Karri Saarinen: prediction

Transcript context

…My belief is that, like any domain or industry, the more it matters, the more the design matters. What happens is whenever there's a new paradigm, I don't know, like the mobile or the web or something the first iterations of those products existing there, they don't have to be super well designed necessarily because they are the first. Then, as you build the 100,000 different email clients, any email client now has to be pretty good to be even considered an email client. It's like the bar is so high. I think today it's almost a very basic thing now. Pretty much from the very beginning, you need pretty high level design for people to even pay attention or consider you seriously. Today my guest is Karri Saarinen. Karri was the founding designer at Coinbase, principal designer at Airbnb, co-founder of two previous startups, and most recently is the co-founder and CEO of Linear, which I'm fairly confident is the fastest growing and most beloved issue tracking tool in the world and something that a growing number of product teams are using to build their own product. Karri and his team are building their company and their product in a really unique way with a huge focus on craft and quality, no AB tests, no metrics-based goals, instead a focus on taste and opinions. Also, no durable cross-functional teams, instead teams assemble around a project and then disperse once it's done. Also, they have just one product manager as the head of product and that's it. In our conversation, Karri shares how he built a culture around quality and craft, how he makes trade-offs, and how he operationalizes quality and thoughtfulness where design can be a differentiator in competing against incumbents. We talk about something called the linear method of building product, which is big on building opinionated software, working in consistent cycles amongst other principles. We also get into Linear's unique hiring approach, which involves a paid work trial where candidates work alongside the team for a number of days instead of just having an interview, also a glimpse into how Linear got their first 10 customers, found product market fit, and scaled their growth engine. There is so much gold in this episode. I'm very excited for you to hear it. With that, I bring you Karri Saarinen after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Mercury who I also happen to use for my business checking account. I've tried a lot of business banks and there's nothing even close to the experience you get with Mercury. I moved cash over from another bank and it literally took less than half an hour to set up the account and wire money over at no cost. They make you want to use the site more often, which I've never felt with another banking site. Mercury is banking engineered for the startup journey, a modern solution to help your company become the best version of itself. Mercury isn't just a place to hold and send money. It's software built to help you scale with safety and stability whether you're a team of two or team of 1,000. Mercury also goes beyond banking to provide you with access to the foremost investors, operators, and tools. Visit Mercury.com to join over 100,000 startups on Mercury, the powerful and intuitive way for ambitious companies to bank. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking service is provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust, members of FDIC. This episode is brought to you by Composer, the AI powered trading platform now with retirement accounts. Algorithmic trading has historically been reserved for the hedge fund elite.…

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