Karri Saarinen

Karri Saarinen is co-founder and CEO of Linear, the issue-tracking tool used by Block, Vercel, Ramp, and a significant share of high-growth startups. Before Linear, he was founding designer at Coinbase and principal designer at Airbnb. He is the author of the Linear Method, a published set of principles for software development that centres opinionated defaults, automated cycles, and engineer-owned projects over metrics-driven processes and traditional PM hierarchies.

Linear has been profitable for two years, carries net negative lifetime burn, and runs on roughly 50 people.

Key ideas

• Craft through iteration speed, not upfront polish. Ship internally fast, collect real feedback from a small number of customers, then polish before general release. The feedback loop is the quality mechanism.
• Opinionated software removes configuration overhead. Give users good defaults rather than infinite flexibility. Users spend less time on the meta-work of setup and more time on the actual work.
• No PMs except one. Engineers and designers own projects end-to-end. Testing for product sensibility at the hiring stage replaces the PM layer.
• PMF is a spectrum. Linear found it with early-stage startups first, then followed pull into AI and crypto communities rather than engineering expansion.

Appearances

See also

• Linear Method
• Product Taste