Karri Saarinen on Linear: how AI is reshaping software development workflows

celebrate your new rebrand. Get your superhuman on your wrist with bezel. Your bezel concier is available now to source you any watch on the planet. Our next guest uh is dressed up as the co-founder and CEO of Linear. I can't wait to talk. Come on in. Great to see you. Great to see you. Well, great.

Thanks for having me again. And yeah, like um my plan was the same as everyone else's. I could have dressed up like you guys, but Yeah, I I saw it's already done, so I thought like, well, I'll just do a different thing and not dress up. No, you're locked in. Locked in. CEO of linear.

Uh you you could uh you could plan to like if you grew out the hair on the sides, I bet by next year you could do a pretty good impression of of one of us without even hat a pure play. Um great to see you. I think did we overlap almost at Were you at the GitHub Universe on Tuesday? No, I wasn't there.

But yeah, that that's why I couldn't join. But um but yeah, we can we can talk about that or or something else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we talked we we we got a good whirlwind tour of what uh Microsoft's doing. Obviously, Sace was taking a victory lap on the OpenAI deal. Uh and we talked to the Codeex team over at OpenAI.

We also uh talked to some GitHub folks. And I think I think the general uh shape of software development in 2025 is becoming clear. there that you have asynchronous agents that you can fire off. You're doing code review. You also have a tab completion model, an IDE that's getting smarter every month.

But uh I'd really love to hear how you see linear uh evolving in that context and how and what I mean you can think about linear as delegating different tasks. How do you delegate when you have uh super long running agents? We were talking to the codeex team. What do you say something ran for 60 hours?

It's like that's something you need linear to manage at this point. I mean, so but t take me through how you're seeing folks uh change their use of linear and what you're doing with the product. Yeah.

Um what one of the things I've been thinking about is that like a lot of like linear was was founded before all this like AI things have started happening more and as well as like I think like most companies out there today have like even like large companies they started before this this was happening.

So I think we're all in this journey of kind of like an evolution of like how do we do these things? So like what are the workflows, what needs to change and like what doesn't change. I've been like thinking about like the whole kind of um writing example.

So like we used to write on paper like we write documents on paper then we moved to typewriters then we moved to like online like uh text processing on our computers and then we went to like online writing. The writing is still it's like you have a piece of paper on the screen.

you're still doing the writing activity and and then now like okay like the AI can also do some of the writing activities but it's kind of like a lot of the tooling changed around that activity or that concept or that need but the activity itself didn't change.

So like we still have like documents and papers as an idea because it's useful.

So I see the like kind of like the chains on the software industry similar that like the AI doesn't mean that we we will just throw everything out of the window like there's no longer like any of these IDs or workflows or something but it's more like we have to kind of like go piece by piece like does this still make sense okay does make sense let's do that and then like does this have to change okay it does has to change or it would be better if it changes so so I think like our thinking um with that has been that like we want to help companies move to that direction as well.

So we do have the for example the agents um platform where also GitHub copilot now um integrated with so you can delegate tasks directly to the GitHub copilot and it can work on the background you can you can then like come back to see like what the results are and and review the code um agents yeah is there any world where the ability to delegate to agents enables more non-technical people it gives more non-technical people a reason to have a seat on linear.

Yeah, I think like it it's something like we're definitely like seeing today and I think like it's one of the the values we can give to value we can give to organization.

So yeah, like IDEIDes and technical tools are are used by engineers but like what we even see in our company now is like designers are making fixes with the agents.

um when they see something like oh this is like a little bit off I can like properly instruct the agents like find this in the codebase do a do like a version of this and you can also like in our case you can preview the result through linear so you can actually see like oh this is how it is and and test it um so I think it's like it gives like a nice loop for a non-technical person to sometimes just like fix things when they see something and it you don't always have to like assign I need to engineer.

How do you think about like project management software broadly evolving? Like do you expect to are you guys experimenting with any new paradigms? Like agents are great in that right now we even call them like humanlike names oftent times, right?

Everyone has their uh you know uh like uh sometimes it's a girl name, sometimes it's a guy name. Uh and like the way that we're using them today is very much like a teammate.

that might suggest that we're not going to see a bunch of new UI paradigms, but are you and the team kind of like what doesn't get shipped that you guys are kind of playing with uh you know behind the scenes? Yeah, I think like I I like to think about there's like two areas. One is the organizational workflow.

So like that goes goes everything from like what linear really offers is like coordination and priorization and communication and visibility to the organization like this is the this is the direction we're going and this is how it's going and these are the people working on those things and so I think like with AI we can we we are looking for those like problems and like what can we actually fix there or like improve there with the AI and then I think the other area is the the individual engineering workflow like where does that change?

So I think like there is definitely like something we're thinking about that do the issues still make sense? Do pull requests still make sense as a concept when you are like more like working with the with AI to to develop something.

I do think like there is still need for reporting things like bugs and like even and or like capturing issues having discussions around it. So I don't think like everything is going to change that.

I think like a lot of times what really help companies with is like some kind of direction and some kind of um kind of like a guidance to their teams like here's here's like a system for you to operate in and these are the pieces and this is the goals and then you let them like do their work.

So I I at least like to say that it's it's not like we I don't when we think about the SAS future or like SAS products, it's it's more about the making them more proactive or selfdriving like we like to say like self-driving SAS is that we we're not yet at the stage of like um like with transportation like we still need cars because we don't have teleports.

So we need to now like we're at the stage of like let's make those cars self-driving and so I think like when it comes to software products I think we are also there that I don't think we are at the stage yet and maybe not for a long time that we no no longer need no software products but I think like they could be much more proactive and driving things on their own on the background without you [clears throat] interacting at all.

So the idea would be that bugs just fix themselves. So like when bugs get reported, someone like the AI will fix it and you don't even have to see it. Um I think there still needs to eventually I'm I'm excited for the future when teams can just go into linear and just watch a bunch of work happening.

There's, [laughter] you know, it's an agent, an agent finds a bug, another agent solves it, an agent has an idea for a feature or user gives an idea, the agent ships it. It's, you know, the fully autonomous future is wild.

Um, I was uh I I wrote a post, maybe it was couple weeks ago at this point or last week about the uninspired company of Silicon Valley and and how I mentioned at one point that uh companies I'm sure now like so many companies have copied linear.

I'm sure there's companies now that copy linear without even knowing like the origin of design language. They're just like, "Oh, this is just the way that design looks.

" So, I was wondering like your philosophy on like you guys get a lot of credit for kind of like creating an entire way, you know, feeling for software and design language and all these different, you know, UI elements.

Do you ever have a uh desire to like rein like like reinvent the next paradigm and and kind of ship something that would you know create create an entirely new you know version of the software that would completely reskin it or entirely skumorphic. It's all just like wooden blocks and grass simulation. Yeah.

Or or do you just continue to own it and be the godfather of modern whatsoever software as a service? random fonts everywhere, random colors everywhere.

I I think I I we definitely think about that like especially on the website side that like well what is the next thing we can do since like everyone is kind of like doing this thing we're doing.

So I think there's definitely that need but I think we in the end like we we try to be functional or pragmatic about the design that it still should serve the purpose. I believe the old like design quote of um the form follows function. So it's like you you're not like like with with productivity tools or other tools.

I don't think like the point is to to be an artist or something like you're not trying to like invent something crazy things just for the sake of it. I think it needs to be like to the purpose or the function of the tool.

And then like around that like there's always like you can like try to figure out what what needs to what could be better or like maybe you can go against some convention when you when you have that reason.

So I mean we're always looking for those opportunities and I think for us like part of the like the mission of the company is to accelerate and inspire builders.

So we we also do in a way like that we're accomplishing the mission of inspiring a lot of different companies on how to design or like focus on the craft or quality.

So that's that's kind of like personally what I also wanted to do that could we like shift this industry a little bit more into the like we can do nice things and it doesn't always have to be just like what metric goes up or down and like or or some some other reasons. Yeah. Yeah.

made the world a more a more beautiful place. I love it. It's uh it's a good time. Uh thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time on Friday. Next time you're passing through uh by the Ultra in person, we love to hang.

Ideally on a day when we're not dressed up like ghouls, like couple of characters can be a little bit more serious. Uh but thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us and thank you for supporting the show this entire year. It's been very helpful. one of the very first.

We've had a lot of fun and everyone in the chat is uh celebrating Linear. Uh Connor says he just onboarded his business onto Linear today, like 20 minutes ago. Let's hear it for that. John actually says Linear is TVPN royalty. That's right. So awesome to see Ki in the Ultra Dome. Uh thank you for coming by.

We will talk to you soon. Have a great time. We'll talk soon. Have a great weekend. Goodbye. Cheers. Um, there's one scoop I want to talk about.

Katie Roof uh is confirming a scoop from TechMe um that Axios is dropping Human Interest, a 401k platform for small and medium businesses that aims to cut down on administrative work. Raised $und00 million at a $3 billion post money valuation. This is a leak, but I know the CEO of Human Interest. He's a good buddy.

And so I just want to say congrats to Human Interest because uh it's very cool. And uh Elon has a new pod up on Allin and on Roen and Rogan. He's on a press tour. He's on a press tour. We got to get him. Maybe this is the time to strike. Maybe we can get him on TVPN next week. The team seems to like the idea.

We'll work on it. Uh thank you guys for hanging out with us on uh on such a crazy day. Uh it's going to be hard to We were while we were putting this on, we were talking about how do we one up this next year? Yeah. What could possibly be? Let us know in the chat.

Uh, as iconic as these two types, maybe Elon and Joe Rogan. That would be good. I think I think throwing in a Rogan is a good one. You as you as Rogan, even though you're 14 in maybe 14 inches taller than Rogan. Yeah. Yeah. I I could see I could see a Rogan. We could do Rogan and Alex Freriedman. That could work.

Maybe we could do a Alex would be the experts. Yeah, the experts is good. like as other podcasters kind of hits. We could do a David Senra. We could both be David Cedra. [laughter] How about that? David Senra by David Senra. Yes, we could both be David Senra. An executive produced by that'd be a lot of fun.

Uh I think your mustache is actually falling off your face. I feel this weird thing where it feels like I'm sweating underneath everything. Yeah. But I but it's I I've had this like scratch up here by this like fake vein and uh I'm not able to itch it. And so I'm looking forward to taking this off. I won't be.

This is so trippy. A lot of people are asking, are you gonna am I going to go home and trickor treat with the kids like this? And no, I do not want to traumatize my young children. Yeah, I will be dressing up as something else. But thank you for uh tuning in with us today.

Have a wonderful Thank you to the team that helped us pull this off. This was a very special, funny thing. I never thought we'd be doing this, but that's the nature of this show. And so thank you for everyone that supports us. Leave us five stars on Apple. Have a wonderful evening and weekend. Be safe.

We will see you back here on Monday. We'll talk to you soon. Can't wait. Goodbye. Cheers.