“Design is never going to be like the reason or like the reason why a company is successful. It's like the company still has to have some other things that like the product still needs to be something. It needs to be better in some ways, or it needs to be different in some ways.”
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More from Karri Saarinen
AssertionSupported
Linear operates with only one product manager across the entire company
“The other thing I would say that what we like to do is we actually don't have much BMS in the company. We only have one”
Karri SaarinenOct 8, 2023▶ 14:26Inside Linear: Building with taste, craft, and focus | Karri Saarinen (co-founder, designer, CEO)
Disclosure
Linear assigns an engineer or designer as project lead instead of PMs
“So yes, like for every project, there's a project lead. That lead can be engineer or designer. It's not like a formal role or it's not based on it, like your whatever level or it's just like, you need to be certain title that you can be that it's more like a a…”
Karri SaarinenOct 8, 2023▶ 19:35Inside Linear: Building with taste, craft, and focus | Karri Saarinen (co-founder, designer, CEO)
Insight
Operating without PMs requires interviewing engineers for product sense and judgment
“Probably the only thing I would say, it's like the hiring front that like you really need to spend more time on it. And like, basically you cannot really interview engineers only for the engineering skills. You also have to interview them for like the product …”
Karri SaarinenOct 8, 2023▶ 21:35Inside Linear: Building with taste, craft, and focus | Karri Saarinen (co-founder, designer, CEO)
Disclosure
Linear does not use A/B testing or target metrics for product releases
“We don't do AP testing or we don't do specific or follow like certain metrics or something. We might sometimes, we do have telemetry or like, we can look at like how people use certain things. And we sometimes Do that. But like, that's not usually the goal we …”
Karri SaarinenOct 8, 2023▶ 36:47Inside Linear: Building with taste, craft, and focus | Karri Saarinen (co-founder, designer, CEO)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Linear has been profitable for two years with net-negative lifetime burn
“We've been profitable the last two years and we also have this thing where we actually have this net negative lifetime burn rate which means that, like, we just have more Cash in the bank today than we have raised.”
Karri SaarinenOct 8, 2023▶ 6:11Inside Linear: Building with taste, craft, and focus | Karri Saarinen (co-founder, designer, CEO)
Insight
Building features reveals product design requirements better than upfront polishing
“Whenever we build a new feature, one of the things is like, we don't want to spend tons of time upfront, just like designing it and polishing it perfectly. Cause we actually believe that when you start building the thing, you actually start realizing more, lik…”
Karri SaarinenOct 8, 2023▶ 9:04Inside Linear: Building with taste, craft, and focus | Karri Saarinen (co-founder, designer, CEO)
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