Saarinen: Overly polished websites create misleading expectations for early-stage startups
Karri Saarinen · Brand Design Tips From Linear Founder Karri Saarinen · Y Combinator · Jul 25, 2025 · at 1:26
Karri Saarinen, co-founder of Linear, explains design principles for early-stage startups on Y Combinator's podcast.
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“You might try to, like, build very polished or fancy websites very early on, but what that kind of, like, tells you is, like, it maybe sets the wrong expectation for the user, that if your product is just that, I don't know, you built it last month, and, like, you don't have everything figured out yet, the product might not be there yet, it's not that polished. It might be set this wrong expectation that this is a very, I don't know, like, polished product already, and it does all the things that you promise it does. So I think, like, there, there's that danger that you go too far, like, trying to look like a large company or, like, a mature company too early.”
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