The Ledger
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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…”
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…”
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…”
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…”
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.”
Saarinen: Software should be structured for execution but flexible for leadership
“We could still be more opinionated on the lower levels where there's more of this volume and need for structure because there's more people and more things happening and the more flexibility you introduce, it multiplies a lot more. But once you get to the very…”
Product quality suffers across tech because organizations incentivize speed over craftsmanship
“Why quality doesn't happen in most companies. It's like, it's just because it's not incentivized. No one ever says you should do it. It's almost that no, we just want you to complete this task. We don't actually care how do you complete it too much. We just wa…”
Saarinen: Founders must think about business models and monetization early
“Made me realize that the advice on like starting a company and not thinking about the business model too much is, is not good. Like I think you should think about it a little bit. It's like, what is, what kind of business are you in? Like what, who is going to…”
Saarinen: Enterprise software is built for buyers instead of actual users
“What I could see a lot of tools, and this generally I think goes for enterprise tools, they are optimized around the buyer, because that's how they get bought.
You don't, the users don't go buy the tools.
The, like the actual end users don't go buy the tools.
…”
Simple MVPs fail in project management due to high baseline user requirements
“Like, you could build a very simple version of something, but in this category, it's, like, just doesn't work because people already have, like, pretty high standards or high needs for how this kind of tool should work.”
Saarinen: Software cannot be optimal if endlessly customizable
“I don't believe that you can build the optimal tool for anything if it's very flexible and endlessly customizable.”
Saarinen: Developer tools are uniquely viable to monetize due to high budgets
“Software companies and engineering tools are type of products that people are willing to pay for because the engineering functions are already highly paid and software companies have, especially VC funded software companies, they have a lot of money to spend.”
Saarinen: High-speed, high-output projects always come from small teams
“All the projects that I was part of, what were the projects that went really well, like where the output was really good, where the speed was really fast or executing execution speed was really fast. And it was always like projects where we had a small team wo…”
Saarinen: Users treat incumbent enterprise software like permanent building floors
“Like, I think this market is like weird where you have this incumbent and I think people just assume it's the thing. It's like, it's always been there. It's always going to be there. And so it's a little bit like the floors in the building. It's like, you don'…”
Saarinen: Product waitlists lose user interest after at most six months
“There's also like waitlist has a decay that it's people's interest doesn't last forever. So I think I would say like the realistic timeframe is probably months or maybe at max six months.”
Saarinen: Pressure on Short-Term Metrics Inevitably Degrades Product Quality
“I think like what often happens to startups or any companies is like, The quality goes down because they get pressured on some, something else. They pressured on the, we need to ship this or we need to get, get these metrics up. And then the quality goes down …”
Saarinen: Engineers validate startup ideas faster than designers through working prototypes
“So there's a little more like clear, like quicker bath to some kind of validation, I would say, versus like designers, you might have this idea of something could be better. But so you design it, but you still just have designs. You don't actually have the pro…”
Saarinen: Linear solves organizational coordination that breaks down as companies scale
“In the end, like what the problem we are solving for companies is this like organizational coordination and communication problem. And especially like the larger the company is more problems you have with that. And basically the problem is always no one ever k…”