Karri Saarinen: How We Win
Show notes
Can a designer/founder win the VC game by ignoring all its rules?
Karri Saarinen is the co-founder and CEO of Linear, the product development system for teams and agents. A Finnish designer, he was previously the principal designer at Airbnb and the founding designer at Coinbase.
In this conversation with Soleio at his historic barn in Silicon Valley, Karri explains why Linear set out to win by being better instead of faster, why quality is directional and never static, why he still designs in Figma instead of code, and why the interface still matters as a shared source of truth in a world brimming with agents.
Karri lives the example that a design founder can choose the races worth running and win by their own rules.
00:00 Winning by Your Own Rules
03:12 Quality Is Directional
06:24 Do You Design in Code?
15:45 Owning the Problem
22:45 Beyond the Issue Tracker
26:36 The Bull Case for Design
28:45 Do We Still Need UI?
33:02 The Car Designer of Software
37:37 School Feels Fake
40:59 Never Build the MVP
43:56 Clarity of Scope
45:37 Linear Recalibrates the Palate
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S3:E03 Karri Saarinen: How We Win
featuring Karri Saarinen https://x.com/karrisaarinen
hosted by Soleio https://x.com/soleio @soleio
coproduced with Room 3 https://room3nyc.com @room3nyc
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Chapters (12)