Linear CEO Karri Saarinen on quality, never building MVPs, and UI in the agentic age
soleio · x · 2026-11-09
The First of Kind podcast sits down with Linear founder/CEO Karri Saarinen, who started the company because "it just feels so bad that people have to use bad tools," arguing that delivering high quality is reward enough. Topics include: quality is directional, designing in code, owning the problem, going beyond the issue tracker, the bull case for design, whether we still need UI, never building the MVP, clarity of scope, and whether his uncompromising design playbook survives the agentic age.
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