Inside Linear: Building with Taste, Craft, and Focus

Linear's CEO Karri Saarinen reveals how his team built the world's fastest-growing issue tracker with just one product manager, no metrics, and an obsessive focus on craft over speed.

Key Takeaways

• Linear operates with only one product manager for 50 employees, giving engineers and designers broader ownership and decision-making power
• The company ships features early to select customers but delays public releases until the craft and polish meet their standards
• Design matters more in crowded markets - the more competitors exist, the higher the bar for quality user experience
• Linear doesn't use A/B tests or metric-based goals, instead relying on deep customer understanding and intuitive decision-making
• Their hiring process includes paid work trials where candidates actually build features alongside the team for several days
• "Go slow to go fast" - taking time to think through problems prevents having to fix rushed solutions later
• Opinionated software with good defaults helps users focus on their actual work rather than configuring tools
• Building a remote culture requires creative solutions like quarterly baking competitions that work across time zones
• Product-market fit exists on a spectrum and should be measured within specific customer segments rather than as a binary state
• Focus comes from distinguishing between "main quest" priorities and "side quest" distractions that don't advance core goals

Timeline Overview

• 00:00 Karri’s background - Karri Saarinen, co-founder/CEO of Linear, previously a founding designer at Coinbase and principal designer at Airbnb, focuses on craft and quality in product development.
• 04:25 Overview of Linear - Linear is a leading issue tracking tool for software teams, known for its frictionless experience. Launched in 2019, it's profitable and used by many growth companies.
• 06:43 Linear’s design process and its focus on quality - Linear prioritizes hiring quality-focused individuals, balancing perfection with speed through internal testing and small customer betas before general release.
• 12:25 Building a craft-oriented company - A craft-oriented company requires founders and the entire team to deeply value and prioritize quality in their work.
• 16:41 Product management at Linear - Linear minimizes traditional PM roles, empowering engineering and design teams with ownership to drive improvements directly.
• 18:37 Strategies for launching a startup without a dedicated PM - Linear initially used a contractor for data, with engineers and designers taking on PM responsibilities, requiring high-caliber, product-minded hires.
• 21:16 How Linear assists PMs in their roles - Linear's intuitive product reduces PMs' time on tool management, allowing them to focus on strategic product direction and new features.
• 23:46 Linear’s potential expansion in PM roles - Linear plans to hire more strategic PMs as they grow, focusing on highly capable individuals for specific product areas rather than daily oversight.
• 24:58 The importance of design - Design becomes more crucial in competitive markets, acting as an enabler for user perception, acquisition, and retention for new products.
• 29:08 Utilizing design and brand as distinct competitive advantages - Design helps products stand out visually, while strong branding creates a default preference for a company even among similar products.
• 30:48 The importance of authenticity in branding and messaging - Authenticity is key to brand building; a brand is built over time through consistent actions, communication, and product development, creating a distinct identity.
• 33:08 How design reviews are conducted at Linear - Design reviews involve weekly demos, personal product testing by Karri for subtle issues, and iterative launches for complex features.
• 38:34 The Linear method for modern software development - The Linear Method outlines the company's principles for modern software development, sharing their philosophy behind product choices.
• 40:07 Why productivity software should be opinionated - Productivity software should be "opinionated" by providing good defaults and optimized workflows to reduce user effort and boost focus.
• 41:23 Why Linear created “cycles” and how it works - Linear created "Cycles" as an optional feature to help teams manage and prioritize their ongoing, often infinite, list of tasks effectively.
• 43:27 Why Linear doesn’t have metric-based goals - Linear avoids A/B testing and strict metric-based goals, relying on intuition and a deep understanding of customer problems to guide product decisions.
• 45:07 How a business can thrive without metrics, PMs, and A/B testing - Linear succeeds by prioritizing quality, trusting intuition, and building long-term customer trust through a customer-centric approach.
• 48:04 A customer-focused approach to building product - Linear focuses on "retention and trust," continuously delivering high-quality products to ensure long-term customer use and respect.
• 50:02 Adapting strategies for diverse products and domains - Product development strategies should be adapted based on the specific domain and problem space, as different businesses have varying needs.
• 53:05 Three techniques Karri uses to maintain focus - Karri maintains focus through three core activities: talking to customers, building the product, and exercising to avoid burnout.
• 56:47 Linear’s hiring practices - Linear seeks hires who are "more than their title," valuing diverse skills and broader perspectives, leading to effective cross-functional work.
• 1:02:10 Paid work trials - Linear conducts paid work trials where candidates work alongside the team for several days to assess fit and collaboration effectively.
• 1:04:31 How to determine a candidate’s “product sense” - Product sense is assessed through in-depth discussions about past projects, focusing on logical reasoning behind design and user-centric decisions.
• 1:08:21 Linear’s growth journey and milestones - Linear began prototyping in early 2019, launched a private beta in mid-2019, and publicly launched a year later with strong user adoption.
• 1:14:18 How pricing strategies were initially introduced at Linear - Linear introduced pricing upon public launch; nearly all private beta users transitioned to paid plans, indicating successful monetization.
• 1:16:18 Linear’s journey to finding product-market fit - Linear successfully achieved product-market fit within early-stage startups within two years, becoming a default tool for that segment.
• 1:21:44 The importance of online presence and authenticity in business - Building an authentic brand and online presence is an ongoing process, shaped by consistent actions and interactions with customers.
• 1:24:59 Insight into the corporate culture at Linear - Linear fosters a culture of craft through activities like remote team baking sessions, reinforcing quality values and promoting team building.
• 1:28:29 Lessons learned during Karri’s transition from IC to CEO -Transitioning from an IC to CEO involves managing diverse responsibilities, requiring effective hiring and delegation to maintain focus.
• 1:30:21 Sneak peek into the upcoming “asks” feature at Linear -Information about the "asks" feature is not available in the provided content.
• 1:32:04 Lightning round - Karri's motto is "go slow to go fast," emphasizing thoughtful action. He also enjoys smart home lights that adapt to different times of day.

The Accidental Formula: How Linear Built Different

Linear didn't set out to revolutionize how software companies operate - they just wanted to build the issue tracking tool they wished existed. But in pursuing that vision, Karri Saarinen and his co-founders stumbled onto something remarkable: a way of building products that prioritizes craft and quality over conventional startup metrics and processes.

The numbers tell part of the story. Linear is profitable after just four years, has a "net negative lifetime burn rate" (meaning they have more cash today than they've ever raised), and powers some of the fastest-growing companies in tech including Vercel, Ramp, Mercury, and Substack. But the more interesting story is how they achieved this with an organizational structure that defies Silicon Valley orthodoxy.

Most startups hire product managers early and often, creating cross-functional teams with clearly defined roles. Linear took the opposite approach - they've built a 50-person company with exactly one product manager. Instead of A/B testing every feature, they rely on deep customer empathy and design intuition. Rather than optimizing for metrics, they optimize for craft and user experience.

This isn't just contrarian for the sake of being different. Every unconventional choice Linear makes stems from a deeper philosophy about how to build software that people genuinely love to use. As Saarinen puts it, "collaboration only happens if people use the product" - and people only use products consistently when the experience is frictionless and delightful.

• Linear proves that small teams with high standards can outperform large teams with average quality
• Their success challenges assumptions about the necessity of traditional product management structures
• Quality and craft aren't luxuries but essential for building lasting competitive advantages
• Remote-first companies need to innovate on culture and team building, not just products

The key insight is that Linear isn't anti-process or anti-structure - they're pro-intentionality. Every decision about how they work serves their ultimate goal of building software that teams love enough to use every single day for years.

Rethinking Product Management: The Power of Broader Ownership

Perhaps Linear's most controversial organizational choice is operating with just one product manager for their entire 50-person team. In most tech companies, this would be considered impossible - product managers are supposedly essential for coordinating between engineering, design, and business stakeholders. But Linear has found that distributing traditional PM responsibilities actually creates better outcomes.

Instead of having dedicated PMs for each area, Linear assigns a "project lead" to every initiative. This lead can be an engineer or designer, and their role isn't based on title or seniority - it's an assignment that rotates based on who's best suited for the specific project. The project lead is responsible for getting things started, working with the team to figure out scope and approach, and communicating progress and changes.

This model requires hiring people who can think beyond their immediate skillset. Engineers need to develop product sense and communication skills. Designers need to understand technical constraints and business priorities. Everyone needs to be comfortable making decisions and taking ownership rather than just executing someone else's specifications.

The benefits extend beyond just efficiency. When engineers and designers have direct ownership over product decisions, they notice opportunities for improvement that a separate PM might miss. Saarinen gives the example of an engineer who rebuilt their right-click menu system to include "safe zones" that make diagonal mouse movements easier - a detail that emerged from actually building the feature rather than just specifying it.

• Traditional PM roles get distributed across engineers and designers who work directly with customers
• Project leads rotate based on expertise and project needs rather than organizational hierarchy
• Engineers develop product thinking skills while maintaining technical excellence
• Broader ownership leads to better attention to craft and user experience details

The one PM they do have operates at a higher level, focusing on overall product direction and helping teams align on larger strategic questions. Rather than being embedded in every decision, they help establish frameworks for thinking about problems and let the teams execute with autonomy.

The Craft-First Philosophy: Why Design Always Matters

Saarinen's background as a designer at Airbnb and Coinbase shaped Linear's obsession with craft, but their approach goes deeper than just making things look nice. They believe that in any mature market, design quality becomes table stakes - and software development tools are definitely a mature market.

The principle is simple: the more competitors exist in a space, the higher the bar for design quality. When Google and YouTube launched, their basic interfaces were acceptable because they were first to market. But try launching an email client today with 1990s-level design and nobody will pay attention, regardless of the underlying functionality.

This creates what Saarinen calls a "design is never going to be the only reason a company is successful" paradox. Good design alone won't save a fundamentally flawed product. But poor design will kill even the best functionality because users won't stick around long enough to discover its value.

Linear solves this through a two-stage launch process that balances craft with speed. They ship features internally and to select beta customers as soon as the core functionality works, even if the experience is rough around the edges. This lets them validate the concept and gather feedback quickly. But they don't release features publicly until the polish and craft meet their standards.

• Design quality is no longer optional in mature software markets
• Good design enables rather than defines product success
• Early internal testing allows rapid iteration without compromising public quality standards
• Craft includes both visual design and functional details like animations and micro-interactions

The craft philosophy extends to engineering as well. Linear's engineers regularly go below the CUDA level to optimize performance, creating details like safe zones in dropdown menus that most users never consciously notice but definitely feel. These micro-improvements accumulate into an overall sense that the product respects users' time and attention.

Building Without Metrics: The Magic and Science Balance

Linear's rejection of A/B testing and metric-driven development might sound reckless, but they've replaced traditional "science" with something they believe works better: deep customer empathy combined with intuitive decision-making. They call this approach balancing "magic and science."

The science component involves talking to users constantly. Every team member is encouraged to join customer Slack channels, answer support questions, and participate in weekly customer calls. Founders and employees regularly hop into shared channels with customers to see complaints and celebrations in real-time. When they do pull metrics, it's to answer specific questions rather than to set arbitrary improvement targets.

The magic component happens when everyone builds enough customer understanding to make intuitive decisions about what to build next. Instead of optimizing for engagement metrics that might not correlate with actual user satisfaction, they focus on solving real problems that customers articulate clearly.

This approach requires a level of customer intimacy that many companies never achieve. But it also enables faster decision-making and more creative solutions. When you deeply understand your users' daily frustrations, you can spot opportunities that wouldn't show up in quantitative data until much later.

• Deep customer empathy replaces traditional metrics as the primary decision-making input
• Team members across all functions maintain direct relationships with users
• Intuitive decision-making works when it's grounded in real customer understanding
• Avoiding metric optimization prevents optimizing for vanity metrics that don't drive real value

The trade-off is that this approach requires hiring people with good product judgment and the ability to synthesize qualitative feedback into actionable insights. It doesn't work if team members just execute specifications without understanding the underlying customer problems.

The Linear Method: Opinionated Software for Productive Teams

Linear has codified their product philosophy into what they call "The Linear Method" - a set of principles for building modern productivity software. The core insight is that productivity tools should be opinionated rather than endlessly flexible, providing good defaults so users can focus on their actual work instead of configuring software.

The problem with ultra-flexible tools is that every team ends up implementing workflows differently, creating inconsistency and requiring constant decision-making about process rather than progress. Linear deliberately constrains options to create what Saarinen calls "good defaults" - workflows that work well for most teams without requiring extensive customization.

One example is their "Cycles" feature, which provides time-boxed focus periods similar to sprints but with automated scheduling. Teams can turn cycles on or off, but when they use them, the system handles the administrative overhead automatically. This lets teams batch their priorities for 1-2 week periods without having to manually manage sprint ceremonies and scheduling.

The "opinionated software" philosophy extends to their design decisions as well. Rather than providing endless customization options, they focus on creating one really good way to accomplish common tasks. This reduces cognitive load and creates consistency across teams and organizations.

• Opinionated software with good defaults helps users focus on work rather than tool configuration
• Flexibility often creates more problems than it solves in productivity tools
• Automated workflows reduce administrative overhead for common processes
• Consistency across teams matters more than individual customization preferences

The Linear Method isn't dogmatic - they still provide escape hatches and customization where it genuinely improves workflows. But their default assumption is that smart defaults serve users better than endless options.

Focus as a Superpower: Main Quests vs. Side Quests

Saarinen has developed a reputation for being exceptionally focused, consistently avoiding the distractions that derail most startup founders. His approach borrows from Y Combinator's classic advice but adds a gaming metaphor that makes prioritization decisions clearer.

The Y Combinator framework is simple: focus on talking to customers, building product, and exercising. If you're doing anything else, you're probably making a mistake. But Saarinen adds nuance by distinguishing between "main quest" activities that advance your core mission and "side quests" that might be fun or interesting but don't move the needle.

Examples of side quests include getting security certifications before customers actually need them, designing company t-shirts, or participating in every networking opportunity that comes along. These aren't necessarily bad activities, but they distract from the main quest of building great software that customers love.

The key is asking two questions about every opportunity: "Is this important to do now?" and "Is this main quest or side quest?" Many things that seem urgent or important fail both tests when examined honestly. A security certification might be important eventually, but if no customers are asking for it today, it's probably a side quest.

• Focus requires distinguishing between genuinely important work and interesting distractions
• Timing matters - many good ideas become bad ideas when pursued too early
• Gaming metaphors help clarify whether activities advance core objectives
• Saying no to good opportunities enables saying yes to great ones

This framework extends beyond individual decisions to company-wide prioritization. Linear regularly evaluates whether entire product areas or business development efforts qualify as main quest work or side quests that should be deferred.

Hiring for Broader Scope: The Venn Diagram Approach

Linear's unusual organizational structure requires unusual hiring practices. Since they don't have specialized roles for every function, they look for people who can operate effectively across traditional boundaries - what Saarinen calls "Venn diagram overlapping" between different skill sets.

For engineers, this means hiring for both technical excellence and product thinking. They want people who can write great code and also have opinions about user experience, business priorities, and product strategy. For designers, they want visual and interaction design skills plus the ability to think systematically about complex workflows and technical constraints.

The challenge is identifying these capabilities during interviews. Traditional technical interviews test narrow skills, but Linear needs to evaluate broader product sense and collaboration abilities. They've solved this through "paid work trials" - multi-day projects where candidates actually work alongside the team on real features.

During work trials, candidates get access to Linear's codebase, Slack, and Notion. They attend meetings, participate in discussions, and build actual features that might ship to customers. This gives both sides much better information than traditional interviews - candidates see what it's really like to work at Linear, and the team sees how candidates approach ambiguous problems with real constraints.

• Hiring for broad scope requires testing collaboration and product thinking, not just technical skills
• Paid work trials provide better signal than traditional interviews for complex roles
• Candidates can evaluate company culture and work style before committing full-time
• Real project work reveals problem-solving approaches that interviews miss

The work trial approach requires significant investment from both candidates and the team, but it dramatically reduces hiring mistakes and cultural mismatches. Most candidates who complete work trials end up being great long-term hires because they've already demonstrated they can succeed in Linear's environment.

Building Remote Culture: The Great British Baking Solution

Distributed teams face unique challenges in building culture and maintaining team cohesion. Traditional approaches like happy hours don't work across time zones, and Zoom social events often feel forced and awkward. Linear solved this with an unexpected approach: quarterly baking competitions inspired by The Great British Baking Show.

Every quarter, the team picks a recipe - initially baking, now expanded to cooking - that's challenging but achievable for home cooks. Everyone buys ingredients on the company card, then joins a Zoom call to cook together. Team members help each other troubleshoot problems, chat about non-work topics, and share photos of their creations in a dedicated Slack channel.

The format works because it gives people something concrete to focus on besides just socializing. The shared challenge creates natural conversation topics and collaborative problem-solving. And since everyone's cooking at the same time, it feels more like a genuine shared experience than a forced team building exercise.

The baking competitions also reinforce Linear's craft-focused culture. Baking and cooking require attention to detail, following processes, and caring about quality outcomes - all values that transfer to product development. Team members often put significant effort into presentation and visual design, turning it into a friendly competition that showcases creativity.

• Remote culture requires intentional design and creative solutions beyond traditional team building
• Shared challenges create more natural bonding than forced social activities
• Activities that reinforce company values feel more authentic than generic team building
• Global teams need formats that work across time zones and cultural differences

The key insight is that remote culture can't just replicate in-person experiences - it needs to create genuinely new ways for distributed teams to connect and collaborate.

Product-Market Fit as Territory Acquisition

Most founders think about product-market fit as a binary state - either you have it or you don't. Linear's experience suggests a more nuanced model: product-market fit exists on a spectrum and should be measured within specific customer segments rather than across entire markets.

Linear found strong product-market fit early with small startups and early-stage companies where founders still directly managed product development. These customers cared about speed, simplicity, and quality - exactly what Linear optimized for. But they knew they didn't have product-market fit with Fortune 500 companies that needed enterprise features and compliance capabilities.

Instead of trying to serve everyone poorly, they focused on dominating their initial segment first. Their goal was becoming "the default tool that startups pick" before expanding to larger customers. This meant saying no to enterprise features and complex workflows that would have diluted their core value proposition.

Only after establishing dominance in the startup segment did they begin building features for larger companies. This sequential approach to market expansion requires patience but creates stronger positioning and clearer differentiation than trying to serve multiple segments simultaneously.

• Product-market fit should be measured within specific customer segments, not across entire markets
• Sequential market expansion often works better than trying to serve everyone from day one
• Strong fit with a narrow segment provides better foundation than weak fit across broad markets
• Focus enables optimization for specific use cases rather than generic solutions

The "territory acquisition" metaphor helps clarify expansion decisions. Each new customer segment represents new territory that requires specific capabilities and positioning. Trying to acquire too much territory too quickly often results in losing control of areas you thought you had secured.

The Premium Positioning Strategy: Quality Over Scale

Linear's approach to growth prioritizes quality over scale in ways that seem counterintuitive for a startup. They deliberately launch features slowly, maintain high hiring standards that limit team growth, and focus on retention rather than rapid user acquisition. This premium positioning strategy has enabled sustainable growth without venture capital dependence.

The company has been profitable for two years and maintains what Saarinen calls "net negative lifetime burn rate" - they have more cash today than they've ever raised. This financial independence allows them to optimize for long-term customer satisfaction rather than short-term growth metrics that investors might demand.

Their hiring philosophy reinforces this positioning. They never more than double team size in a single year, preferring to find exceptional people who can take on broad scope rather than hiring quickly to fill specialized roles. This creates higher per-employee productivity but requires more patience and investment in finding the right people.

The customer experience reflects the same premium approach. Linear provides white-glove onboarding for new teams, maintains responsive customer support, and regularly ships quality-of-life improvements that don't directly drive revenue but improve daily user experience. This creates strong customer loyalty and word-of-mouth growth.

• Premium positioning enables sustainable growth without external pressure for rapid scaling
• Quality-focused hiring creates higher productivity than volume-focused hiring
• Customer experience investment drives retention and word-of-mouth growth
• Financial independence allows optimization for long-term value over short-term metrics

The trade-off is slower growth than venture-funded competitors who prioritize rapid market capture. But Linear's approach creates more defensible positioning and sustainable competitive advantages that compound over time.

Lessons from the Linear Playbook

Linear's success offers several actionable insights for other product teams and startups, though their specific approaches won't work for every company or market. The key is understanding the principles behind their choices rather than copying their exact practices.

First, craft and quality can be legitimate competitive strategies, not just nice-to-haves. In mature markets with strong competitors, user experience often determines who wins regardless of feature parity. This requires treating design and engineering excellence as business priorities rather than afterthoughts.

Second, organizational structure should serve product goals rather than following industry conventions. Linear's minimal PM structure works because their product and market reward deep customer empathy and craft over rapid feature shipping. Other products might require different structures, but the principle of intentional organization design applies broadly.

Third, focus becomes more important as opportunities increase. Linear's "main quest vs. side quest" framework provides a practical tool for prioritization decisions, but the underlying discipline of saying no to good ideas in service of great ones applies to any growing company.

Finally, building for specific customer segments often creates stronger businesses than building for broad markets. Linear's sequential approach to market expansion - dominating startups before expanding to enterprise - required patience but created clearer positioning and stronger product-market fit.

• Craft and quality become competitive advantages in mature markets with strong competition
• Organizational structure should be designed to support product strategy rather than following conventions
• Focus frameworks help distinguish between genuinely important work and interesting distractions
• Sequential market expansion often creates stronger positioning than trying to serve everyone simultaneously

The Linear story demonstrates that thoughtful, intentional approaches to product development can compete successfully against well-funded competitors optimizing for rapid growth and market capture.

What's Next: Scaling Intentional Culture

• The premium positioning test - Linear's approach will face new challenges as they expand to larger customers who may prioritize different values than early-stage startups
• Organizational evolution - Maintaining their minimal PM structure and broad ownership model will become more complex as the team grows beyond 50 people
• Market expansion decisions - Sequential territory acquisition requires choosing which adjacent markets to enter and when, balancing growth opportunities with focus maintenance
• Remote culture innovation - Distributed teams will need continued creativity in building culture and maintaining alignment as the company scales globally
• Product complexity management - Adding enterprise features and capabilities while maintaining the simplicity and craft focus that attracted initial customers
• Competition response - Well-funded competitors may copy Linear's design approach while maintaining traditional organizational structures and faster shipping speeds
• Customer success scaling - Maintaining personalized onboarding and support experiences as customer volume grows significantly
• Feature prioritization frameworks - Balancing requests from different customer segments while maintaining opinionated product decisions
• International expansion considerations - Adapting the Linear Method and company culture for different markets and regulatory environments
• Platform evolution decisions - Determining how much flexibility to add without compromising the opinionated software philosophy that differentiates them