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Lenny's Podcast / episode intelligence

Linear’s secret to building beloved B2B products | Nan Yu (Head of Product)

30 Jan 2025 32 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Nan YuLenny Rachitsky

Claim mix

belief 15evaluation 10recommendation 3uncertainty 3commitment 1

Evidence policy

Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

32 published records

01 / recommendation

Recommends The Design of Everyday Things.

“I think the one book that I recommend the most is The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. I read it originally in college for an HCI class I was taking, and I think of everything I've ever read, it's the thing that caused me to see the world from the perspective of everything you interact with as a product. Every pencil that you use, every door that you open is a product that somebody designed.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

03 / commitment

There's this category of, "We know we will not build things for middle managers that want reporting and custom stuff just to track what's happening," versus something an IC wants to be more productive and successful, Linear.

“There's this category of, "We know we will not build things for middle managers that want reporting and custom stuff just to track what's happening," versus something an IC wants to be more productive and successful, Linear.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

05 / belief

I can tell you about the exact thing that I'm doing this quarter, and then you'll have some level of intelligence about what people are actually trying to solve because I think often we just get stuck in these very high level general types of questions like, "What's the company goals sand all that kind of stuff, and it's like, no, you can get really specific.

“I can tell you about the exact thing that I'm doing this quarter, and then you'll have some level of intelligence about what people are actually trying to solve because I think often we just get stuck in these very high level general types of questions like, "What's the company goals sand all that kind of stuff, and it's like, no, you can get really specific.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

06 / belief

His tweet is, "I increasingly believe that 'good, cheap, fast -- choose two' maxim is devious misinformation spread by the slow. In my experience, slow and expensive usually go together.

“His tweet is, "I increasingly believe that 'good, cheap, fast -- choose two' maxim is devious misinformation spread by the slow. In my experience, slow and expensive usually go together.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

07 / uncertainty

I don't know if you could share these sort of things that's just sitting in the backlog of just like, "We're not quite ready to tackle this yet, but here's something we're inkling on.

“I don't know if you could share these sort of things that's just sitting in the backlog of just like, "We're not quite ready to tackle this yet, but here's something we're inkling on.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

12 / belief

You mentioned like being opinionated, and I think sometimes when people talk about being opinionated, it can feel like they're almost saying like, "Hey, this is arbitrary," like your opinion and my opinion, they're just too opinions, man.

“You mentioned like being opinionated, and I think sometimes when people talk about being opinionated, it can feel like they're almost saying like, "Hey, this is arbitrary," like your opinion and my opinion, they're just too opinions, man.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

13 / belief

In the case of looking at the IC versus the middle manager, in this case, it's like, "Let's talk to the person actually asking for this thing," not, "There's like 100 people generally asking for this thing and let's build what we think is a general solution.

“In the case of looking at the IC versus the middle manager, in this case, it's like, "Let's talk to the person actually asking for this thing," not, "There's like 100 people generally asking for this thing and let's build what we think is a general solution.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

14 / belief

I think what's also useful here is you all keep your team very small intentionally and being constrained keeps you from taking on these things too early because you don't have the engineers to build their designers.

“I think what's also useful here is you all keep your team very small intentionally and being constrained keeps you from taking on these things too early because you don't have the engineers to build their designers.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

17 / evaluation

You're calculating cost of acquisition and all that stuff probably comes equipped with a tool because those are the right practices to do when you're doing this sort of marketing exercise. And whether you knew about it before or you learned it from the tool, like as a buyer for this kind of product, what I'm doing is I'm saying like, "Hey, I'm going to bring in this baseline level of marketing competency into my organization, that this is the worst we can do is whatever the tool defaults are.

“You're calculating cost of acquisition and all that stuff probably comes equipped with a tool because those are the right practices to do when you're doing this sort of marketing exercise. And whether you knew about it before or you learned it from the tool, like as a buyer for this kind of product, what I'm doing is I'm saying like, "Hey, I'm going to bring in this baseline level of marketing competency into my organization, that this is the worst we can do is whatever the tool defaults are.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

18 / belief

You can ask them," and I think that being able to tie it all the way back to reality in that way is a big part of how we really think about and discuss these things.

“You can ask them," and I think that being able to tie it all the way back to reality in that way is a big part of how we really think about and discuss these things.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

20 / belief

I actually hadn't really put that part together, but I think some of the reason we've done it this way is because we don't have the bandwidth to action everything.

“I actually hadn't really put that part together, but I think some of the reason we've done it this way is because we don't have the bandwidth to action everything.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

21 / belief

I think the job that I do that we see it as is you're taking the building side of the organization and the selling side of the organization and bringing it together.

“I think the job that I do that we see it as is you're taking the building side of the organization and the selling side of the organization and bringing it together.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

23 / evaluation

I think a trap that a lot of times PMs will fall into is they'll make something, and they'll make some choices in it because maybe it's beautiful or it's elegant, but they don't go the step of like, "Is reality also beautiful and elegant?

“I think a trap that a lot of times PMs will fall into is they'll make something, and they'll make some choices in it because maybe it's beautiful or it's elegant, but they don't go the step of like, "Is reality also beautiful and elegant?”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

24 / evaluation

Capacity planning is a thing that's been sitting in our backlog, and it's something that we see managers struggle with all the time, which is like I have a limited amount of personnel and resources, and I need to deploy them in such a way where we can theoretically accomplish our roadmap, but also we don't get blocked by some bottleneck that we don't end up blocking all of the projects because this one engineer is stuck on some info thing, and that's a thing people struggle with all the time.

“Capacity planning is a thing that's been sitting in our backlog, and it's something that we see managers struggle with all the time, which is like I have a limited amount of personnel and resources, and I need to deploy them in such a way where we can theoretically accomplish our roadmap, but also we don't get blocked by some bottleneck that we don't end up blocking all of the projects because this one engineer is stuck on some info thing, and that's a thing people struggle with all the time.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

25 / evaluation

I'm just making modifications in place. So, we made this very specific choice of on a brand new issue, we will interrupt you, and then on an existing draft that you're messing around with, we're just going to auto save everything and someone doing a analysis.

“I'm just making modifications in place. So, we made this very specific choice of on a brand new issue, we will interrupt you, and then on an existing draft that you're messing around with, we're just going to auto save everything and someone doing a analysis.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

26 / evaluation

There's a lot of project management tools, and I think the more competitive your industry is, the more the low-hanging goal-oriented stuff is already picked because every PM from every one of these companies has been asking like, "Well, what's your goal?

“There's a lot of project management tools, and I think the more competitive your industry is, the more the low-hanging goal-oriented stuff is already picked because every PM from every one of these companies has been asking like, "Well, what's your goal?”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

27 / evaluation

What I love about Linear, I feel like it's an inspirational business because many people want to, "I'm going to build just a much better version of something," and often that doesn't actually work out.

“What I love about Linear, I feel like it's an inspirational business because many people want to, "I'm going to build just a much better version of something," and often that doesn't actually work out.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

28 / evaluation

It's doing deep surgery. They have to redo all of their internal processes and the way they manage inventory and all this kind of stuff, but they're willing to do it because they know that this is a battle-tested way of making sure that you're actually doing good management of resources.

“It's doing deep surgery. They have to redo all of their internal processes and the way they manage inventory and all this kind of stuff, but they're willing to do it because they know that this is a battle-tested way of making sure that you're actually doing good management of resources.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

29 / evaluation

" I was like, "Why is this labeled Bible Study Kit?" And it was literally just the pen in four different colors, and it was because the thing doesn't bleed through pages.

“" I was like, "Why is this labeled Bible Study Kit?" And it was literally just the pen in four different colors, and it was because the thing doesn't bleed through pages.”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

30 / evaluation

" This is the question that we're going to get. So, we hear it quite a lot, and it's very sensible for them to ask it because they see history being littered with the corpses of startups trying to compete in this space and not making it, and I think when we examine this problem, we look at, "Well, what kind of feature requests can we debate and what kind of feature requests do we absolutely have to say no to?

“" This is the question that we're going to get. So, we hear it quite a lot, and it's very sensible for them to ask it because they see history being littered with the corpses of startups trying to compete in this space and not making it, and I think when we examine this problem, we look at, "Well, what kind of feature requests can we debate and what kind of feature requests do we absolutely have to say no to?”
Speaker
Nan Yu
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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