Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in product building | Karri Saarinen (Co-founder and CEO)

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 Airbnb Brian Armstrong Brian Chesky Coinbase Jori Lallo Linear Tuomas Artman Y Combinator Where to find Karri LinkedIn Twitter/X Where to find Brett LinkedIn Twitter/X Where to find First Round Capital Website First Round Review Twitter/X YouTube 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