Karri Saarinen is the co-founder and CEO of Linear, the project management tool built for high-performance software teams. Since its founding in 2019, Linear has achieved a valuation of $400 million and now counts companies like OpenAI, Ramp and Vercel as customers. Before founding Linear, Karri led design at Airbnb and Coinbase, and previously co-founded Kippt, a bookmarking tool acquired by Coinbase.
In today’s episode, we discuss:
- Karri’s childhood love for computers that shaped his career
- The lessons he learned from a failed first startup
- Linear’s founding principles
- The early validation strategies used to shape the product
- Why Karri believes in small teams
- And much more…
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Where to find Karri:
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