Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in product building | Karri Saarinen (Co-founder and CEO)
Description
Karri Saarinen is the co-founder and CEO of Linear, the project management tool built for high-performance software teams. Since its founding in 2019, Linear has achieved a valuation of $1.25B as of 10th June 2025 and now counts companies like OpenAI, Ramp and Vercel as customers. Before founding Linear, Karri led design at Airbnb and Coinbase, and previously co-founded Kippt, a bookmarking tool acquired by Coinbase.
In today’s episode, we discuss
- Karri’s childhood love for computers that shaped his career
- The lessons he learned from a failed first startup
- Linear’s founding principles
- The early validation strategies used to shape the product
- Why Karri believes in small teams
- And much more…
Referenced
Where to find Karri
Where to find Brett
Where to find First Round Capital
Timestamps
(1:37 ) Childhood roots in computers and design
(6:54 ) Founding Kippt and lessons from a failed bookmarking startup
(13:14 ) Lessons from a serial entrepreneur
(19:32 ) Why teams shouldn’t grow too quickly
(25: 03) Linear’s early beginnings
(36:55 ) The unexpected power of intuition
(42:41 ) Linear’s unusual approach to user growth
(47:29 ) What shaped Linear’s early product roadmap
(52:02 ) Startups shouldn’t try to boil the ocean
(57:30 ) The power of extreme focus
(59:18 ) Design “something for someone”
(1:04:29 ) Flexibility vs. simplicity
(1:17:27 ) Lead your team with strong principles
(1:24:45 ) Design founders vs. engineering founders
United States
