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Karri Saarinen
Professional Profile
Karri Saarinen is the co-founder, CEO, and designer of Linear.app, a software company that develops an issue tracking tool for managing software development.12 Here are some key details about Karri Saarinen:
Professional Background
Previous Roles::
- Principal Designer and design systems lead at Airbnb1
- Founding designer at Coinbase1
- Co-founder of Y Combinator-backed startup Kippt12
Education::
- Attended University of Vaasa, studying Management and Organizations at the School of Economics2
- Participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2012 batch with Kippt, the first Finnish company funded by Y Combinator2
Achievements and Recognition
- Received the Ruby Hero award in March 20132
- Awarded the Material Design Award by Google in October 2016 for the Airbnb mobile apps2
Linear.app
Karri co-founded Linear.app, which has quickly become one of the fastest-growing and most beloved issue-tracking tools in the world.3 Some notable achievements of Linear under Karri's leadership include:
- A team of 50 employees working 100% remotely across 16 countries5
- Used by tens of thousands of companies, including 66% of Forbes top 50 AI companies5
- Raised $52 million in total funding while remaining profitable with a negative lifetime burn rate5
- Achieved impressive growth with minimal marketing spend (0.5% of revenue) and a small sales team5
Personal
Karri is known for his focus on design, product development, and building with taste and craft.34 His approach to leadership and product development at Linear has garnered significant attention in the tech industry.
Highlights
Signed another $10B+ decacorn startup as a Linear customer.
After the pilot the participants said: “The difference in user experience and speed cannot be overstated. Linear is a step-change in productivity and ease-of-use”
And why does this matter: “We found a 46.52% increase in people that use a given tool once a day or multiple times per day.
High frequency usage (at least once a day) indicates that it's a better source of truth for the current status of work, creating a flywheel effect that adds compounding value for tracking projects and work.
This is an important signal since it means that engineers are likely finding greater value in the tool, thus looking to read/update their work in the tool more frequently.”
We’ve built Linear very founder focused way and been trying to avoid the normal scale trappings. No VPs, not much management overall, small teams, founders work directly with ICs and teams, choosing our own path instead of playbooks.But it’s something you need to keep reminding yourself constantly and it can be kind of a lonely path. VCs and everyone out there seems to push you the VP/C-hires and their playbooks and best practices.
