Linear CEO Karri Saarinen on building the default project management tool for AI-era software teams

on? How you doing? Thanks. Thanks for having me on the show. Of course. Great to have you. Uh it's great to have you a partner uh on the show as well. It's fantastic. Yeah, I've been like following you guys along from the very beginning.

I I think like you really have like kind of interesting concept and like I think like some people are going for the third the three-hour podcast but I think like I like you guys are going for the more like shorter content as well. Three hours a day. There's something for everybody. Yeah, it's fantastic.

Um uh well yeah uh there's tons of stuff to talk about. I think uh we'll probably see you up in uh in in SF next week potentially. The week after the week after for uh for Figma's event.

But um but yeah, why don't why don't you uh give a quick introduction for everybody that that's not familiar that maybe hasn't used uh linear in the past like us but uh and then we'll go from there. Sure. So yeah, I'm Caris Sarnon.

the CEO of Linear and Linear is basically this purpose-built tool for planning and and building software or products and we've been building this the last five years and what we're really doing for the product organizations and companies is that we are helping them with the end to-end workflow from like going from customer discovery like collecting c customer requests into planning road maps, planning projects, then executing on those projects and and tasks.

So we we try to like be this like really understand the customer's workflow here that what it takes for these different people in the organization to do their job well and how can we streamline it or make it make it easier for them.

And today we have about over 10,000 companies as as customers and like these can be anything from like ambitious startups to major enterprises and I think like if you think anyone building something cool today they're probably building it with linear.

Um so open AAI scale your sponsor ramp I think uh Mercury probably the lot of logos that you see at the bottom of the screen there are our customers as well.

Um, so I think like for me it's it or for us it's been really exciting like work from with this very forwardlooking companies and like they're always like thinking like how they can do things better.

And I think like you probably talk about this a lot on the show that I think AI is the topic that like AI is changing the way we do work or how we like how people do it their personal work but also like how the organization should operate and I think like a lot of XX and CEOs and CTOs are now pushing it to their companies that hey we need to use more AI because we do we do believe that it it can make us more productive and and more efficient.

When uh when did you know you wanted to start linear? Uh you were founding designer at Coinbase and then you were over at uh Airbnb. I imagine you were pretty frustrated with the tools at the time and and had a kind of concept for what you wanted to build, but I'm curious at what point it really clicked.

Um I I mean in the end it clicked with my my co-founders. I think we're all kind of frustrated at the same time. So I think we we had this like a time where we all worked in our companies for like four years or so and we were like well what do we do next?

And I think like we're all so frustrated that each of the companies we ever worked at these tools never felt that good and especially it didn't feel feel good for builders like us like when we like maybe that the tools were okay for the management and and like the some of the other people in the company but but like for designers and engineers.

Yeah. It's very different if you're just kind of like looking at a dashboard as an exact and you're just kind of like monitoring the situation.

But when you you're the person that has to you sort of like use the tool constantly and sort of be generating uh the content in the tool uh is just a dramatically different experience.

I I remember at my last company uh when our um first employee joined this this guy Brandon Jacobe who had been at Cash App and and Square uh and joined to lead design and product uh he literally set up a linear account on the first day because he was just like we're never we're not going to use anything else.

It would just be insane. So uh I'm curious uh we talk a lot about venture markets broadly.

I think you guys have taken a pretty unique approach and in sort of like building, you know, being a sort of default tool and I'm sure over time getting an immense amount of pressure uh from investors to take on uh more and more and more capital yet I feel like you guys have have had kind of like a efficiency ethos from from day one.

Can you talk about uh your kind of just like mindset when it came to when the right moments were to to raise and and what went into that? Yeah.

Um so so I think the ethos of the company is like what we really try to do is like we want to be the best tool for this purpose and this market and I think that's the way we win and that's kind of like the strategy we have.

And for me being a best tool means that you also need to be a quality tool like a high quality tool. I don't think like you can be the best tool if if it's like the the the quality is kind of low.

So to to do that I think like sometimes companies get themselves or startups get get themselves into this stage where it's like you just have to like work on the growth metrics because you need to raise the next round. Like we were fortunate that we didn't have to do that.

Like we could hit the we hit the market pretty well and like we got like companies starting to use us like in the first year and and we started getting revenue pretty quickly and then given that we also had this quality mindset like we always saw that we worked at the Airbnb and Uber and Coinbase that that like and the amount of people doesn't necessarily generate the quality.

A lot of times when we actually build trying to build something new or something really like good is it was a small team and so we we took that lesson that like hey can we just build better with the smaller team. So that that's great.

So like situations like our costs are lower but then also like we were able to like start generating revenue so that we actually started we became profitable the the second year and we've been profitable ever since. So then the last like um four years or so.

Um, and so what what it what it creates is like we can have a little more control of our destiny of like we don't have to work for the round that the the round all of the rounds have happened because we felt that like there's now like a good moment of bringing someone new in like we are in this new I think with the with the seed I think obviously there's some like well we should like let's say Sequoia light our seed so I think there's some like a brand aspect of that like hey we are like a real company now and we have like real backers And then some of the other like serious A and B has been about hey we are now like entering this new segment.

It's a little bit uncertain like what's going to happen. We are getting these larger customers and maybe we need to invest more into the sales.

So like I don't I don't the profitability is not like the number one goal of the company like still the growth is but what it what it allows us is like it gives us a little more like flexibility.

how do we go after it versus like well I'm running out of money like in six months now I have to like go figure out how do we put the numbers up so I can like raise a good round. Uh one unique part of your company uh in that it feels very core to the culture.

You guys are uh remote only and then you simultaneously I think it probably one of the reasons that works so well you guys focus on hiring very very senior people. uh do those two things go hand inand or are they sort of separate and and both have their own reasons?

Yeah, I would say like there's some some link there and I I think like it kind of like from the perspective we wanted to have more like kind of like a talent density. So you have smaller team and like better talent. Um so I think that that talks about like that kind of goes into this more like senior people.

I think remote it it is a type of mode of working where you have to trust the employees to like figure things out on their own and usually that develops a little bit later in the career.

Um it doesn't mean that like junior people would couldn't have that but it's like just more um just happens more and like as as you get more experience.

Um I think it's it today we are like hiring more more engineers and I think the the in the end like the remote to me is just that there's a lot more focus on the actual work. Um like I think like when you're in a company and in an office there's all kinds of things going on and people have like crazy ideas all the time.

Some of those ideas maybe are very good, but sometimes people end up or startups might end up kind of tacking a lot like they're like constantly changing the direction versus remote. It's a little bit the management is a little harder like it's harder to like it's almost like hurting people to the direction.

So you have to do it more like this is the plan and this is the strategy and then you need to let the people to execute on that. And so you kind of have to trust people's judgment.

So that's what we try to hire for is like hire people in all positions that like if we if we get no instructions from us directly then like could you figure this out and could you like make something good? About a decade ago I was running an engineering organization. I think we were using Trello or Asauna.

I'd love to know kind of like what is what what does your battle card look like today? Uh, and what what was the feature or or pitch to get organizations that maybe already had some sort of product in place to switch over? Like what was the killer go to market motion?

I think part of it, not to jump in, is that if a if a designer or a product manager moves to a company that doesn't use linear, the first thing they tell the hiring manager, I won't join unless you commit to to switching to linear. But uh Ki go for it. Yeah.

I mean that that's I think that in the end that's kind of like it like it's the word of mouth. So like and like I think obviously that hap doesn't happen in just automatically. Yeah.

So like it it's it's been like interesting that there hasn't been necessarily like just one thing but there's some some kind of these kind of tools are in some ways simple and some ways complex. It's there's like a lot of things that people do different things people do in a product different roles use it.

So like a lot of things needs to go right and I think our lessons like going using these tools for a long time is like one is like speed. It's like it it's really annoying if things are slow.

Like if you're trying to like do a little task and it takes like every time it takes like a minute to do it or you are confused or even how to do it. That means like you you probably won't use the tool that much. Like engineer will just well whatever I I'll go there once a week to update my status.

Oh, that's the worst having like dead project management software, product management software that's like, "Hey, we we paid for this. We have it. It's my dashboard into what's going on and no one's updating and you got to go around be like, "Everyone, you got to update. " Yeah. Bad. Um, you got a question.

You guys had a a an agent focused launch recently. I'm I'm curious to um You guys uh are a company that historically is is less fixated on sort of chasing trends, right?

like you know what you're building the best platform to plan and build products and so when a new trend pops up you're not sort of automatically piling into it at the same time so so in that context I think you know uh having this new focus on agents is probably a reaction to what you're seeing from customers what you guys are doing internally I'm curious how you kind of um to get your thoughts on on where uh agents are today in a sort of workplace environment and kind of how you see them uh evolving over time just because you guys are in a position again where you're not, you know, uh trying to raise uh a billion dollars selling, you know, a dream around agents.

You're just trying to build great products. And so I I think it's um more real grounded context.

Yeah, I think like we definitely have followed the like AI what what's been happening and experimenting on things but we we like a lot of times we we do ask talk to the customers and that's kind of like what we seeing now that there is a lot more interest and demand for this and and then also I think the in the last couple years the models have gotten better and we're now like starting to see like this like agent um like companies building agents and like agents I I think people are fighting like what the actual definition is, but I think to me what it means is that this kind of AI model or system can take some kind of form and or like a shape in these tools and or outside of the tools and they you can start delegating things to them and so like in in our context it could be like obviously there's a bug being reported maybe the agent can see that this is a bug that can they can solve pretty confidently and they could just say like hey I can solve this and then someone some human like approves that or like a as an engineer like an IC contri individual contributor can can just look at their task and say like hey I'm I'm going to try to delegate some of these tasks to to the agent and then I go work on my own task like whatever is the most complicated one so yeah oh yeah I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about uh the trends in uh management philosophy I remember agile conbon Toyota management, all these different uh terms.

There's books written on these. Uh what's the latest and greatest? And is there I I remember a lot of companies were kind of aligned with one strategy or the other. Uh what are you long, what are you short now in terms of like management philosophy?

Um yeah, I I think the I think a lot of this like systems are like agile or safe or some of this like other like frameworks. I think I I generally short frameworks when it comes to any kind of management like systems.

So I'm I'm more like I I'm long on like the first principles of like I I think like in the end it's like what what any kind of organization is about is like how do you generate the outputs?

it's like doesn't really matter how do you get there and so with linear I think the idea always been like can we make it simpler and I do see like uh like if you like franchisees and Airbnb they have this founder mode idea and then I think Pre had like a similar shift that like hey let's try to simplify the system like the framework so I think like that the simplification kind of I think why why it helps is that like it makes the makes the real things more visible like it's easy to like if you have this like very complicated framework or system it's easy to hide in the corners of like yeah we're kind of like moving things around but nothing is actually happening but I don't know it's interesting questions like what does the agent system does I I think in some ways it's it it's one thing I think like it's like interestingly each individual contributor kind of like maybe becomes more like a manager because they have this like almost like parallegals working for Um, yeah, you have to imagine that there's more focus on like CI and less like waterfall monolithic monor repos in the age of AI, but I don't know what you think about that.

Does that track? I think it could track in a way that it's it's if building things implementing the code becomes a lot cheaper and faster you can I think like today we have this waterfall processes partly because the engineering is expensive.

So you do the thinking and the design before you start building because the building part is kind of like the bottleneck or or expensive. But if that equation changes, so now we can just start like what we see with a lot of this like like um kind of website builders or something.

It's like you can just try something out and see if it that that's like actually like useful.

So I think that's it does flip the system but I think like you still probably need to go back to the planning a little bit like think why are you doing these things but you can maybe like start experimenting more internally directly with code and and not not like try to have this like very waterfall process.

How are you thinking about uh partnership partnerships in the context of your agent you know support? Uh I imagine you got you guys have your own sort of agentic workflows.

Uh but then uh over time I imagine some you know coding agent will come to you and say hey can we get sort of plugged in so that uh you know instead of delegating a a specific issue to an engineer you just delegate it to us.

But then that introduces kind of a vector where I feel like linear is about like surgical sort of precision and perfection with product.

And so adding this sort of external agent who's now sort of becoming a part of the product um even though they're sort of in some way mirroring what what an external engineer might look like. Uh but but I'm curious how you think about that.

Yeah, I mean our view is that there's going to be like hundreds of agents maybe like thousands and I don't think we can we can hold it back and like I don't think we should. So, so what what we're doing is like we're kind of fully leaning into that hey linear is a platform for for agents.

So this might be like third party companies building agents. Maybe we build our own agents.

Maybe our customers built their own internal agents and they want to bring them on and our job there is to like figure out like what is the right way to like what is the kind of interaction layer like like how do you actually use these thing like use this agents? How do you delegate the work? How do you monitor it?

how do you um review the work or how do you as an organization um kind of just generally monitor the the security or the usage or the cost for example. Mhm.

So we we just think that like there will be a lot of at least in the short medium term there will be like a lot of different agents and we should just like support that. Um and so so that's that's like we already have two at least two um that people are using like Devon and Codegen that they that exist on the platform.

You can assign issues to them today and they will try to fix them. Um and we actually seeing like a lot of develop like other developers and we're launching something in a couple weeks. So I think there will be like more launch partners there. That's awesome.

Yeah, it actually I mean it just gets me really excited because historically using linear there's just so many sort of the issues that you create that are assigned to a junior engineer. They take a crack at it. It's hopefully they get it right.

Sometimes they don't and then you bring in other people to actually get it resolved and so it's just like such a natural uh workflow but it's also exciting because jun even more junior engineers will learn sort of how to manage engineers just by managing agents.

So, I'm excited to run the show on linear project one ticket. Bigger gong. Bigger gong. Yeah, we're going to need a big more tinfoil hats. More soundboard effects. Can we get a founder mode sound effect to kick it off?

In talking with your team, I mean, one of the one of the like uh everybody that that watches the show knows this. We're trying to make the show, you know, one one% better every single day. That sometimes it's in different ways, but we really do have so many projects. New studio, new lighting.

like I have 20 projects in my mind and and like they don't perfectly map to different you know a lot of people think of content as like you know it's a camera and a microphone and you're editing but it's more so like the the show is ever evolving product totally totally so anyways uh excited to hang this fantastic thanks for coming in always welcome and uh yeah we'll talk to you soon yeah thanks for having me by cheers see you and next up we We got Sean Frank coming in the studio.

The wallet man himself. But we're going to tell you about Ramp in the meantime. Time is money. Save both. Get on ramp. com. Switch your business to ramp. com. Also, find your happy place. Go to wander. com. Book a wander. Uh with inspiring views, hotel great amenities. What does Wanderer always say?

Find your happy place. Find your happy place. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we got we got Sean Frank in the studio, the wallet salesman here, uh, here to