Karri Saarinen: How We Win

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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First of Kind @firstofkind

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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