“I would say like on the waitlist, I remember that eventually we had about like 10,000 emails on it. I would say about like 10% of them converted during that year.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
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More from Karri Saarinen
Insight
Saarinen: Companies mistakenly treat resources as headcount instead of output
“Companies don't really do it that much because I don't, I find they often think about the resources as number of people, not, not necessarily like the output of those people. So it's easy to say, like, we need to hire like a hundred more engineers, but maybe y…”
Karri SaarinenJun 5, 2025▶ 21:03Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in product building | Karri Saarinen (Co-founder & CEO)
Opinion
Saarinen: Startup success enables mass hiring, not the other way around
“I don't actually believe that those people are needed for the success. It's more that the company is so successful that they can hire these people. So it's like when you have the growth there, you are able to do that. That's the lesson people should take from …”
Karri SaarinenJun 5, 2025▶ 22:05Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in product building | Karri Saarinen (Co-founder & CEO)
Insight
Saarinen: Productivity tools should optimize for individual contributors rather than management
“In the end, the productivity of any company comes from the ICs, like what the actual, what is actually the work output and the ICs engineers or designers or someone are building that output.
So I think if the tool should be optimized around anything, it should…”
Karri SaarinenJun 5, 2025▶ 30:09Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in product building | Karri Saarinen (Co-founder & CEO)
Insight
Saarinen: Individual contributors and executives align on output while middle management obstructs
“I noticed in all of the companies I worked at that actually the ICs and the high level leadership was, I think more philosophically aligned because I think CEOs and a lot of the high level leadership, they just want to see things happening.
They want to see ou…”
Karri SaarinenJun 5, 2025▶ 33:00Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in product building | Karri Saarinen (Co-founder & CEO)
Insight
Linear models user needs internally rather than building direct feature requests
“It's never been, even in the beginning or later stages, it's never that like we Listen to these users and then we build what they want or what they say. We went there, like, it's more like we have that model in our heads. And then if something doesn't quite fi…”
Karri SaarinenJun 5, 2025▶ 37:49Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in product building | Karri Saarinen (Co-founder & CEO)
Insight
Saarinen: Startups should do the opposite of incumbent competitors
“You shouldn't probably emulate. You should almost do the opposite what all the other players in your domain are doing. And maybe you can take inspiration from some other companies in other domains and do something like similar there.”
Karri SaarinenJun 5, 2025▶ 1:14:07Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in product building | Karri Saarinen (Co-founder & CEO)
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