool, Mercury and Substack are building with

linear. We also additionally have lots of other companies like

thousands of other companies using linear. These companies can

be like very early stage team like some some companies just

graduated from YC or a public company. And just like briefly

why we created linear is that like, like you said, like we I

work with you at the Airbnb and before that, I work at Coinbase

and before that, I had my own startup and all of us founders,

there's three of us, we had like a similar base where we worked

in multiple different companies in different stages. And what we

saw often is that like the tools available for managing software

projects weren't that like really cutting it. I think a lot of

them felt very conky or complex or or just like they had this

kind of legacy way of thinking about software development. And

so we just felt like we should do something about it. Then that's

so with linear we we set out to do like build this like most

frictionless and streamlined system for for modern software

development. I'm also happy to share that we we've been

profitable the last two years. And we also have this thing where

we actually have this net negative lifetime burn rate, which

means that like we just have more cash in the bank today than we

have raised. I think a lot of startups like usually the normal

ways is that like you you spend you raise money and then you

you need to spend it to build it. But I think we since we were

able to build a business pretty early on, we've been able to be

in this position that actually we haven't spent any money on

building the business.

That is insane. I didn't even know that. Okay, so for all those

reasons, a lot of founders and a lot of product leaders look up

to the way when you're built product and the way you think

about product. And so to kind of frame this conversation, there's

three areas I want to dive into. One is just how you approach

building product. Two is how you go about building the team and

the business in general. And then three is just how you grow

linear. And to start, I want to talk about craft. Clearly, one

of the biggest reasons that people look up to linear and use

linear is the quality of user experience and the product. And

I know your team puts a lot of emphasis on craft and user

experience. I imagine that also comes at the cost of some

tradeoffs, like takes probably longer to get stuff out the

dairy, probably losing sales, because people are waiting for a

feature and you're not ready, ready to launch yet because you

want to make it better. What have you learned about creating

space for craft and building product that is really, really

great?

Yeah, and I think it's interesting that those things you

mentioned, like hiring, building business and building

product and craft is like, I think that all of those are

somewhat related to each other. But so what I can say about the

product craft per se, it's like, it's definitely like starts

with the people that like on the on the hiring front, we always

look for people that care about it. As a business, like, why we

really care about it is, is that, like, we see that

cooperation only happens if people use the product and like

our product, which is supposed to help the core collaboration

coordination, if there's friction, or the experience

isn't that great, or there's this little paper cuts, I think

it gets really annoying for people to use. And so we think

like, for the business to be successful, the quality is, and

the craft is very important. There's definitely like trade

off sometimes, like, there can be like, for example, timelines,

like we, we are about to launch something. And then, for

example, I or someone else goes to look at it, then and says,

like, Oh, this, this doesn't like feel right. And we just like

should fix it. So I don't think we should launch this now. So

sometimes, like, it doesn't definitely push the timelines.

But this, this might be like days. It's not like we need to

like, redo everything. The other way we think about it's

like, we are actually very okay, like pushing things out to

ourselves and into for like a small group of customers, like

if they opt into that. So whenever we build a new feature,

one of the things is like, we don't want to spend tons of

time up front, just like designing it and polishing it

perfectly. Because we actually believe that when when you start

building the thing, you actually start realizing more like how

we could how it should work and how it should be better. So a

lot of times with the teams, we tell them like, just, just put

it there and not like, I don't know, the first week almost

like, after you have some kind of designs in place or some kind

of design ideas, just like put it into the app and like ship it

to production, but only visible to us. So we internally can

test it out. And then I think the next stage is like, we look

for like, a customer that could be interested in this feature

or, or we just like, ask people to opt in to like some kind of

better program. And in those stages, the experience can be

a little like janky, or it's not that like polished, but we're

okay with it because we are saying it's not finished, like

we just want to get your feedback early so we can make it

better. But like once we get to the kind of like it, the full

general release, then we like, pay more attention to the

actual like polish or the or the craft.

So that is so interesting. I didn't know you do that. So you

actually go ahead and launch things really early to select

a group of people that want the early stuff. And then did you

say that you find one customer to kind of co create and help

evolve the feature and change with?

Yeah, usually it can be one or it's like three or five or 10.

So it's often, especially with the larger company, like larger

company facing features, we usually do try to find a large

company because it's sometimes it's hard to like imagine these

things how they should work. And so it's better if someone is

willing to work with us to like explain, okay, this is how we

do something and something like, for example, we work this way

with Vercel that there was some some changes they wanted to see

in the in the roadmap feature. So we work with them to to like

improve it, then and then they could like give us feedback along

the way.

That is so interesting. Because I think people seeing linear

from the outside, it feels like you just take the time it need

you need to build something awesome. And then it launches

and it's amazing. And it's great. But turns out that isn't

exactly a build. It's you actually do launch things really

early. And people don't necessarily see it until it's

done. But there's this whole process behind the scenes.

Yeah, I think like sometimes people can believe like think of

that craft is is about perfecting things and like perfecting

them in a in a very like, organized way or like very early

on the downside with this like perfection mindset is that it

can be sometimes hard to like put anything out because nothing

is ever like fully perfect. And so we try to like balance this

thinking with the fact that we should be always pushing things

out very quickly. But then like also fixing them like improving

them very quickly. So it's almost like the opposite ideas. But

then we we try to like kind of combine that. And I think it's

been it's been working well that generally in the company,

there's not necessarily like a lot of reviews or something that

we we always like review everything that like gets shipped

this way. Because we do want people to like feel that they

can like put something in the app. And then we can try it out.

So it's more like, let's just like try it out. And then but then

like, yeah, we do need to look at it again, when before we release

it to everyone.

A lot of founders, a lot of product leaders, a lot of

designers definitely want to create space for craft and

making products really great, something they're really proud

of. But in practice, it's really hard. Very few teams and

companies do this. Is there anything else you've learned

about creating space for this sort of thing and prioritizing it

for founders that are listening that are trying to instill more

and more of this? Or do you have to be a designer CEO like

Kari and there's really it's hard to do otherwise?

Yeah, I don't I don't think actually, it's it's it's not

like purely coming from me. So I think they'll of the office

founders, like, Jory and Thomas and additionally, their

background is engineering. But I would say like, they actually

have almost like, I think they spend even more time on the

details than than sometimes I do. Like, I think, like, very

early on, when it was three of us, I would be the one like kind

of get doing the broad strokes designs, like this is how the

UI works. And this is how the some of the things work. And

that they were the ones that like, Oh, there should be

animation here. And there should be like, this kind of thing

here. So I think it's it's kind of like that DNA, I think

comes from comes from all of us. And I think like with with the

craft, it's always starts with like, people need to care about

it. Like, if it's not valued in the company, then it's very hard

to do for anyone to do because not it is people don't feel like

it's it's valued. And I had I gave this advice to some founder,

he was asking me about it. And like, in their case, like their

founders were coming from different companies, like, maybe

this one founder came from a European B and then the other

ones came from my Facebook and and Amazon. And I think like

these, like, for example, I think Facebook and Amazon have a

very different culture on quality or craft or, or shipping. And

I think like, where I said to them, like, you just like, you

need to align on it, like, it's like, you cannot run a company

with multiple different kinds of cultures. I think I made some

points like why the quality is important for certain kind of

products. And like, you should all kind of believe in that. And

then like instill that with everyone you hire. The other

thing I would say that what we like to do is, we actually don't

have much bms in a company, we only have one. And like, we can

talk about more about it. But the one of the things I think

that happens is like, when when you build a team, and you start

creating this very specific roles for everything, where like, I

think that often the PM can be the one that like figuring things

out and like making decisions and guiding the team. But they're

not the ones like building the feature. So they're not there,

like, looking at it, like the whole day, it's like, how, how

is this, where does this button go? Or how does it work? And I

think like a lot of that like this graph for us happens when we

give the project team this like ownership. And the project team

is just engineering and design. And then when they start

building that feature, they start seeing this opportunity is

that this thing could be better. Like a good example of this is

like we, one of our engineers, Andreas, like when we were

building this right click menu in the app, like so you can

right click different things. And under that you have sub

menus, like Mac OS does this well, where it's like when you

menu open that menu, you hover on the menu, and then you want to

go to the sub menu. So you hover to the right, you don't have

to go like exactly like horizontally to get into that

menu, you can actually go kind of like diagonally, or like you

don't actually have to hit the menu exactly, there's like this

kind of safe zone. But like a lot of software like just

implements like, Hey, let's do this menu, let's make the sub

menu. It only works if you exactly hover over the menu. And

then like what happens is the user often like misses like with

few pixels, what they were trying to like do. So what the

address did like, which we didn't tell him to do is like, yeah,

this kind of sucks. And like, we should make this better. And so

he figured out the way to like create those like safe areas that

are dynamic based on like, like the sub menu positioning and

everything. So it's much easier now, like you can go

diagonally to the actual thing you want to go to. So I think

like these kind of things like happen when you give people like

more of the ownership of the project and also, like the space

to do that. And then you also have like, leadership or or

generally the company culture that that values the quality or

the craft.

Alright, well, I got to follow this thread. There's a couple

questions I want to ask. So you have one product manager,

would you call him the head of products?

Yeah, non you who is who is the yeah, he's the head of product.

Awesome. So what made you decide to hire him and even have any

PMs?

We started to see that. Okay, we have enough features and and

like, like areas of the product. And also like the team is

bigger, that it's hard to keep kind of like, align on all of

these things or like even keep track of things. And like,

initially, we actually hired none as a contractor to help us

with this like insights data tool. So we have this like data to

tool feature built in linear so you can get like data on what's

happening in the workspace. And for us, like founders, we

realized like none of us are like, we are not super experienced

in in data tools. So we need someone to help out and luckily

none was like we knew him and like he actually worked at mode,

which is a data tool. And so we initially hired him like, can you

help us figure out like, what exactly should this data tool

and how should it work? Because I think there's different ways

of doing that. And I think, always the easiest way is like,

let's just copy what some other company is doing. But we didn't

want to do that. So we wanted to like figure out like, what is

actually like, useful way to to use this data or like get this

data. So he helped us with that. And then we kind of saw like,

yeah, this could be like useful in other larger areas or

overall with the whole product is like, we might have this kind

of questions, like, what should we exactly be thinking around

here? Like, why and like, how would we like, define this

direction and then like, help the teams to also like, align on

it. So like, it to us, it's more like he's kind of like the

figures out the direction of the product and and and like

steers the some of the efforts and not like he's there in every

meeting and like, making every decision or writing every spec

or, or something like that.

Another question along the line, because there's a lot of

PMs listening, they're going to be like, Oh, shit, these guys

don't need PMs or PMs is over product management it. And so

just another question along these lines. Somebody needs to do

the work that a PM does. Basically, right, there's all

these things that is on the plate of a product manager when

they're at a company. And if they're not there, other people

have to do those things. And what I'm hearing is basically, you

give those responsibilities to the engineer designer and maybe

other functions within team. Is that right?

Yeah, so I mean, definitely, I think what it means is, and

there's definitely like trade off. So like, I think sometimes

when companies specialize roles a lot, it's like, because of

it's more efficient, like if the engineer just spends 100% of

their time like coding something, then it's like, they're using

their skill set to the max. But then we just think that in in

order to like, build quality things or build things in a

certain way, it's actually better if people actually also

spend some time thinking about things and not just like

executing. So yes, like for every project, there's a project

lead that lead can be engineer or designer, it's not like a

formal role, or it's not based on it, like, like your whatever

level or or it's just like, you need to be certain title that

to you can be that it's more like an assignment that like,

okay, now, you're responsible, like getting the project started

and working with together with the team, like figuring it out.

And then like communicating when changes or like communicating

how the progress happens. And so it's definitely like, it means

that the engineers and or designers also have to like do

these things. And like, then do you need to communicate? And then

do you need to think about like, the scope or things? It's a

different way of doing things. And, and also not everyone wants

to do that, which is fine. But we wouldn't in the hiring from

try to hire people that are kind of interested in the broader

scope than just like the that they're like, specific skillset

that they have.

Yeah, I think those last two points are really essential is one,

people often don't want to do this work. And they kind of are

happy to offload it to a potential product manager. So the

fact that, say, engineers have to do all these boring PM things

like communicate timelines and keep pure specs aligned and make

sure timelines are hidden all that stuff and run meetings. A lot

of people don't want to do that. A lot of times they do. And I

think in this case, people seem to really want to be doing

that. The other is I think you need a really high caliber team.

That's very product minded. And the hiring bar needs to be very,

very high for say, engineers and designers to want to do all

these things and be good at them. And so I think I think those are

two necessary ingredients for this to work out.

Yeah, sure.

For teams that want to try this sort of approach, especially

startups that are kind of starting out and maybe not excited

about hiring product managers. Is there anything else that you

think is essential or important to functioning well without any

product managers and you're at around 50 people at this point?

Yeah, we're around 15. Probably the only thing I would say

it's like the hiring front that like you really need to spend

more time on it. And like, basically, you cannot really

interview engineers only for the engineering skills, you also

have to interview them for like the product skills. And it's

like, it's like, you cannot, I think expect that people have

some like, if you do some kind of PM interview for them, it's not

they're not going to have the same kind of skill set or the same

understanding of the concepts or something. But like the way we

have done it in the past is like, basically, I might interview

them about the product. I'm not a technical person, per se. So I

will just like ask them questions about like, how did they do

something? Or like, how do they think about something? And it's

similar to other roles to this, like we just look for like, do

this person have like opinions about, about products and how

they work and, and like, can they form opinions? And can they kind

of use their own judgment at times? And then, like, can they

communicate or articulate those things as well?

Awesome. I was just thinking it's interesting that a tool that I

don't think is designed specifically for product managers,

but essentially for building products, like the infrastructure

for building product in a team is built by a company that has

one PM and very few PMs.

Yeah, I mean, I think like, in some ways, I would say that like,

with linear, we're trying to help the whole company. And like, I

think engineers is probably like the largest user user group of

the of the product. And like, I think in some ways, we want to

make the BMS drop easier, like, they have to spend less time

like managing everything, like where they're like the day to

day, because like the engineers actually using the product, and

they're like updating the things, it's okay, for the BMS, it

would be much more easier to like get this, like, what is the

state of things and, and like, maybe trust that much more

because people actually use the product. So in some ways, like,

I think we, we're trying to like, kind of like make it easier

for everyone easier for the engineers, like they, they can

focus more on their work. And then for BMS, I think, like, we're

trying to make it so that that they can also focus on more on

other things than it's like, I don't know, managing the tool

that they use. Like, I think that's not the most important job of

a PM, I think they should be like thinking more of the, I don't

know, bigger picture or like other problems or like figure out

like the next, like features or or something.

Just one more question along these lines. There's other

companies like Stripe, I think waited till 200 employees to

hire, I think their first product manager, Snapchat, I think

is famous for something around that. Do you have any sense of

if you think this might change when you think you might hire

more product managers, their kind of plan here, or is it just

kind of see how it goes and as you grow?

I think we will definitely hire more. It's like, I think like

what I said before, it's like, I think we like to see in the

PM smarts, like operating on a higher level, like the whole

company, like, I think the way we try to build it is like, we

have less people, but people who are more high caliber and can

think about like, certainly like larger scope than what their

current role is. So I think like, it's, we're just like trying

to build this like a smaller units, but more effective units,

which I think like where the PMs go and that they, they would

be also less of them, like, and they're not there at every

level. But I think in the future, as the company grows and the

team grows and the product grows, we might have like several

PMs that are focusing on or looking at specific areas or

specific types of things of the product or specific customers or

something like that.

Awesome. Okay. That was a tangent because I could not go in

that direction. But I want to come back to design again and

craft. So it feels like linear. One of the reasons you guys have

been successful is design and experience is basically a huge

differentiator from other products. And there's always

this question of can design be enough of a differentiator in

specific markets? Is there always an opportunity to build like a

significantly better product experience and have a real shot

at disrupting an incumbent? Do you have any sense of when design

can be enough of a differentiator? And this is coming

from like a founder trend aside, should we go big on design and

experience or should we invest in like distribution or new

technology or something along those lines? Any thoughts there?

My belief is that like any domain or industry, the more it

matters, the more the design matters. I think like it's kind

of like it's fairly easy to see in different like if even in

software or in other industries, it's like, what happens is like

whenever there's like a new paradigm, I don't know, it's

like the mobile or the web or something. The first iterations

of those products existing there, they don't have to be like

super well designed necessarily because they are the first. But

then like as as you built the hundreds, like 1000, like

different email clients, any email client now has to be like

pretty good to be be even considered like reason of like

an email client, it's like that the bar is so high. So I think

like, today, the startups like, I don't know if you look at

like the web page Google launched with or like the web page

YouTube launched with or some of these like older companies,

it's they were very basic. If you launch that kind of website

today, it's no one really pay attention. So I think like the

design is always like, it's almost like a very basic thing

now that like you from pretty much from the very beginning,

you need like pretty high level design that people to even like

pay attention or consider you seriously. And I think it's like

it's not necessarily fair because like sometimes it's like,

maybe the product is really good, but they didn't have a

designer or they didn't have like time to do it. And then

people just kind of like dismiss it because it doesn't doesn't

seem like something that in the interest them. So I think like

that that's the first thing is like, I think it's it is. And

it's going to be more and more important. But I would also say

like design is never going to be like the reason or like the

reason why a company is successful. It's like, it's like

the company still has to have some other things that like that

the product still needs to be something it needs to be better

in some ways or needs to be different in some ways. And then

like a design is just like enabling some of these things

like enable and similar to technology is like, if you have

good technology, it's like easier to do certain things. And

like, if the product works better in some ways, then you

having like a bad technology or bad bad like infrastructure. So

similar to design, I think like if you're if you have a good

design and like people are or even like a good brand, like

people are like drawn into it. And then it's like makes like

some like user acquisition or user retention or just like

even people perception of the product better. I think like an

example is like packaging and products like Apple or a lot of

companies spend a lot of time like effort into the packaging

because it's kind of like already sets the expectations for

the user who is receiving the product is like, even before you

use the product, you like start thinking that this is a high

quality product. And like, I'm gonna love it. And then like

when you actually have it, then you actually like might feel

that way, unless the product is really bad. And then like, you

wouldn't feel that way. So I think similar with startups or

like SAS is like your landing page or some of the other

things is like, they are already like communicating something

to the user. And they setting setting the expectations. And

then I think that that can be like very useful thing,

especially early on when no one really knows you or or knows the

product or cares about you. So I think like, especially, I feel

like design can be very good leverage in the in the beginning.

I think that's such an interesting insight, especially

that the first thing you said around how the more often and

the more crowded the space is, the more opportunity there is for

design to be a differentiator that roughly how you think about

Yeah, so I mean, just think about like, I don't know, any any

product category, it's like, basically, people, people have

then like lower choices. And then they like how do they make

choices? Like maybe there's a specific thing they want, but

like a lot of people don't necessarily know what what is

the specific feature I want from this software. So it's more

like, Well, what is the best one? Like what is the highest

quality one? And if you put things side by side, and you just

people see things people are visual. So like then like the

design can be one of those things is like stands out is

like, well, that looks the best or that looks the most like

quality product to me. So I'm going to use that one. Like when

people have a lot of choices, they probably will pick the one

that like looks more, more interesting. And then I think

there is the second part is the brand, which is something that

you if you can build a brand, then I think it's like, it

doesn't really even the product almost doesn't matter, like

it's it's it's it becomes this kind of default like, I don't

know, like, again, like Apple or Nike is like, yeah, there's

all kinds of shoes you can buy. But there's a reason for someone

to buy Nike shoes, other than some some random brand, even if

the random brand would be actually a better shoe, they

still buy Nike because they like, I don't know, like the brand.

So then I think like both the design of the product, but also

the design of the brand can be like, like very strong, like

kind of things that like pull people to your company or to the

product.

Is there anything you've learned about just building a brand

over the course of building linear, something you find to be

really important in actually building that perception of

linear is really great and amazing.

To me, I think like the brand should be always like authentic

and like it's just kind of like, I think even people if people

can't articulate it, it people start to feel like something is

off. Like, I think there can be like companies or startups, they

like think about brands like old brand is the local or the

colors of the website or something. And then they like do the

same thing and some some other company does. And then they like

think like, okay, now we have a brand. But like, you actually

didn't like think about like what's your brand, like what is

the message or voice you you want to talk about. And it doesn't

have also like the brand doesn't happen overnight. So it's

basically just you start in the beginning, like and and like

when you start a company, you don't have no brand. And so you

have to create it. So and you you create it over time by the the

things you do, the things you say, like how you say them and

like what what kind of how do you approach things? How do you

treat customers? How do you build the website or product? Like,

all of these things start to like build this like idea, like,

what does this company mean to me in people's heads? I know,

like, we both work with Airbnb and like, I think Francesca is

like, I think the brand was probably the most important

thing for him. And I don't know how many hours or meetings or

conversations there was about the brand. And it's like the brand

was always like, it's like part of everything the company does.

Because it's true. It's like, yeah, you can you could book

things like places to stay a lot of places on the web. But when

people think about like, Oh, I want to like stay in some cool

place. They're gonna think about Airbnb. It's like, they're not

gonna like think about those other places. So that's like the

power of the of the brand to like people stop thinking about the

other things or or they start understanding like, okay, this is

the thing for this.

And it's part of the reason Airbnb has been able to build a

direct destination where people aren't like Googling, I want to

stay in a home that are like Airbnb.com, which gives Airbnb

such a massive advantage, not having to run ads on, you know,

Facebook and Google or SEO, it's just like people know Airbnb,

and I just go straight there. And there's very few sites where

people go, I'm going to go straight there and look for

some knowing that they can also compare hotels and all these

other sites. Coming back to design briefly, just like very

practically, how do you guys do design reviews? Just like, how

do you actually go about reviewing what's going on? And

then to maybe to pick a question, but just whatever you

can share is just like, what do you how do you know when it's

done? How do you know when it's ready and approved? Kari sealed

checkbox ready to go?

We've been doing like exploring different ways of doing this. I

think like today, I still run the design team. So I do see

some of the designs, like on a weekly basis. And and then like

I, or one of the other co founders, or one of the, or the

head of product, we are basically the sponsors for the

projects. So then like, we are kind of like responsible, like

check, like reviewing the reviewing the work. And so we

might just have a meeting where we go through, okay, let's go

through the demo and like people can explain what's what's

going on and like how they think about it and why. And then we

might have like feedback, okay, this seems like strange or or

something. And then I might just after that, I might just like

go into the product myself and like try it out. And then what

happens sometimes, like, it's like, in the initial stages,

like, obviously, we're not gonna like, start fixing

everything. It's more like, let's try to get the like the main

concept there and like figure out how it works. But then like

before we are launching it, I might just go in like try it out

and like try the different states and click it, click it

around. And sometimes I find things like, like, we were

building this threading to comments. And, and then like

when it looked all good in the demos and stuff. And then, then

I went to try it and like try different lengths of messages

and stuff. And then I started to see like, oh, sometimes in

animations are kind of janky, or it's just like, off, like, they

don't go the right way. The, you know, on the screen doesn't

scroll exactly, right? So then I just like, kind of like

captured those things and like, send it to the team. And so we

had to like, kind of pull back the release a little bit until

those things were fixed. That one was like, it's very like, I

think, like a simple concept. And it's like very known concept

like, okay, this is how trading comments works. So that that was

mostly about like, okay, what's the execution of this? But

then we have projects where we are like, not sure exactly how

this should work. And like, we can't really like, like, we can

try it ourselves. We also have to see how how companies use it.

So something like, we built this feature project updates. And

it's like a common thing companies do is like, you need to

write an update on a project. Is it yellow, green, red? And

like companies have very different ways of doing this in

different tools. And we just thought like, well, I think it

would be like really, really nice if it's like inside linear,

and you can the team when they work on a project, they can write

the update, linear can also capture some of the stats, like

what actually happened. I think with that feature, it's like,

it's been working well, but then also now we'll be like

exploring. It's like, after using it a while, we think like, oh,

actually, that it could be like more robust way of following

these updates, maybe people could maybe the leadership could

just like get this updates over email, or like, maybe when you

have a lot of updates, you should have a search or like a

filtering system or something. So I think a lot of times we

just think like, okay, this is like the scope of it for now,

and we're okay, like launching this, and the execution is

good. But we know that like, this is not the like, fully

figured out version, and we just need to see people trying it

out and like, see that see the feedback.

So it sounds like on the decision of whether it goes out or

not, it's kind of this intuitive feeling from your actual

experience, trying it out, feeling gut level, this is ready,

or this needs a little work.

Yeah, I would say like a lot of things that we do is is more

like that, but we don't do AP testing, or we don't do,

especially we go follow like certain metrics or something, we

might sometimes we do have telemetry, or like, we can look

at like how people use certain things. And we sometimes do that.

But like, that's not usually the goal we have in mind. It's like,

yeah, we should move this number as much. So it's more about

like, based on the understanding of the problem we have, and

based on the way what we think is right, is this the right

solution? And is this a good enough solution to be released

to to the customers?

One more question along this thread is, how do you actually

structure these reviews? It sounds like you go straight to a

prototype? Is there like a design review phase? Is it all kind

of informal and people just review here's what we need your

feedback on?

Yes, well, there's like projects don't necessarily have

like specific states to them. But like, I would say like,

roughly, usually we do start with designs, or there's like

that, some explorations on the design, like, okay, there's like

different ways of we could like approach this or sometimes

there's just one way because it's like pretty clear, clear. But

then like, what I said before, is that like, we do try to like

get into the building phase as quickly as possible. Because then

we can also like see is this this direction actually like

reasonable? And like, what what else does it call? Like, is

there some problems it causes? Or how does it just generally

feel here? So I think like that, that there isn't like

specific like, review stages, it's more like, yeah, let's check

like, if let's check on this project, like every week or every

two weeks. And then before releasing, let's also make a

like a review of it and like really test it out that like, is

it that is it the quality we want?

Awesome. So that's a good segue to another area. I want to

spend some time, which is the linear method. You espouse this

way of building product that you call the linear method, which

you publish online and willing to in the show notes. And I just

want to ask a few questions around this way of building

product. One is you are big on this idea of building opinionated

software. Can you talk about just what does that mean? And

then maybe give an example or two of how you actually have done

that a linear.

So first, like with the linear method, what we why did we

create in the first place is like, we just believe that there

is more of like this modern ways of building software and

thinking about it. And we wanted to like share some of our

thinking on it. And that's kind of like also, it relates to how

we built linear as well. Like so you might like, understand why

we make some choices, because this is like the way we think

about making these choices. So we're trying to like share our

thinking behind the product and not just like, here's the product

and like, figure it out. Yeah, so like the opinionated piece,

like, I personally have like this belief that productivity

software should be, and especially company software

should be opinionated. I think that like, what the productivity

software is trying to do is, is like, make people productive.

And I think like what what productive means is like, you

actually do something that matters for the company, which is,

which is like, I don't know, build some new feature or like

fix something or design something. Like all of those

things are like, eventually, they provide some kind of value

for the customer. I think there is this like ideas or notions in

the world that like, flexible software is great. I'm like, I

think it can be great sometimes. But like what happens is like

people start spending a lot of time like, figuring things out,

like how does how does this feature work? Like you can use it

in 10 different ways. And then everyone, every team or everyone

figures out the different way of doing it. So our thinking is

like, we, we like to provide this like good defaults or good

opinions, like this is how the feature works. And this is how

the workflow works. So you as a user or as a team don't have to

think about it. And you can focus on the work you do. And the

other thing is like, my design mantra is always like, design

something for someone, like it's very hard to design everything

for everyone, because there's you just end up with a very

generalized solution. So then what we're trying to do with the

opinionated solution is that like, that's the best solution or

the most optimized solution we think of. And then like when you

use it, like hopefully you agree and like you can feel that

it's the most optimized. So being opinionated, it's like, I

think the value it provides people is like, you don't have to

think too much like, or spend some more time on the tool than

you do on your actual work.

And then another core element of the linear method is something

called cycles. And I know linear is all around this idea of

creating cycles and working in cycles. You talk about what is a

cycle, and how it works at linear.

So for example, like the cycles is it's optional, like not every

team has to use it or not they have the whole company has to use

it, but it's there as you can turn it on or off. But basically,

I think the why we created cycles is that I think any team

that works on software or some other products like you always

have almost like infinite list of things to do. And that list gets

longer every day. And it can be sometimes very distracting for

the individual or for the team to like decide like what, like

there's a new thing coming in like should we work on that or

should we work on this other thing we've decided in the past. So

the cycles is just a way to say that like, like for the next

week or the next two weeks or whatever timeframe, we're going

to work on these things. And like these are the things we think

like are the priority or the focus for this timeframe. And then

the team can kind of try to focus on those things. Now, if

something happens, like, like, I don't know, we really need to

jump on this other thing. At least there was like some kind of

initial state that like we decided before we want to do

these things. And then now something else happened. And so

now we have to go on this thing. So so you have like a answer

when someone comes to you to ask like, why didn't you do this

other thing before? Then you can say, well, we did decide to do

that. But then something happened and we had to do this

other thing. So the cycles is like, it's very similar to

sprints. But we like to call it cycles, because we are not

really sprinting anywhere. The cycles also run on like

automated schedule. So it's like, you don't have to think about

like, which day does it start? Or, or like, every, every time

like set it up manually. So it's just like runs automatically.

And so it's just meant to like, to help the team to focus on

like, let's just like focus on this few things. And forget

about the infinite list of other things that are are in the

background.

You mentioned earlier that you don't set metrics goals. And so

let me take into that a little bit. Is that true? You don't

really have number goals for features for launches and things

like that. And so let me let me start there and I have a follow

question.

Yeah, so we might have like a company level goal sometimes

like, for example, like weekly active users, like that's like a

metric we want to want to increase or something. But in terms

of like specific features, we don't have goals for those. And

the reason is that I think like product like us or like a system

that is used by different kinds of companies and kind of it's

like a system made of multiple different parts. And it's not

like a very, it's not necessarily like you want to

optimize any specific thing about it. It's like, also

companies are a little bit different. So like their usage

of different features can like differ because they just operate

slightly differently, or their team size is different, or the

setup of the team is different, or the culture is different. So

there's like, I think, for example, I don't know, some

like, Instagram or some of these apps is like, yeah, we need to

drive engagement. And that's like the main feature, like

that's the main metric for every feature. Like, we don't

actually, we don't have that. Like we, we just think that like,

there should be features that help companies. And sometimes we

can look at the metrics before we start working on it, like,

let's see what's the state of things are. But we don't

necessarily want to set like, oh, we need to increase the

specific metric by x. It's more like, we want to solve this

problem. And ideally, the success way it looks like the

problem like customers agree that the problem is solved, or

they enjoy the solution. And it's not like that the metrics

went up.

So just to summarize so far, if no metrics, you have no

experiments, you have essentially no PMs, just one

product leader, you spend a lot of time on design and craft and

making things awesome. I'm curious just what you think it

takes to make a company work in that way, because this is pretty

different from how a lot of other founders think and a lot of

other product teams work.

Yeah, we like to like, talk about this internally, like this

like a mixture of like, magic and science and like, like how we

described is like, there's always some level of science that

we do. And I think like, some companies are very scientific

on their product management that like, they like to measure

everything and they do do a lot of tests and things. But like,

we just decided like, we don't think that's necessary, or

that's that's a good for us. So the science for us means that

like, we do talk to users a lot. And like the whole, whole like

the any project we start with, we do some like level of user

research. And as founders, like different people on the team,

like, we might have like weekly calls with customers or users,

we also encourage everyone in the team, like go to the customer

Slack, they answer people questions, like we have shared

Slack channels with customers, we go anyone like I sometimes go

answer the questions there. I also see when they complain about

something. I think so. I think the first part is like, the whole

team kind of has to be really understanding the product and the

customers and the problems people are facing. And I'm kind of

have that like, empathy, and as well as like the understanding

like, what is the state of things today? And then we talk

about that. And then sometimes we might pull up stats and see

like, oh, wonder like, is there some kind of patterns we see

like, okay, these kind of companies are using this thing

more? And what do we think about it? But usually we have some

kind of question we want to answer. It's like, I wonder what

what is going on? And then we look at it versus like, let's

us pull some metrics and then decide that we should increase

this metric. And then the magic part is like, what happens when

you kind of build this understanding, like everyone in

the company builds, it's not like everyone has the same

understanding, but like everyone builds more of that customer

and product understanding, then like, we have discussions like,

what should we be doing? Or like, what decision we want to make

here, then everyone is much more like kind of informed of the

actual reality of the, the customers or the, or the product.

And then we think like, you can much more like use your

intuition or, or thinking to do those decisions that you don't

have to use data or metrics to back those things up. So that's

like, I think the main thing is like, the whole company kind of

has to like, be with the customers or like, like talk to

them, and then like understand like where the product might

work well or where it might fall short.

That's what I imagined you were gonna say. And I love hearing

that. For someone that wants to create a similar culture. Is

there tactically anything you find just understand if your

employees and engineers, designers have enough of that

context and really understand the problem?

I mean, I think it's always like a different people, like

different people in a company will have different

understandings. It's not like you can expect like everyone,

like will every day like go to see everything and like has

has this. But like we, we do sometimes like sessions with

that with the team, or we do record videos with the

customers, we kind of write notes, and we share this with

people. I feel like again, it's like fairly apparent, like if

people, like, if you know your customers or the product, like

it's very different way you can talk about it versus like, if

you don't have any idea, like, I think like, if you don't have

any idea, you probably don't even know what to say. So I think

it's like, kind of apparently people have that. And it's not

like, every project like we need like everyone to have this

like, understanding, it probably usually enough is one or two

people have that understanding or have different understanding of

different things. So I think it's again, as I feel like it's

like a culture thing. And I think the other thing is like, you

kind of have to have the, you just have to kind of believe in

it. Like, I think sometimes people use data a lot or too much

because states are, they're worrying or they're afraid

that will I make the wrong choice? And, and like, I'm using

data to like, make the choice for me. But then like, you might

still feel like this is not the right choice, but the data is

selling me is the right choice. And then turns out maybe it was

the right choice or not, but it's more like, again, like a

practice thing, like you need to be, I think the company and you

need to be okay that like, sometimes we make mistakes. And

like, we've made the wrong choice. And then we just can fix

it. But at least we made that choice and the data didn't make

that choice for us.

What's interesting about this is, if you've heard the episode on

ramp and how ramp builds product with Jeff Charles, there's

such a different ways of building product ramp is all about

velocity, shipping, all the time, metrics, measuring

everything. And your approach is almost the opposite. And I

think what's interesting there is as a takeaway is just there's

many ways to do it. You just have to do it almost fully. And

you have to have really specific people, it feels like the

people want to work in a certain way. And a lot of it, I think

also is the founder has to has to be like natural to the way the

founder operates and thinks of building and building a company.

Yeah, and for sure. And then like, if you look at like,

successful companies, and like Amazon is very different than

Apple, and like how they operate, and I think both of them are

successful, but not in the same way. So I think it's again, it's

like, yeah, it's a decision you make as a company or as a

founder, like what kind of company you want to build. I do

think there is like some aspects of like the domain that

you're in. Like what what does that domain and the problem

space require from from the company. And for us, if they

think it's like, we are in the, I think we are in the retention

business, like it's like, and the trust business kind of that.

Ideally, we have a company starting use linear very early

on, and then they stay with us forever. And I think the only

way we can do that is like, we need to continuously kind of

deliver them like good quality product and like kind of maintain

that trust that we are that that we don't like fail them or or

somehow otherwise like mistreat them. And I think like some

businesses are much more like transactional, where it's like,

yeah, we just need to make this e-commerce sale. And then once

it's done, like we don't care what happens. So in our case, it's

more like we really need to like build this relationship over

time. And then that's why like, I think some of the choices we

make are also like, kind of like more about respecting the

customer versus like, we're just wanting to drive the revenue of

the company.

Awesome, such an important point.

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Something you're really good at personally is focus. I find that

just trying to get you on this podcast was a lot of like, Hey,

Gary, Hey, have you thought about this yet? And I know that a

lot of VCs are just like reaching out to you all the time,

all these really fan CVCs that are just like trying to talk to

you and get close to you. And I just know you're really good at

avoiding shiny objects and staying really focused and really

heads down. And I've always wanted to just ask you, what do

you how do you do that? Do you have any tricks systems

processes approaches to staying focused other than just ignore

ignore the inbox mostly?

Yeah, I don't think there's any like complicated like processes.

And so I think like one of the things like I was in YC in 2012

and one of the things the main thing they say there is like

what you should be focusing on when you build a startup is like

talk to customers, build the product exercise. And like if

you if you're not like if you find yourself doing something

else than those three things, it's probably like the wrong thing

to do.

And everybody said exercise or

yeah. Yeah. And the exercise is that like, it's important for

you to be healthy, or not to like burn yourself out. So I

think there is like, it was like a balance, like advice to to

that.

Love it.

So, so I'm doing those three things. And, but as so, so I

think the thinking there is like, I think we often as a

company also talk about this and, and like very early on, and I

use this the same way. And like, I think the company can use it

the same way. It's like, I think there's always things that

you're supposed to do. Or like, it sounds like a good idea to do.

And like, it could be like, yeah, like come to this podcast. And

I actually think like, before I wasn't like, or like, I was at

this question is like, is this important to do now? Or is it

important to maybe do later? So I think like, for example, the

question on this podcast is like, I didn't feel like it was

important to do it earlier, because we weren't at the stage

or scale or something that it I think would be like as

interesting or or or something. So I think like it was a better

timing to do it later. Similarly, like when we built the

product, well, like initially, we were just very like, focused on

like, is this really important thing to do? There's always like,

yeah, like, you could get like, sock to like security kind of

certificate. But and we know that like, eventually, we need to

get it, but we don't need needed today. So we just say no to

that. And like, if customers ask for it, it's always like, we

don't have it. And we will have it one day, but not now. And see

like, and a lot of times people are like, Okay, like, that's

fine. And then like, internal, we also talk about this, like, you

know, like, RPG games, you have the main quest lines. And then

you have the side quest lines. And we often talk about the

company is like, avoid the side quests. Like, like, there's

always like ideas people have. And it's a good thing. And it's

like, people have ideas. But then it might be like, Yeah, let's

make like this T shirt. So like, let's make this thing. And then

we're like, Well, is it does it help the customers? Does it

help the product? Like, this sounds like a side quest to me.

And like, basically means like, we shouldn't do it. Like this

doesn't progress the main quest line, which is like building

this product and like making it awesome for for these customers.

So similar to me, it's like, I operate this way personally too

that I think about like, is this important for the main quest

line in in building this company for me? Or, or is this

something that I can ignore for now, or something I can do

later? And it makes more sense then.

What is such incredibly good advice? Basically, ask yourself

how important is this to do now? And is this the main quest or

is this a side quest?

Amazing. Okay, so let's talk about hiring. As with most areas,

you're very, very, very deliberate about hiring. The

bars so insanely high at linear and you also hire very few

people. So just a few questions along these lines. Just one is

when you're hiring people, what do you look for that you think

maybe other people are not looking for enough? And where do

you spend a lot of time?

I think one of the things we all of us founders kind of saw in

this high growth companies that sometimes like the high growth

is like, especially on the employee side, it's not that

great. It can create a lot of kind of chaos or just messiness

or we're just generally like in my his past on working in

companies, it's almost never it was always easier to work with a

smaller team, very high quality people than with a very large

team of like more average people. It's like almost like it's

always faster and better output when you have like more much

more like smaller team. So that was kind of like the thing

with linear too is like we just believe that you can actually

build better with less people than you can with more people. So

that's like this is the basic belief we have. So then when it

goes to hiring, we've been like taking very like, kind of like

slow steps on it that like in the almost like the first year,

we didn't hire anyone. Then like the second year, we hire like

couple people and then the second year, we hired more few

more. We never top more than doubled in a year. And that's

kind of like, you know, like guideline that like we shouldn't

more than double. And this might be something we change in the

future that we actually might do less than that. But like what we

look into hiring is is is like a couple things like one is also

obviously depends on the role. But basically, I would say like

every with every role, we often talk about like the there needs

to be some taste or some like, this kind of understanding of

the, like how things are done or how how what's the like, people

have more like a broader perspective than like whatever

their role is. So like, we talked about the engineering

before that like, they do need to do some of this BM type of

stuff. And and so what we look for in them, like, is that like

if they have some of this like skill set or product thinking,

or they can articulate why some some choices are better than

some others, or like in their past, like, did they disagree

with some of the company's choices or the team's choices?

Or like, so we want to have this like, obviously, they need to

be good developers, but also like, do they have this like a

product sensibility or, or can do they have like a judgment

around that? And this goes similar to like, like, for

example, like a marketing hire is like, we, we think about like,

yeah, we do need the marketing skill sets. But then we also

want to see that this person also like, like, maybe it's a good

storyteller, or like, they have like this, like, kind of

appreciation for, for writing or stories or like, they have a

taste of what's, what's like, interesting and what's not. So I

think like, with or like, when we hire like operations person,

we also like to see that they, they maybe like have

understanding on HR, and maybe it's not their role, but they

understand it. And what happens is like, when you have this

people that are a little bit more than their title, it's like

the company is, I think, much more easier to manage, because

it's like, people can like pick up things more easily, or they

can like, work together more easily, because everyone has

more like a shared like, more like a shared areas, or, or it's

not like, it's not, you rarely get to the point, like people

say, it's not my job, it's, it's more like, people understand,

okay, yeah, I'm, I'm kind of in operations. But today, I kind of

need to help on this HR thing. So which is okay. And so that's

kind of like, what we look for people is like, they are more

than there, they can take more scope than their skill set would

assume or like, what normally is expected from them.

So essentially, you're looking for kind of these Venn diagram

overlappings across different functions and teammates.

Yeah. And I think it's the other thing is, like I said before,

it's like, we want to build much, I think, like a company that

has less employees, which means that it's like, like I said

before, we don't want that many like specialized roles or like

two specific areas of ownership or something. We just think

that we could build this like, we could have less people and

those people can take on more scope and they can own more

scope. I think like traditionally, I feel like in

companies, like how do you get more scope is that you advance in

the levels of the company, because there's like a lot of

different teams and different levels. And then to get any kind

of scope, you need to like rising into this like higher

levels. And what we try to do is like, you don't actually, you

don't have to have that many levels. But like people can just

like, already when they, when they start, they can start like

owning more areas. And I think that can be like much more like,

also like interesting, not to everyone, but like, I think

interesting to many people. And it's kind of like how I also

like always felt about as being a designer is like, I don't, I

didn't feel like my job is purely like just looking at the

designs. I also thought like, I actually need to be helping this

business or helping this other area as well. So I think it's

just kind of like also like natural to me.

Awesome. So one thing you didn't mention is you have a really

unique way of interviewing, which is a paid work trial. Can you

just talk about what that is? And also just while you're in that

area, you talked about testing for product sensibility. So

whatever you can share or how you actually do that would be

awesome.

Yeah, so we do with all of the employees, we've done like a

paid work trial and depends on the role, what it looks like, how

long it is, and depends on also sometimes on the person. But

basically, like we do fairly like standard like in the V loops

where, where we test, like, we have some hiring manager

interviews and then like skill interviews and or tests and then

the last step of the process is the work trial. And basically,

yeah, we, we basically come as like a mini contractor to the

company. And we give them a very like, usually fairly vague

problem statements, like, if you're engineers, like, Hey,

there's this feature that needs to be built, like how would you

build it and like, go build it. And so basically, they need to

first like understand the problem, then they need to scope it

down to something that they can do in the time frame that they

have. And then they actually like go, they get the access to a

code base, they can actually go and go and like build a version

of it. And then like, at the end, they can present the work

they did. And why we do this is that like, we just seen that

like, it's a very good way to see like, for both us, like

both for the company and the candidates to see like how we

work together. And like, for I think, for the candidate, what

they can see is that, like, what kind of company are joining

like, what is it like to work here? And how are the, what is

the my ownership or like, how do I approach this? Like, I think

a lot of engineers also like that they see the code base and

they're like, Oh, wow, this is like really clean. And like, it's

not like some kind of spaghetti code type of thing situation. So

I think like it helps the candidates as well understand

like, what, what are they signing up for? Which I think can be

like very risky sometimes with, especially with startups, like

it's, it's really hard to tell like how the startup is

operating just from the interviews. And in a large

companies, I think things are more standardized. So it's like,

I think they're more similar on it's easier to make that choice.

But with startups, it can be like very like different how

companies operate.

Yeah, that is so unique. And I rarely hear of a company being

able to hire that way. I imagine one of the reasons you can get

away with that where people are like, don't have a full time job

for a while while we're doing a pay trial is because linear such

a enticing place to work. Imagine for a lot of companies,

they can't really do that. But I guess any thoughts on just

maybe more companies can actually pull this off.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's always like, if you don't ask,

like, you don't know, like, I think like, in our case, we

that's just been the standard. And we try to work with the

candidate, like, let's figure out maybe we do it on the weekend,

or maybe we do it some other, like a vacation holiday or

something. So there can be ways we can like schedule it so that

it's it causes as little kind of problems to the candidates as

possible. And I think we only have like, only a few people

probably have ever declined it. Like it's it's not like, I think

everyone else has been at least after the fact they've been

happy that they did it, because they felt like they had a much

better sense of the company they're joining. And then also,

like doing that work trial, they can actually join our

meetings, they they get access to our slack and notion. And they

also have one on one chats with the rest of the, like some of

the other people on the team. So they already get to know

people. So it's a good way for them to like evaluate us as

well. And then for us, it's obviously we can see like, what

is important for us to see is like, how does this person operate

in this kind of environment? And like, how do they approach

problems? Like, how do they think? And like, are they able to

make progress in a very short timeframe, which I always think

it's like, very important for startups, like, in a large

companies, you have maybe all time in the world to do stuff.

But I think like, in any kind of startup, even even with us,

when we like take our time doing things sometimes, it's still

important, like, we can do things quickly if we have to.

Super cool. Just to close the thread on product sensibilities,

or anything you could share of just how you actually help

understand someone's strengths and inability there?

Yeah, I wouldn't say like, we have like, some kind of very

scientific or some, some like, special way, figure it out for

this. So I think it's a lot of it's like, it's like a discussion

of, of, and I often think, like, ask people that, like, like,

asked about their projects. And I try to go deeper. It's like,

why was this decision made? Like, why do you think the decision

was made? And like, I might ask, like, do you think it was the

right decision? And like, or do you, did you agree on it? Or

asked about, like, what, what do you think you would have done

done differently? Or something? So I think it's more like, I'm

trying to see if they do, do they have thoughts in this area?

And like, what their answers is? And people's answers can be very

like, different levels, like some people might be, yeah, just

like, I didn't like it, which I don't like, yeah, it's an

opinion, but it's not based on anything. It's just like, you

didn't like it, you should be able to expand on it saying like,

why don't like it? Because in this case, like, it would not

work well for this kind of users or in this kind of context or

for this kind of purposes. So they, they have like more of this

like reasoning, or some kind of rational, like, why they think

this way. And they can articulate that. So I think

that's like, kind of like what I'm, we often like testing for

us, is like, can they, can they do this and how well they can do

it? And it's, it's gonna be like very, yeah, they're gonna be

like, very wide ranges of how people do it. And when when you

see someone who really thinks about this stuff, it's very

clear to see that they can just like talk about it forever. And

they can go deeper and deeper. And then some people that maybe

don't haven't had the experience or don't think this way,

they're like, yeah, I know, I don't really know, like, I just, I

just build it and then seem fine.

Let's transition to the third area I wanted to spend some time

on, which is growth. And basically, I love to just

understand how linear grows and what you figured out around

growth, especially in B2B, SAS. So first question here is just,

how long did it take from starting to work on linear to

launching, say V1, something that a number of people can use.

So we started, like, official in 2019, some, I think, months

before that, we were already exploring and prototyping the

product. So it wasn't. So I think we prototype different

kinds of designs a little bit. And then we also, one of the

things we really wanted to solve is like, we wanted to make the

application really fast. And the way we figured out we do that

is like, we have more of this, like a local base data

structure, where all the data lives in the client and then and

then it gets synced on the on the back ends, like with this

delta packets. And, and back then, we were just exploring

like different off the shelf solutions and systems, but there

wasn't nothing really there. So we ended up like building our

own. And so we, we spent some time like prototyping that. And

then once we we've officially, I think started working on the

company in April 2019, and then we announced the company, like

roughly meet April. And we have this like little website up

with with the waitlist. And, and then I think by May, we could

use it ourselves. And then we, we already we started inviting

some friends like try it out. But then I think in June, I think

we started more like inviting people from the waitlist and

around June, July, I think we had about, I don't know, 100,

200 users on it, and then maybe like about 10 companies or

something. And, and then we were in this private beta stage for

almost a year. And the way we did it was just like, we had this

waitlist of people on the waitlist. There was like few survey

questions, like what kind of tools you use today? And, and

then, like, why do you want to use linear? And then we just, and

what's the company size? And we invited people based on like we

invited more like smaller companies, using the tools we

currently support it. And then also, like, I was trying to see

like, who is more like interested versus us. And I don't

know, I just want to try it out type of purple. And then a year

later in June, we, we launched it publicly. And back then, maybe

we already had like, I don't know, several hundred of

companies using it. And then we also launched the pricing. And I

think like, almost all of them, maybe one company didn't

subscribe, but everyone else subscribed to that pay plan.

Okay, there's a number of really interesting things here. So

one is you're in private beta for a year. And then a year later,

you launched. How long was that period between starting to

like incubate and starting to build to that private beta milestone?

Yeah, I think just like few, few months like just a few months

of building the V1. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I thought it was a lot

longer. That is so interesting. Okay. What a team you've got

over there. Okay. And then this survey piece is really

interesting. I've heard a little bit about the story. So

essentially, you launched it on Twitter, you had kind of a

following, your founders had a bit of a following. So I think

that helped build up the initial waitlist. But what you did

there wasn't just like, hey, go sign up for a waitlist, and you

just add email addresses. It's a survey asking them what tools

they use, like whether it's GitHub, or something else, and

then also the size of the company and their interest. And

that helped you basically prioritize who to go after and who

to onboard. Is that right?

Yeah. And the reason we did it, because we know that like, we

didn't support everything. And like, what was that before? And

the focus is like, we want to like, also like, be focused on

like, let's just like, build a version that can work for some

people, or some companies, we don't have to try to address

everyone in the world in the in the first months of the of the

business. And even before after that. So it was very like

selective process. And I think we yeah, we were fortunate that

like, we were able to get people sign up on a waitlist. And I

think after, after a month or so, we had like, maybe 4,000

people on the waitlist. And then we had this like, internal, I

think initially it was just like a very manual process. But

eventually we built this in like an invite tool that we could

just send invites. But in the beginning, I would go read the

actual surveys, like in a spreadsheet, then I copy the

email, and then I email them, they invite link from my

personal email. And then like, I would just like, email them

like, after like, few days or a week, and it's like, Hey, what

do you think? And the reason we and so we would invite only

like, in the beginning, we may be invited to like 10 people a

week. And like, eventually, we increase those amounts. But the

reason we did it that way was that we thought that, like, if

you just invite everyone at once, or a lot of people at once,

the all of those people are gonna probably hit the same

problems in this kind of software that is very early

stage. Like, I don't know, they, they hit the same bug or the

same problem in the software. So then they will all send us

feedback, like, Hey, there's this problem. And then we felt like

it was kind of like a waste of effort. So we would just do this

cohorts, like, let's invite these people and then they say,

like, like, Hey, this is a problem, like, I don't, this

doesn't work or something, then we go fix that. Then after we

fix that, we invite the next cohort of people, then they say,

like, Well, there's this thing that is needed, or this doesn't

work. And then we fix that. So for that year, we did this

cohorts, and then always get the feedback from the cohort,

saying, like, this is like, wrong, or this doesn't work. And

then we will fix that. So, so eventually, I think it was much

more like a, I think, like, effective way of doing the

initial development than just like inviting or letting everyone

to use the product right, right at the beginning.

There's so many interesting lessons from this. I wanted to

ask how you got your first 10 customers. And what I'm hearing

essentially was from this waitlist, you launched it on

Twitter, people signed up, you pick people to let on board, you

worked with them over the course of a year to make it what they

needed, and then eventually started charging.

Yeah, I think like the first 10, like, people companies using

it, I think maybe a little over a half, maybe there was like

three friends that like friends that have startups and they

used it. And then I think the majority of them were just from

this waitlist, but they didn't like pay us anything like we

didn't have pricing in the beginning, or during the private

beta. At some point, we start building the payments function.

So we just like added a added page in the settings that like you

can optionally pay. And then we just give you a slider that like

how much do you want to pay for seats? And then we just like

see like if some people paid like $28 per seat, and some people

paid like $1. So so we buy like it doesn't really matter, we just

wanted to test the functionality and see like what people people

think. And then like, yeah, like after a year, when we launched,

we already had like, I don't know, first week of launching, like

we have probably like some hundreds of customers.

I've never heard of that approach to pricing is just an

actual sliding scale, where people can slide the scale

themselves and how much they want to pay. Did that help you

figure out what to charge? Or is it mostly just an experiment?

I don't think it's like gave us like enough data to like decide

like I think it's but I think it was like good to see that it's

like there was some people that went I think that 20 was

probably the maximum that people could pay. So I think there

were some people that went to it and they felt like, actually

like, yeah, I really love the products. I'm happy to pay like

$20. So I think at least it gave us some like confidence that

if we charge for this and and it's like something under $20,

it's it's there's going to be like market for it.

I want to hear about the story of how you've started to feel

product market fit, whatever that means to you, when did you

start to feel like, Oh, wow, this is actually gonna work. And

maybe this is going to be a real business.

Yeah, I think like, we always been kind of, I don't know, some

like paranoid or skip like, yeah, I guess maybe a paranoid is

good way about the product market fit. I think like, it's

like a paranoid in a way, like we're always wondering, like,

do we really have it? Like, and like, with who do we have it?

And I think it's, it's true in our kind of business is that

like, I think, I think we started feeling it very early on.

And like, when people first like, started using it, and we

could see like, Oh, now the whole company is using it. And

they're, they seem like happier using it and the feedback is

good. And they might have some additional asks for them for

us. But, but we started feeling like there was definitely like

product market fit with certain kind of customer. And these

were like, more like, smaller, like early stage companies,

maybe we're still the founder is still running the, the product

then and they care about the speed of the shipping or they,

they kind of have like a certain values in a way. So it was

like a good fit with them. And then I think we always like, know

that we, we want to like address the whole market and not just

like these early stage customers. But we knew that like, I

don't like if a fortune 500 company came to us then or even

like today, we might not be like, I don't think we can like

provide them the solution today that works for them. So I don't

think the fit is there. So for us, like the way we think about

is like, do we have that? Do we have the fit in this specific

segments? And like, how strong that fit is? And so like in the,

in the company is like journey, I think we the first year, we

kind of just focused on like, can we get the fit in the first two

years, we focused on like, can we get the fit in the, in the

early stage, like startup kind of segment? And like, basically,

the goal was like, we want to be the default for, for startups,

like the default tool that the startups pick. And I think we were

able to accomplish that, but we just purely focused on that

segment and getting the product market fit there. And then like

after, or at the same time, we started getting some larger

companies. And we saw like, yeah, it's not like, really great

for you right now. But like, let's work on it, making it

better. And so I think the last two years, we've been like

focusing on that. It's like, how do we make the software work

better? How do we get the product market fit better, like

stronger in this larger company segments, like, that are like

thousands of people, or like hundreds of people, or like a

thousand people.

I think this is such a good way and smart way of thinking about

product market fit. A lot of people see product market fit as

this like binary, I have it or I don't. And like, when am I

going to really feel product market fit? And what you're

describing is what I often hear is it's more of this spectrum

of like, more and more confidence that there's product

market fit and even more specifically, it's like product

market fit with segments of the market, it's kind of like this

map of the world, and you're just like slowly acquiring

territory in the market with specific elements and then over

time, it grows and grows.

Yeah, I think like a spectrum is a good way to think about it too.

I think it's I feel like there's this blog post and like written

in the past, where it's like, you know, when you have product

market fit, and I think it's it's probably like, it's like that

for some, I don't know, social consumer apps, like, you know,

like if it's taking off or not, then you don't really have like

a lot of different segments, or like, you don't really think

about it, like you just have users and you have millions of

users. So, and then you see like it's taking off. And so you have

a product market fit. But then I think like in a more like a

BGP world, I think there's always like, you can have

different sizes of customers, you can have different domains the

customers are in, or there's different kind of like categories

where it's like, you might be doing a little well in one

category, and then not that well another. And I think like maybe

the countering to do things is that like, actually, if you're

doing really well in some category, it's just like, kind of

double down on that. This is something like I talked to, to

the zoom founder Eric at some some point in the company's

lifecycle. And this is also what he said, like, it's like, when

they were like, building zoom in the early days, they would get

this one type of customer, like, I don't know, maybe it's like a

university, and then they like really, it worked really well

for them. Then they're like, well, how do we get more of the

universities? So they would always like focus on a certain

kind of customer, rather than like, let's just try to get

everyone like, so let's focus on everything, which is not

possible. So again, like, it's about the like, the focus is

like, if you have some like, you see that something is working

really well, then it's almost like you should focus on doing

that more until you hit some kind of points like, okay, now we

do have that category, like, captured or or handled as much

as we want. And we should like expand to to a new area.

Essentially, look for pull and just follow that and pay

attention to that.

Yeah, and I think there's like, for us, it's often like there

can be sometimes like, for example, now we have most of the AI

companies are like, are using us. So I think like it's always and

before I was like a crypto company. So I think there's like,

when we see this kind of things happening, then we start to

think like, Oh, could we do something differently? Or like

should we? Could we like get more of these AI companies on board?

Such a great lesson. Just a few more questions. You mentioned

that you launched on Twitter, and that led to a large wait

list and a growing wait list. Is there anything you did before

that to kind of build this following? You know, that sounds

like really, like really amazing, cool, we just announced it on

Twitter, and we have this large wait list, and then we grow and

we get all these customers. Is there anything you did ahead of

time, in anticipation of this launch? Would you recommend

people work on building some kind of following online before

they were going to start it? Was it just like, Hey, we happened

to have this kind of following and it worked out anything along

those lines, you would recommend to founders these

days?

Yeah, I mean, I think definitely if you have a following and,

and like, opus depends what kind of following, but I think

like my, my background as a designer, I was like, at the

Airbnb and Coinbase and other places, and I did some like talks

and conferences and, and write some plug posts. So I was

definitely like out there and then kind of had that some of

that following, which which was helpful. But it wasn't like I

have like, 1000s of like 100s of 1000s of followers or millions

or something, I had maybe like, 10,000 or something, which is

like a significant number. But then I think what the other

thing is, is, I think with the announcement, like, one of the

things we, we did, I think, well, it's like, I think sometimes

startups do, try to like emulate successful large companies

too much. And you kind of like do this, like, fancy

announcements, where it's like, hey, now we're like, doing this

fancy thing. And then it's like, sounds very like corporate or

something. And I think with the, with our announcement, we try

to like, wrote it more like, direct or authentic to us, like

this is like, what are we going to do? And this is why I'm like

this, these are some of the things we're going to do. Then

on on the Twitter, we did the same thing, like all of us

founders, we wrote our own reasons why we're doing this. And

I think it was like, just much more like, and I think like,

people could dress and people like us could resonate more with

it. So we were kind of writing to the right audience. And like, I

think that's the probably the first thing you're like, when

you're announcing your company is like, you think about like, who

is my first audience? Like, who would be the best users, like

early users for this product? And, like, where are they? And

then like, how do they think about things? And like, what, what

kind of language they use? So for us, it was like, fairly, it

came very naturally, because we are these people, we're in

building software and these companies. And we've seen, like,

other people have seen similar things we have seen. So I think

it did that the way we announced it like resonated with a lot of

people. And then I think we, we did have some friends. And as

it like, we got some data like angel round, where we got some

like friends involved. And the main reason we did it was that

which is felt like it's, it's in the early days, it's good to

have like, you feel like a real company, in a way, that's like

you have someone to answer for in a way, even though the

investors don't really run your company, or they don't have that

much power, it's more like, oh, I took someone's money, so I now

need to like make it worth it kind of. But then like, I think

with the announcement, again, like, we could use some of those

people to like, spread the message as well.

To kind of close out our conversation, just a couple more

broad questions. You have a pretty unique culture at

linear. And I know you one fun thing that you do is you have

this kind of baking competition. Can you, can you talk about

that? And what do you do there?

Yeah, so so so since we are like, fully remote and distributed

companies, so we have people in Europe and US, like a lot of

like, kind of like, group gatherings are kind of

challenging, like, remote group sessions are kind of

challenging, because the time zones are so different. So like

some of the basic things like happy hours, it's not really

like, really, like, doesn't really work that well. And also

like, assume happy hours is really not that fun anyway. So

so what we, I think a lot of people in the company watch

their great British baking show. And so we decide like, maybe we

do something like that, like where, basically, we would just

pick a recipe. Firstly, it was like baking. Now we expanded to

cooking recipes to. And so we just pick a recipe that is like

somewhat reasonable to do in internet, like in a few hours in

a couple hours. And it doesn't like require like tons of

equipment or skill or something. And and then we, we just tell

people I go by the ingredients use the company card, everyone

has a company card. And then, then like hop on zoom on this day.

And for me, it's usually like, since I'm in California, it's

like 8am in the morning. So so we start like that baking or

cooking then. So so we've made things like, like a roll cake and

lemon meringue pie. And we made some, like pastel net data,

which is like Portuguese, like pastry. And, and then like, we

just hop on the zoom, everyone's like doing their thing,

following the recipe. And then like, sometimes people have

like questions like, Hey, I'm, I don't know, stuck with this or

like, my dough looks weird, like, does your dough look like

this? And people can kind of like help each other. And then

also like chit chat about whatever random things at the

same time. And then like, we, we do the thing. And then we, we

everyone takes pictures and posters on this like slack

channels, like what they, what they achieve, then I think we

have like, kind of friendly competitions, like who did it

better and like, or who did it best. So people sometimes put a

lot of effort into the, into the decorations and, and visuals.

So in a way, it's again, like, a craft thing that we do. It's

it's like, I think baking and cooking and these kind of things

is also a craft. So we liked it that way. And yeah, we've been

basically doing it quarterly, since the beginning of the

company. And yeah, the latest thing, we were a little bit

like, I think, didn't have that much time. So we decided to do

like easier thing, which is like a summer drink recipe. So I

think it's it was like people made like matcha drinks and and

some like coconut drinks or like iced tea or something. So

even that was kind of like interesting to do.

Have you ever won one of these competitions yourself?

We don't know if we like declare winners that much. But I do

think like, I do, since I'm a designer, I do have some

advantages on the, on the visual presentation. So I think that

I generally do well on that. And obviously, that's like, with

this remote competition, it's that's the only thing you can

really like, look for. It's not not necessarily about the taste

or the texture, because you can't really taste it through the

zoom.

Maybe it's the last question. Just again, broadly, you've gone

from being an IC designer, manager of designers to the

CEO of a very fast growing company. What's something that

you've learned about leadership over the journey of linear that

maybe you didn't expect?

For some reason, it was surprising to me, I think that

like, being a CEO or, or some of these like leadership roles is

that you end up doing so many different things. And I think

like, even when I was a designer, like, even if I would be like,

like some like high level designer in some company, it's

still like, you're just mostly focusing on the design. And

that's like your job. But then like, when you're a CEO, then

it's like every week or every day, there's some some different

thing going on. And it's not like, there's sometimes they can

be like problems. But a lot of times it's like, hey, we need to

like, figure out how are we going to do this? Like, how are we

going to do this? Like compensation? Or how are we going

to do this marketing plan? Or like, how are we going to do this

like offsite thing? And so it's just like, to me, what is like

challenge, like, definitely like, challenging for me is, is

handling that like, different kinds of things that that come to

you. And like staying somewhat focused still on something. So I

think it's haven't necessarily fully figured it out. But I also

like, learn, figure it out that like, yeah, hire, like hiring

and delegation helps with this that like, if you can find other

leaders that can like take on certain areas that that's that's

helpful. That that's the like the main thing that that like, how

what is the it's like a very wide range of things that you may

be didn't have experience before. But also, I think it's

interesting to me to learn about these things. And like, you

learn about financials, and you learn about legal things. And

then you start to feel like, Oh, actually, I know something about

these things are like over time.

For the actual final question, before we get to a very exciting

light and round, what's just the future linear? What's coming?

What's happening in the future? Anything can share?

Yeah, I think there's always things we're working on and

improving. One, like a newer thing we're working on is this

feature called asks. And, and basically, what it is is that we

we see that like, in a company, there can be a lot of a lot of

different people that needs to interact with the product team

or different people that needs to interact with this team, but

they're not necessarily like in linear or part of this team. So

we would be building this like an ask feature, which which is

like integration to Slack, where you can very easily like, go to

a Slack channel, then then ask like, so your question, like, you

need something from this team, like maybe it's it team that

like, you need like a laptop, or maybe it's like the, like

infrastructure team, and you need like, help them like you need

something from them. Then the team that this is is handling the

request, they can very easily like send it to to linear into

this like triage that we have. And then like, they can start

like, doing stuff with it. And if they have like questions or

discuss like additional questions to the actual person who

requested it, we can like send those messages back to the

person through Slack so they don't actually have to go to to

linear or they don't have to be a linear user to use it. So we

think like, this is like just like a good way for the company

or the whole company to be more potentially involved in the in

the company, like the product operations, without like having

to be like, like a power user of linear or or because not

every function really uses it or or needs to use it.

Awesome. What a cool peak at something coming out soon. Or

maybe all by the time this comes out. And with that, we've

reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got a bunch

of questions for you. Are you ready?

Yeah, I'm ready.

All right. Well, what are two or three books that you've

recommended most to other people?

Timeless way of building by Christopher Alexander, like he

he's just like, he wasn't really an architect, but he I think

thought in Berkeley. And I think he he has this like

interesting thoughts about like, building things. And like, he

focuses on buildings and towns and these kind of spaces. But I

think there's a lot of like things that are also interesting

for building software. The other the other book that I like is

like the Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, because

it's also like talks about the quality of things. And and I

think that's one of the main themes of the book. And like,

that the thing is also that quality is so hard to define. It

is like, if you actually like start thinking about it's like,

how do you define it? It's it's like, it's kind of like, it's

really hard to pin pin down. But it's all kind of like, when

you try something or see it, then you kind of know if it's

quality or not.

What are some recent movies or TV shows they've really enjoyed?

I think that the movie is like, probably the john wick for I

think it's, it's, it's like, kind of feels like, I mean, help

us say it's like, there's no a story in that movie. But it's

like, I think it's very true to its nature. So I like that fact.

And then also, recently, I started watching the silo on

Apple TV. And I think I kind of like it. It's like a good

mystery. And then also, it's kind of reminds me of the fallout

game. So, so I kind of like it that way too.

I actually read the silo books. And I was really excited for the

show to come out. But we mentioned this on a previous

podcast, the show is like so little to do with actual books,

like the core ideas are the same, but there's always stories

that they're just making up on the show. So I kind of stopped

watching because I was just like, that's not what I was hoping

for. But maybe I need to check the books later, like one

side, which the show definitely read the books. But

there's three of them. And only the first one is actually good,

the other one, they're not actually, we could and I

should not have read them, because it just just went off

the rails a little bit. Anyway, next question, what is a

favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates

when you're interviewing them?

I think usually I like to ask, like, what is what is the

candidate most proud of and why, like what, like on their

professional life or otherwise, like what they're most proud of

and why. And then I think we can go deeper on that. But I think

it's kind of like, gives you a little bit indication, like

what the person values and, and like how they think about

things. And, and I also like, I think it's always nice that

people can share something like they think they did really

well, and we can spend time on it versus just like, asking

something like more like negative things.

What are some favorite products you've usually discovered

that you really, really like?

Not sure if I discovered them recently, but like recently I

have been in this home office, I've been installing some of

this hue lights. And I really like them because like, throughout

the day, I can like have more like kind of harsh lighting,

because it's I'm in meetings or something. And then like in the

evening, I can kind of like change the temperature, like I

make it much more like red or orange or something. So it's

just like, I think it's nice to like, you can kind of transition

to space is like, okay, now I'm working and now I'm like, doing

something else and you can use the lights to kind of like

indicate that.

That is so cool. Do you like automate the schedule or you

manually change the color?

Yeah, I just manually change it. So I have like, like on my home

app, I have like scenes that like, so there's the night scene,

and then there's the day scene, like the morning scene. And so I

just like, click that button and then then it turns changes the

lights.

That is extremely cool. I'm gonna try that myself. What is a

favorite life motto that you like to repeat yourself or share

with people, something you kind of come back to a lot?

Go slow to go fast is, I think for me, it's, it's, it's about

that. Sometimes people have tendency to rushing to things

and especially in, I think in startups, but other places too,

that you kind of have this like, I think urgency is important,

but, but then sometimes you, you have like too much urgency and

you are rushing things. And what happens is that you, you rushed

it and then now you need to come back to fix it. So I think

sometimes we, I like to think that like, you should take some

time to actually like think about it and like, what are you

gonna do and then do it? Because then it's in the end, it's

gonna be faster that way than like going back and forth and

fixing things.

What is the most valuable lesson that your mom or your dad taught

you?

I think it's like respecting people and things. So I think

it's, I mean, I think the people respect us is pretty obvious,

but I think the, I think with the, the things you have also, I

think like you should take good care of them. Like when you, when

you use them, you just like, I don't know, clean them or put

them away and then they're like ready for the next time. So I

think I like that though, like you, rather than like you

treating things like that they're a trash or, or kind of like

not that valuable, you should kind of like treat things that

they are, they are valuable.

Final question, you were born in Finland, I think you grew up

in Finland. What is a finished food that people should

definitely try to get as soon as they can?

One is like this salmon soup. And it might sound weird, like a

fish soup, like maybe it's not gonna be that interesting. But

it is like, it's like a creamy soup with some like potatoes,

carrots, and, and other things. And it's kind of like almost

like a sweet, little bit like sweet flavor to it. So that's

one thing like you can, you can make it yourself at home or, or

you can like, if you go to Finland, there's probably like a

few restaurants that offer it.

Okay, amazing. Is that something we could get here or you

have to go to Finland to get it?

I don't think I've never seen it here in in US in any restaurant,

but it's not very hard to make it yourself. If you can probably

Google recipe, it's basically you just need some salmon and some

some like basic spices and some cream and and some fruit

vegetables.

All right, next episode, we're gonna do a cooking show with

Kari. Kari, thank you so much for being here. You're building a

very special company in a really unique way. And I think many

founders and many product builders can learn a ton from

watching you operate in the business that you're building. So

again, thank you so much for being here. Two final questions

where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and

maybe ask you some more questions? And how can listeners

be useful to you?

Yeah, so I'm on Twitter, my, my name, Kari Sarn, and, and, and

then we also have the linear account, which is I think is

interesting. So that's just at linear. And then, yeah, I think

like, I hope everyone can like, check out, check out linear and

like see if it could work for them in their company and like

figure out if there's a pilot, like, I think we always happy to

assist on those things that like, if you just want to try it

out, then I try it with the team, we can help you to set it up

and, and like help you to like understand how to use the

product.

Awesome. And it's just linear that app, right? Is that the URL?

Yes.

Awesome. Okay. Easy peasy. Amazing. Kari, again, thank you so

much for being here. Bye everyone.

Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

Keywords

Linear, Karri Saarinen, Craft, PM, Design, Brand, Software development, Metrics, Customer, Hiring, Growth, Pricing

People

Karri Saarinen

Companies

Linear, Airbnb, Coinbase, Block, Versailles, Ramp, Retool, Mercury, Substack, Stripe

Organizations and Institutions

YC (Y Combinator)

References

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Karri Saarinen is the co-founder and CEO of Linear, an issue-tracking tool that has quickly become the fastest-growing and most beloved in the world. Before Linear, Karri was the principal designer and co-creator of design systems at Airbnb and the founding designer at Coinbase. In today’s episode, he shares:• How to prioritize craft in product development• The Linear method for modern software development• How Linear operates with only one PM• Why every product needs good design in 2023• Strategies for staying focused amid distractions• Linear’s unique hiring strategies• Sneak peek of a soon-to-be-released Linear feature

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Brought to you by Mercury—the powerful and intuitive way for ambitious companies to bank | Composer—the AI-powered trading platform | Pendo—The all-in-one platform for product-led companies building breakthrough digital experiences

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Find the transcript for this episode and all past episodes at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/episodes/. Today’s transcript will be live by 8 a.m. PT.

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Where to find Karri Saarinen:

• X: https://twitter.com/karrisaarinen

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karrisaarinen/

• Website: https://karrisaarinen.com/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Karri’s background

(04:25) Overview of Linear

(06:43) Linear’s design process and its focus on quality

(12:25) Building a craft-oriented company

(16:41) Product management at Linear

(18:37) Strategies for launching a startup without a dedicated PM

(21:16) How Linear assists PMs in their roles

(23:46) Linear’s potential expansion in PM roles

(24:58) The importance of design

(29:08) Utilizing design and brand as distinct competitive advantages

(30:48) The importance of authenticity in branding and messaging

(33:08) How design reviews are conducted at Linear

(38:34) The Linear method for modern software development 

(40:07) Why productivity software should be opinionated

(41:23) Why Linear created “cycles” and how it works

(43:27) Why Linear doesn’t have metric-based goals

(45:07) How a business can thrive without metrics, PMs, and A/B testing

(48:04) A customer-focused approach to building product

(50:02) Adapting strategies for diverse products and domains

(53:05) Three techniques Karri uses to maintain focus

(56:47) Linear’s hiring practices 

(1:02:10) Paid work trials

(1:04:31) How to determine a candidate’s “product sense” 

(1:08:21) Linear’s growth journey and milestones

(1:14:18) How pricing strategies were initially introduced at Linear

(1:16:18) Linear’s journey to finding product-market fit

(1:21:44) The importance of online presence and authenticity in business

(1:24:59) Insight into the corporate culture at Linear

(1:28:29) Lessons learned during Karri’s transition from IC to CEO

(1:30:21) Sneak peek into the upcoming “asks” feature at Linear

(1:32:04) Lightning round

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Referenced:

• Linear: https://linear.app/

• Vercel: https://vercel.com/

• Nan Yu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thenanyu/

• The Linear method: https://linear.app/method

• How Ramp builds product: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-ramp-builds-product

• Lessons from scaling Ramp | Sri Batchu (Ramp, Instacart, Opendoor): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-scaling-ramp-sri-batchu-ramp-instacart-opendoor/

• Eric Yuan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericsyuan/

• The Timeless Way of Building: https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Way-Building-Christopher-Alexander/dp/0195024028

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry/dp/0060839872/

• John Wick: Chapter 4: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10366206/

• Silo on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/silo/umc.cmc.3yksgc857px0k0rqe5zd4jice

• Philips Hue lights: https://www.philips-hue.com/en-us

• Finnish salmon soup recipe: https://jernejkitchen.com/recipes/finnish-salmon-soup-lohikeitto

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

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