Karri Saarinen, Co-Founder & CEO

Karri Saarinen

Co-Founder & CEO

San Diego, CA

About

Originally from Finland, I live in California and work on Linear, building a place for people and agents to make better products and become better at making them.

Currently

Co-Founder & CEO at Linear

Available for

Writing

Notes on building

Every project produces product and understanding / Design is a search for the problem and the solution / Taste grows through making and paying attention / Quality is in the company DNA or not / Quality earns trust, attention, and loyalty / A good product depends on what we leave out / Tools should serve the people doing the work / Good tools give us our attention back / Delegating work doesn’t transfer responsibility / What we learn should improve the team’s understanding / A company is something you craft, too / Profitability gives freedom to build on your own terms / Brand is who you are and what you stand for / Speed without direction is motion, not progress

Tools Are Getting Better. Are We?

Product work leaves behind learning as well as shipping; better tools alone don’t compound understanding.

Sharing Linear’s growth with the people building it

A tender offer for teammate liquidity after cashflow positivity, instead of raising more primary capital.

Some Notes on AI

A grounded take on what AI changes in practice once the honeymoon period starts to fade.

Output isn’t design

Generating interfaces faster misses the hard part: finding a good fit between form and context.

Every feature should earn its place

Building got cheaper, but keeping features still costs clarity, so each one has to justify staying.

Against “Against Taste”

Judgment under real constraints still matters, and tools alone can’t replace cultivated taste.

The disappearing middle of software work

As agents handle more implementation, more of the work shifts to shaping what should be built.

Design is more than code

Collapsing design into code is reductive; the open question is how designer roles should evolve.

Part 2: Design is a search for the opinions

Tools and systems encode choices, and strong opinions help people move on to the real work.

Design is a search

Exploring a messy problem space before early constraints close off better directions.

Designing remote work at Linear

Remote-first treated as a design choice: trust, autonomy, and deliberate time together.

Self-driving SaaS: When software runs itself

Beyond helper chatbots, toward software that carries out the work instead of only nudging people.

Building our way: Announcing our Series C

An $82M raise framed as more fuel for the same path: building with quality and purpose.

Why is quality so rare?

Even with more skill and speed than ever, craft still fades unless people choose to pursue it.

Design for the AI age

Familiar UI “roads” give way to open-ended AI flows that need a different kind of design.

The profitable startup

Profitability as controlling your own destiny and pace, not a lack of ambition.

Building at the early stage

On prioritizing, setting goals, and keeping meaningful weekly momentum once you have users.

Startups, Write Changelogs

A simple practice for showing progress, aligning the team, and celebrating real user value.

Starting Linear

Leaving Airbnb to build a more enjoyable, efficient way for teams to manage software work.

Crafting the Airbnb Cereal Typeface

How Airbnb and Dalton Maag developed a typeface meant to work across product UI and brand.

Creating the Airbnb Design System

Moving past one-off UI toward a shared visual language that reduces design and engineering debt.

Designing Coinbase - Clarity and Trust for Bitcoin

Early Coinbase design work aimed at making bitcoin feel clear, secure, and usable for more people.

Jiro’s Dream

Reflections on craft and taste from Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and only working with people who care.

Your Product Needs a Soul

Crowded markets fill with lifeless products; character and care are what make something stick.

Speaking

Why craft and focus still win

Discussing why craft and focus still matter when building products, from experience as co-founder and CEO of Linear.

Config 2025: Crafting quality that endures

Figma Config 2025 talk on crafting quality that endures.

Scaling design with systems

Talk on scaling design with systems from Airbnb DLS work.

Why Is Design Moving Over to the C-suite?

Slush Conference panel on design leadership.

Selected work

Linear

I created Linear as a more enjoyable and efficient way to manage software development, with a mission to streamline how teams build great software.

Airbnb Design Language System

I designed and maintained Airbnb’s cross-platform design language system, creating reusable components for a more beautiful, accessible, unified, and efficient product experience.

Airbnb.com

I redesigned the Airbnb homepage around a simpler visual direction, clearer search, timely promotions, improved readability and performance, and a closer relationship between mobile web and native apps.