From Airbnb to Linear: How Karri Saarinen Redefined Product Design

21:15Karri Saarinen:I think it's one variable to think, like, how, yeah, like, is the partner, like, earlier in their career and they have less of those companies? Or are they, like, are they the superstar of the business or on the Midas list or something? And, like, yeah, maybe those people, so I think it's, like, kind of, like, depends on the person, like, how it comes out. So I value both in a way, but it's just, like, matters, like, it just, like, depends on the situation. So for Axiom and Sequoia, I think I did go with them and with more like less experienced partner, but I could kind of like take that bet that like, I do think like she will work harder on this and then like make sure like we are like well represented there like Sequoia because it's probably like one of her like most important companies.

22:07Karri Saarinen:so I think in that I took the path and I think it's been working well and I don't have any problems with that or I think it's been working well but so definitely something I think about there's also the other variable you can think about is like are you going with a pure investor or a previous

22:26Joubin:operator because there's

22:28Karri Saarinen:a similar kind of trade off on one hand And if you go with the previous operators, they might be actually helpful because they know how the business can be run. But then there's a downside. It's like maybe they have too much experience on running their business, not your business, and they can't distinguish the difference. And then with a pure investor who hasn't started something, hasn't run their company, they often, hopefully, the good ones know that like they don't know everything about everything and like they shouldn't like try to like kind of like um they know that they haven't run a company so they know their place kind of like that i'm an investor i can ask questions and like have like conversations but i also i don't know exactly what you guys should be doing or like i don't know like how you should exactly run the company yeah so they're like a little bit more like like not helpful in that way but like it's actually helpful that they are not trying to like yeah middle like metal in the business yeah totally So I think I've kind of chosen more on that side.

23:35Karri Saarinen:Like I haven't picked, I picked some like previous operators as like smaller investors, but not as that. Yeah. Yeah. Or like, yeah. Like Dick Costal is one of our investors and he has a firm, but like he's a previous operator, but he's not on the board. So like on the board, I have like more of the, like the kind of people who have been VCs and not the operator. That makes sense.

23:58Josh Coyne:Yeah. And if you want operators on the board, you can always appoint a independent. You could just bring a, I don't know, CEO that you think highly of.

24:06Karri Saarinen:Yeah.

24:07Joubin:Right? Yeah.

24:09Karri Saarinen:And I don't think like with this question, it's like there's necessarily right or wrong.

24:12Josh Coyne:No, no, I actually don't. There is no right or wrong.

24:15Karri Saarinen:Yeah. I think it's just like you should, yeah, like what is, it's just like what is your preference? Yeah. Like what do you think is going to be helpful for you or for the company? And then you make the choice.

24:24Josh Coyne:I also like, my experience is that it's very founder dependent, right? Meaning like, what do you need based on what your business needs, based on what this firm or person can provide? Right. And I think like at the end of the day, like, do you trust them?

24:43Karri Saarinen:Yeah. And there's that like funny scale of like VCs is like, it's like, like the good thing is if they're like neutral or like you can just trust them, but they do nothing. and then there's like a lot of like like if they actually try to do too many things it can be actually like negative because now like you're distracted or like it's like causing problems in the business so like in the end like yeah like the only things you need is like you can trust them they give you money and then like hopefully like they can be helpful in some ways but if not then they just stay away

25:17Josh Coyne:can I like zoom into you were saying oh we don't grow we don't hire that fast like can we go through a chronological sequencing of seed to a how much maybe like how much revenue did you do in that time how many people did you start and end with

25:40Karri Saarinen:maybe from c to a let's start there yeah also like roughly we've been doubling every year so we started with three people the year after like when we did that so at seed with those just three people So year after at Series A, we had like about five people. So we hired like one, I think, couple of engineers and then one support person. And at the time, like we had just launched. So like we had like a one year private beta where we invited people, like companies in, and then we launched it, meaning that now anyone can sign up. I think at the time of this Series A, we had a little under a million in revenue, like ARR.

26:24Karri Saarinen:But it was just after we had basically announced, like a launched company to everyone. So yeah, six people and like five people and about a million

26:36Joubin:in revenue. Wow, five people. That's not very many people.

26:42Karri Saarinen:Yeah, I think like so I'm a designer and then my two co-founders are engineers. so we were able to build a lot of the products, just three of us, pretty quickly. So we started in April full-time, and then by, I don't know, June or something, we had a version working that people could use, and we got some friends using it. And I think it's just like we were a quite efficient team at the time, and then we just added a few people to support that. And then since then, we've been roughly just doubling every year. So going from five to 10 and then 10 to 20.

27:25Joubin:And then today we're at 120. Okay. So zero to 1 million, seed to A, three to five people. Next year, you doubled again, five to 10 people. That's it? Yeah. One to? I don't remember exactly.

27:47Karri Saarinen:I would think it's probably was like 5 million or something. 1 to 5.

27:52Joubin:Yeah. Okay. And still hadn't raised the B. Yeah. 1 to 5 million, 10 people, like 500K per employee. Okay. Then next year. Yeah.

28:09Karri Saarinen:Next year, I think we go from the 10 to 20 people. Employees. Okay. And then I think by the P, it was probably, I don't know if it was over 10 million or under, probably like between 10 or 15 million.

28:26Josh Coyne:Okay. So five to somewhere between 10 and 15.

28:30Joubin:And you double the employee count again to 20? Yeah. Okay.

28:38Joubin:Then, and then another double, it just continues. Yeah. Like, we don't have to be. It just kind of continues in that pattern.

28:46Josh Coyne:How do I ask this? You have a giant roadmap. Okay. Like, you have a whiteboard full of, like, P0s, P1s, and P2s. As you add customers, the whiteboard gets more full. Okay.

29:01Joubin:Maybe it's in a linear. Okay, great. And don't you want to just hire engineers to accelerate some of those work streams

29:13Josh Coyne:to chew through the roadmap faster?

29:16Karri Saarinen:I would say like, yes, but like, I think in reality, it doesn't work that way. So the reason for this, like how we hire this way is that, well, one is like in the beginning, we always wanted like linear to be the best in class tool. And for me, it also means that it needs to be like a quality tool. So you could be like very functional tool, but if it's really buggy and it doesn't work that well, it's kind of confusing. I don't think it's still, I don't think it's that great. Like people will say like, yeah, this is, it works, but it's kind of like confusing or, or buggy or something. So it's not clearly, it's not like a best in class.

29:49Karri Saarinen:So we had this like a quality thing. And then we kind of like thought about like, how do you like ensure that? And I think looking back into my like previous jobs, I always felt that like the best work we ever did was with a small team. and it it was also like we created the work fastest and we also the output was better and i think like whenever i saw like a project that got massive there like a lot of engineers a lot of stakeholders a lot of everyone it gets like the whole idea gets kind of like muddly like everyone has their opinions like no one knows what's going on there's a lot of like communication like needing to happen so it's like the whole thing gets so like complicated like people started like even like losing focus on like what is what are we even building and so we we kind of like thought like in order to build well you actually have to build with less people and have like right kind of people and have them like focused on the right things but like yeah you're right though like if you have less people you your bandwidth is more uh limited but we also think it's not a it's not like a bug it's more like a feature because now you like have to focus yourself and the company more like what is the actual important things we have to do that the thing like what i think it doesn't scale like uh well is that like the it as a founder or leader or something like if you're running the company like you you have some like bandwidth like limitations you cannot be monitoring every project like and like the more projects you have like the more like limited you are in bandwidth so i always feel like we don't have that much like good decision making in a company where we can make sure that that what we are building is actually really good if we are trying to build too many things at once like we need to have the like company focus on like only a few things and then make let's make sure that they they work well or like they are the right things the second problem is like hiring fast or a lot is that in the short term it never makes things faster so like if you need to move fast this year actually like the fastest way is not to hire almost anyone because like you just put the people you have working on the things and like not not make theirs like not interviewing yeah and then like when new people come in like people have to onboard them and they have to like they don't know exactly all the things and like so like it's it's like maybe hiring more people it's like it helps the next year but it doesn't help this year so um so that's like often like we do think it that way like on a sales or some of these other functions like do we like what do we think about the next year do we need to start preparing for that but because even sales people need like ramp up times and like everyone needs like some kind of ramp up time so i just don't believe in that like that the way to go faster is actually hiring more people that the way to go faster is like having like a better focus or like a better clarity of like what what do you do and that makes that like like if you have don't have that focus or clarity then like i don't think you can get the speed you want or like you get a lot of like mistakes or a lot of things that maybe are not that important like you are launching things that like you didn't need to launch because you just put those people working on something because they have to work on something so i i do see this a little bit now with the with the ai is like if ai makes things um building things faster it doesn't mean like you should be like shipping more stuff necessarily like if you just ship if you have a product and you ship all kinds of features to it there's a cost to it because now it's like it gets more and more bloated and those features might not be like working together well or like they're not like considered enough or something so like the speed is not always the most important thing or at least in my mind like i think to me it's more important like what is the like what is the quality experience like like is there is that the user who is using or the customer is using the product like is there a good clarity of like what the product does and like how it works and how the different parts of it like work together not just like it has the most features so like with linear we always like never competed with that like we have the most features we always competed like we have the right features and hopefully like built in the right way and like in a streamlined way and in some ways it's like it means that things are simpler it doesn't have all the features but it then the benefit of that is like people don't get confused or they don't spend extra time setting things up or like figuring these things out like when things are simple they

34:31Josh Coyne:can just like focus on the work and not on the tool your product is a real fan favorite inside of Roadrunner. You know that I'm in an engineering-driven company when our customer pipeline is in Linear. I'm sure you see that all the time. Maybe you don't. Sometimes, yeah. Guys, let's see how long we can make this last, but for now everything's inside of Linear.

35:00Joubin:They'll love it.

35:01Karri Saarinen:Yeah, well, that's great to hear. I think in some ways we do want to bring more of the customer side. We have the customer feature now and there's a customer request feature. So we think there's actually a lot of times in companies the product and the customer teams are so isolated from each other and we think that both sides could benefit if we have a good connection between those. The product team can know that what are the customers saying, what are problems, what are blockers and deals like what are the customers actually saying because it's usually sometimes like yeah you can hear it from the salesperson like they wanted this but the salesperson can sometimes kind of like translate the ask too much like you don't know what did they actually say so um we think like we have also like a salesforce integration now to to help with this like those those notes can be like captured from salesforce and then like you can pull them into linear and then you can And anyone who is in linear can look at like, what is this particular customer or this particular segment saying?

36:07Karri Saarinen:So we think it's like useful, the product element, but then also I think it's useful for the sales or customer teams to know that like the product team is like listening and like sometimes they fix things and they can say like, okay, now it's like we did this feature and like you can tell the customer it's like fixed. So we do think like the connection between the customers and the product is actually important and should exist in the platform.

36:32Josh Coyne:We don't know, but I'm curious how you think it's going to play out. So, okay, let's just say we have a triangle of roles. One is the engineer.

36:41Joubin:The second is the product manager. The third is the designer. Okay. Pre-AI, these are all like pretty clear swim lanes, right?

36:53Josh Coyne:Product manager interfaces between engineering and sales, translates the set of features to engineering, helps them prioritize. then design uh puts a series of designs in figma for the engineer to work off of then the engineer

37:08Joubin:goes and builds it okay roughly roughly today uh designer is in figma make or cursor or just straight into Claude.

37:23Josh Coyne:Uh, engineer is using these tools to be pretty darn good. They have pretty good design sense. Maybe you disagree. Uh, and then product manager, uh, is, has access to all

37:40Joubin:the same tools. I have my own opinions, but like, I'm curious, do they collapse? Uh, the, the things

37:51Karri Saarinen:stay the same i don't think that things will stay the same and like even even the same like even before ai like at linear we did already start kind of like collapsing this a little bit like we i felt that the last decade and in like tech companies it seemed like we we were building this like a software factory where it's like everyone has like a very distinct role and it's like the bm is the decision maker the designer draws the pixels and the engineer kind of implements it that it's like this like a pipeline of like things but then we we kind of like always felt that like it's it's not like optimal because the if we want the like quality of the experience like it's really hard to spec that like saying like hey build it well but like what does it mean like you can't define it so i think we have to like give it to that builders or the designers like hey this is now your job to do this well and you have to make the right decisions to do it and you push the decision making down to that put the decision making together with the execution of it and because in the past I felt that as a designer with the engineer we're building something then we realize this is a dumb idea this doesn't work and then now I'm like well it's kind of approved already by these people and now I have to walk it back up the chain to change this so we wanted to make sure that the people building it has more like that ability to make those calls.

39:17Karri Saarinen:And this was before AI. And then I think this AI will kind of accelerate this more because I do think the roles are kind of collapsing or at least changing. But I think everyone has more like a shared surface now. Everyone could touch the code, for example. I don't know if everyone really needs to or should all the time. I think there's still a need for different kinds of thinking so I don't like the idea of for example designers going directly to code it depends a little bit on a project and type of app you're building but I always think designers should still I often start with a blank canvas of like, well, we need to build something or we need to change design in some ways i'll just screenshot the app and then i kind of like put it there then i block everything out and then i start like rebuilding the interface and while doing that i'm starting to like kind of like get a feel like what is the structure of it and then i have another idea it's like okay the structure doesn't make sense i'll just duplicate and like start over with a new new thing and so what i'm doing is i'm kind of like exploring the different paths we could take or different options and it's very quick because like you don't have to worry about any kind of like downstream effects, like how this affects code or like, I don't start with the existing code base or like existing design that much.

40:47Karri Saarinen:Like I started as a screenshot sometimes to like, if I'm not changing the whole UI, I can just block out the, like I can just keep the other UI around, but then I just start working on the specific area. So I think like designers should still explore kind of more freely to like, just like see like, what are the options we could have? and then even if you have a pretty obvious kind of idea in your head, like yeah it should work this way I think it's still sometimes valuable to try all the bad ideas like what if it worked the opposite way or something, because sometimes you might realize that actually that if it works the opposite way, then you thought it's actually better, but you didn't realize that until you tried it so I think still the designer probably has this realm where you should use different design tools to explore what are the options we could have.

41:40Karri Saarinen:But then the designer could also use the coding tools to actually try some of the ideas live. Kind of like a prototype. You can build some of those designs or some ideas as a prototype. I don't think designers should be submitting that much code that gets merged. I think it's I still think engineering there's a lot of rigor and I think a lot of things if you're not an engineer you might just don't know that you shouldn't be doing those kind of things and then I think the product manager can kind of work a little bit similar to designer they can mock up designs and they can build prototypes as well but I think their focus stand should be probably more on the Depends what level they are, but more on the customer side or more on the overall direction of the company or the strategy or something.

42:40Karri Saarinen:They look at it from that point of view. And that's hopefully their interest, not how the code works, but what is the direction we are going here. And then I think the engineers mostly... I think we like that the engineers have product sense too, and they can kind of collaborate on like a contribute in that sense sent that way too but i think like the engineers mostly i think it moves into the code review that like you you use the agents to build the things but then you have to still review the code and make sure that like you're not submitting anything like bad into the code base so i don't i don't have like a my view is more like less drastic that these roles cease to exist.

43:26Karri Saarinen:I think there's some evolution and movement and these things get more muddled. And it also depends probably on the team. Like, yeah, if you're like a small startup or like something, like, yes, everyone probably can do everything. And that's usually how startups work. But as a large company, I think we have two PMs and they're not really like working on the projects per se they are more like managing the overall like roadmap or strategy it's like this is more important now we should do this because of these reasons or this is the direction we are going and these are all the projects we are doing and so they like maintain this more like a high level direction versus like being on the ground like fiddling with the buttons or something

44:09Josh Coyne:2 out of 120

44:11Karri Saarinen:and like the product team is about 60 people And the other half is like operations or go to market or sales or something.

44:22Josh Coyne:So sorry, 60 are operations, go to market or sales. Then 58 are engineering, then two are products or engineering and design to a product. And then what's the ratio of designers? How many designers are there? I think we have about eight or so.

44:37Karri Saarinen:And what do you think is a good ratio of engineer to designer? I don't think there's a specific ratio that applies universally. So I think it's more like, I think it's a function of what kind of product you're building. So if you're building a backend service, yeah, you probably don't need too many designers. If you're building an app like ours, which is very UI heavy and it's used frequently, and we also pride ourselves to do good design, I think you should have more designers. and so I think we often kind of like determine that like when should we hire more is that when things start breaking or like designers are basically doing too many projects at once or we feel like we're not getting enough kind of like design support so we usually kind of just keep hiring engineers and then at some point we realize like now we need to hire more designers because like we are not able to support all these projects we're doing so it's kind of like a little bit lagging but that's for us an easy way to see if we should hire more or less.

45:47Karri Saarinen:There's also you can sometimes hire more designers kind of front-loaded because I think design has this function where they can just try to imagine the future so even if the project is not going there's no project for something, they can still imagine how it could work or they can design it like this is how it could work. And sometimes those kind of designs or prototypes can be valuable for the company to understand, yeah, maybe we should actually do this because this makes sense. So it's kind of like making some idea a little bit more real so that the company can commit to it more. And I think now AI can help with that, that you can actually make this more like prototypes that also are real, like using the real code base.

46:36Karri Saarinen:So then I think there is potentially value having more of those designers who can kind of like, or anyone really that like, who can like kind of like test new ideas, even if there's no like commitment to like do those ideas yet.

46:50Joubin:Do all the designers report to you? Not anymore. So they used to, but now we have a, like a head of design who they report to. How many managers do you have? Hmm. I think not that many. So like, um, On the product team, I would say we have probably like four or something.

47:17Karri Saarinen:So we are a remote company and we have people in US and Europe. So we kind of run those teams a little bit separately because the time zones are hard. So we have a US product team and Europe product team. So they have their own managers and designers and engineers. and then we just decide does this project go to US or Europe so each of those teams have one or two managers so we kind of keep it quite low we don't have a lot of layers, we don't have a lot of managers so basically most functions there's just one layer, there's one manager there's no directors, sales is starting to get because it's now bigger it has more like you have a manager for the segment or the team and then you have a general head of sales so there's like two layers but most teams are just one layer

48:14Josh Coyne:so it's like IC layer you

48:18Karri Saarinen:or to a founder so it's like so both of my other founders, so one of them is Europe and one of them is here so the engineering manager in US reports to the founder in US and then the engineering manager in Europe reports to the founder in Europe. That makes sense.

48:40Josh Coyne:Okay, there's one thing that I'm fascinated about that I would love to understand

48:45Joubin:better, which is I read something around how you, like you talked about remote, fine, like I disagree, but I'm curious

48:57Josh Coyne:to here. And then there's like an hours, like you have an hour, like you have a 40 hour work week, something like that. I read it. So I want to first like understand, is it true? And then second, I just want to banter with you. I'm like, how the hell do you build a startup on those, with those constraints? Is that true? Yes. Yeah. Like I was reading like, oh yeah, you'll wake up and then, you know, eight to nine, hang out with the kids, nine, log on, like four log off maybe he'll do an hour from seven to eight is that true yeah that's that's in five days a week and then you have well there's there's some nice days like something happens but like usually it's like that and everybody's in the company is like that uh

49:44Karri Saarinen:i think it's uh well it's remote so i can't really tell for sure like i think it's i i do think like it's more or less like we it's kind of like part of the culture we don't expect you to be like working all hours of the day and like work all the time we do think like it's good to like take time off and like every day and like obviously like sometimes have vacations and stuff so we kind of think it's again like going back to that kind of like the quality thing is like we think we value the quality of the output higher than the like volume of the output so to me and this is kind of like probably like a personality thing or a personal thing where whenever i worked in designer i never could like i don't think i can can't really like grind the design like i can't like work on the design like 20 hours a day or something i don't think it's like even if i could even if i do that like i don't think the output is very good so the way i usually worked is like depends on like if i find the direction or the inspiration then i might work a lot until like i kind of exhaust it like i don't have any more ideas i have to like stop now so sometimes like i might like do nothing for that like if if i know like i have a deadline like end of the week i have to have this design ready i might if i don't have the inspiration on the first days like i i try some stuff but i'm like i don't think this is happening i need to like figure like what is wrong like why can't i figure it out i kind of like stop when things get hard like i i don't keep like hammering it more i start thinking like well what what why is this this way like why can't i figure it out like am i missing some information or something so my way is always like when something feels hard i try to like reflect like why is it hard and like is there something like i can make it easier like am i just like missing something that i would make this easier so i think that's like kind of like where this like balance thing kind of comes from that like if you're constantly like hammering stuff like you don't stop enough to like think like like what i'm even doing like why i'm doing these things like should someone else do this and like um or like should we do we even need to do these things so i think it's more like um i think it's just the way i always operated that like i don't i can't just like grind stuff like all the hours of the day.

52:12Karri Saarinen:I don't think the output is good. But then when I have the right vision, I can do the whole design in a day. I can design the whole product probably in a day if I have the right kind of inspiration or the vision for it. So I can work really fast and get the right output. It's more like I can't force it all the time. If I'm tired, I can't force it.

52:36Josh Coyne:Yeah, but that design might be unique in that way. like where your inputs don't equal your outputs but in most other jobs your inputs are very

52:46Karri Saarinen:tightly correlated to your outputs yeah probably like but there's jobs probably like where i don't know like yeah a lot of the like email jobs like you just need to email a lot of people or like respond to a lot of people yeah that's like very like correlate correlated but i think any creative work I think they're like and I think like most jobs are should be like creative in some ways I think sales should be creative it shouldn't be I think like when you stop being creative on something like you are actually you become like a robot or something I think like even if you run the we all have experience like working being sold to and it's like very scripted like it's it's like the the rap is just running to a script and they don't even know what they're saying and that's like kind of like we just put people running the script and we don't care like what the output like the outcome is like maybe it works out maybe it doesn't like if it doesn't work out we will let this person go and but it's like if they're like incentivized like just do more meetings regardless what the output is like i just think it's like dumb that like i I would rather have them do one meeting and then close it and get a good customer or do five meetings and close all of them rather than doing 20 meetings and then closing three of them or something.

54:11Karri Saarinen:I value the actual output versus the input more. And I think that's where the remote function also comes in. Remote companies always bought what is the actual output, not what the input is. We don't know what your input is actually or we can't track it that well. so i think like the whole 9996 or the office culture or some of this like culture kind of it's it starts to i think it has the right idea that like doing things is generally good but then i think there's the other question is like are the things you're doing actually the most valuable things like you can always come up with stuff to do but like it might not be the most valuable thing.

54:58Karri Saarinen:Like you can always go organize your closet or something, but like, that's probably not the worst, like the most important thing in your life. Like maybe you have something else to do. So I think that's like what is missing sometimes in this conversation is like, well, are you actually doing something that is meaningful or are you just doing things? Like, are you, like, are you kind of like, uh, what's the saying? Like you're kind of, um, confusing the motion with the momentum or emotion with meaning. You're just like motioning versus like actually.

55:28Josh Coyne:That might be true, but the way startups work is like, okay, yes, you have a sequence of priorities, but once you get through the like most burning priorities, there's still a long list of other things that maybe are not like the most important, but are still pretty important that have to be done. And, you know, like chewing through those, it's still like builds momentum into the company and in some ways like you chew through enough of those things across enough people like momentum is kind of the in my view like the oxygen of startups

56:07Joubin:um and that's an easy way to maybe ignite momentum yeah probably i think that

56:15Karri Saarinen:um i think like from the beginning we always kind of which i learned from my first startup is that focus is really important that even in the very beginning of Linear, we knew that there was a long list of things we need to do eventually, but we also just asked the question do we need to do it now? And so it's like, can we do it later? Is there some burning reason actually doing these things? We know that SOC 2 is something we'll need one day, but we didn't get it for the first two years or something. We lost some customers because we didn't have it, but sometimes the customers didn't even need it but they just asked for it but we knew that like yeah eventually we'll do it but it's just not like a priority right now so I'm still questioning it's like yeah you might always have a long list of things to do but like actually how important those are like what happens if you don't do them and I think it's and like maybe like what I'm trying to protect is some kind of like a like kind of like a focus or just like you have the right capacity to work on the right things, like the more important things.

57:24Karri Saarinen:And you constantly try to like look at the list of things you need to do and then try to like pick the more important things. And then like if things are not on fire or like something needs to be actually fixed, like a lot of the other things can be wait or like maybe never, you do them never.

57:40Josh Coyne:Yeah. But are you not nervous that there is a group of 10, 15 incredibly smart people that are working around the clock

57:51Joubin:building a linear from the ground up, calling your customers, like trying to take your lunch?

58:00Karri Saarinen:I mean, like in theory, yes, like it would scare me. I just don't know in practice how that would work. Like, what is that? Like, and it's kind of like, I don't know, like what would actually make it happen. Like, so I think they would have to be like really talented then to like kind of. Let's assume they're incredibly talented. Yeah. but I think again my feeling is that it's not the amount of stuff you do it's the amount of how well you put these things together is it the right solution for those customers so I think even if we go harder or faster on things I don't think we necessarily will make it more right or somehow better we just do more stuff but we don't do better on a caveat I would say now with the ai's like world and and this kind of um speed the things are changing and like how many unknowns there are i do think like there the speed is more important because it's like in the past we could rely on a lot of like the problems are kind of known like we kind of know how like companies operate and like how the product teams operate so we can know what the problems are in those teams and like it's it's like those problems are somewhat static like they don't like change all the time.

59:18Karri Saarinen:They change a little bit, but they don't change every week. But now with the AI workflows, those things are changing a lot, and no one really knows where it's going to settle, how is software going to be built in the future. So there I do see the need for speed, in a way that we need to get some of these AI tools quicker to the market because we don't even know what the problems are before we try them, before customers can try them and then find the problems and also find the opportunities. So it's kind of like, it's a different market now where we do need to move faster, but I think I'm still wanting to retain the space.

1:00:03Karri Saarinen:We should reflect on these things. Once we put them out there, let's see what the feedback is or what do we learn from it and then reflect on those learnings and then make a next version or something and not just like every day just like push more and more and not learn anything kind of um so so i do think like now this is somewhat i think also dependent on like what the market you're building in or what kind of product or like what is the market dynamics you're building in so for us it is it was like like in a way good because the market has been somewhat stagnant like you have like an incumbent that has been around like 20 years and nothing has really changed like like not that many things have changed like in the 20 years and no one's been able to kind of like break into that um so our thought was like well i don't think we can break in just like being faster on everything i think we need to be fast but also like we need to build something better and like different and we can't just like if we just copy the existing patterns so it's not going to be better or different.

1:01:11Karri Saarinen:We have to really think through the patterns and learn from what would make sense. So for us, it's like the market dynamics in the past were much more favorable for this, that we could take our time to build things because it was more stagnant. And then now, because things are more active or more changing all the time, we do have to change in some ways. so we are changing but i don't still believe in the pure like to ship all the time everything because i think there's like a cost to it and and even like if you the one cost is like the more you change the more the users like if you have a application that people use every day if you change the ui every day people eventually will like hate it like they will hate you because it's just like it's too distracting like you're trying to do your job and now the buttons move around and so i think like i wish like that the industry had a little more like constraint or like patience sometimes like you don't have to change everything every week but like try to think like yeah you should change things and test them out but like don't like ship it to the customers every week and kind of like test it live with the customers some things you can do but like it's It's again, like, are you changing the core interface or are you building a new feature that is, with new features, you can, like, iterate them easily.

1:02:38Karri Saarinen:But then, like, if you're changing the core, like, flows or the core interface, you have to be a little more, like, not changing it every day.

1:02:45Josh Coyne:I have some tactical questions for you. How often do you do in all hands?

1:02:51Karri Saarinen:I think every three weeks now. It used to be, like, every week, then two weeks, and now it's, like, three weeks.

1:02:58Joubin:It used to be every week in the beginning?

1:02:59Karri Saarinen:Yeah. So you do a weekly all-hands? Yeah.

1:03:02Josh Coyne:Why?

1:03:04Karri Saarinen:I think part of it is remote. So I think it's when you're remote, a lot of ICs don't have a lot of meetings. They're just working on things. And so I think it can get kind of lonely sometimes. I think people do more meetings these days. Usually you are working on projects or you're working on a few people. we also now do have workspaces in san francisco and new york and in berlin where people can go to together if they want to um but i think like the all hands was like one like let's just like do together like event like meeting together and we can talk about some stuff like and these things have changed over time so maybe it was like first more like you show like demos of like what you've been working on or something and there was some like other talks and then now it's more like more like the company stuff like this is what we're doing this things are going there's some different functions sometimes presenting something and like kind of like trying to get the alignment or some kind of yeah like share like what is

1:04:08Josh Coyne:happening generally how long are your board meetings uh i think now they're

1:04:15Joubin:two hours do you send an investor update before the board meeting uh we we do send the

1:04:22Karri Saarinen:we usually send the board deck before the board meeting. Do you send a monthly investor update to everybody else? I used to, but now I've gone to more like a quarterly one. I think it just didn't seem like it's that meaningful. And there's not usually a lot of specific, active, like if I have an active ask, like I need help on something, I'll just email them separately and then just do the investor update more quarterly. But those are different. They have some of the same information, but the email investor update is more brief and more highlighting the specific things we did or happened. And then the board meetings, usually there's the basic stuff, some of the metrics or numbers, and then there's usually some theme or topics for discussion that we spend most of the time on that versus looking at the slides.

1:05:24Josh Coyne:That makes sense. How often do you go on vacation?

1:05:27Karri Saarinen:I don't know. I don't track it, but my pattern is more like twice a year. So usually at Christmas time, I take some time off and I often go to Finland. And then in the summertime, I also go to Finland for a couple months. and usually I take some weeks off then when I'm there.

1:05:51Joubin:And then there might be some smaller few days here and there where I'm not working. A couple months in Finland. I guess it's remote, it doesn't matter.

1:06:03Karri Saarinen:Yeah, and it matters a little bit because of time zones. It does get trickier to do calls to the West Coast because it's 10 hours ahead. so you have to do calls in the evening so you kind of have to constrain your hours or constrain how many calls can you do with people on the west coast

1:06:23Joubin:and you'll take a couple of weeks while you're there both in Christmas and summer and how so you had

1:06:35Josh Coyne:a kid about four years into the company yeah did it change anything about how you

1:06:43Karri Saarinen:run the company or manage your day yeah i think it it's a little bit to kind of um set the boundaries like tighter and like um that like yeah i stopped working in the evening uh like and after like at four or something to like make sure i have time to like spend time with the family um and then it does change like i do try to avoid the the kind of like the work travel or try to do the work trips kind of like as quickly as possible kind of like if i fly somewhere i might just fly for a day or two days or something um i don't know if it changed like too much other things i feel like in the beginning as it that it did make me realize something like kind of like being a parent and leaders there's some like things that are connect connect there and I think one of them was like the like the example like like small kids are always like they see what you do and and they they will like not not learn everything you do but like they they might pick up the things you do as well so you have to be more like mindful like what do you do what do you say and like that kind of thing and I I thought like that kind of applies for leadership to or like company leadership where like people look at you the way that like how do you act or like what do you say or like different things you do and so there's like a you have to be kind of mindful about that or like you can like some people aren't but like i think you can should be like mindful about that because people might see it as an example and is then you have to think like is that what you're doing is like are you setting like a good example or like a bad example for the organization or for the culture so that was like one thing i realized

1:08:36Joubin:really interesting um do you ever get mad

1:08:42Karri Saarinen:sometimes like uh like not not a lot like i i think like it's i don't i feel like i don't take a lot of things like personally like it so i think it's sometimes it's i don't know when per like what are the situations where I get mad it's more like sometimes I've gotten mad to the investors when they're really pushing for something and like I just don't want to hear about it anymore or like I don't want to like talk about this thing anymore Give me an example

1:09:15I think there is like there is a little bit on the like growth

1:09:21Karri Saarinen:not growth but like on the hiring so we also like not only the hiring less we also hired a little bit different profiles so like we like i said like we don't have like a lot of managers and we don't have like a lot of leaders per se in a company or something like um we don't have any like we only have a coo but we don't have many others c people and we don't even have vps like and we have some head of something, but we don't have a lot of high credential people. And sometimes the investors are really pushing heavily on these people, like we should have a CRO. And then I'm always listening to that feedback and like, okay, well, why?

1:10:04Karri Saarinen:Or like, why do we need it? Or like, what would they do? And then they have some explanation and usually it's also like, hey, go talk to this person and then go to talk to them. Then I like maybe go talk to some founders and then I ask them about their experience hiring this kind of person or something. And then I might come to a realization, I don't think we have any of these problems like this person would help us to do. And then sometimes we even try these people, like we have them join us for a little bit to help us with something. And it doesn't seem like they actually kind of changed that many things.

1:10:40Karri Saarinen:I think our operations are pretty good. And we obviously need to improve all the time and like we use some of these people as advisors but like I just still don't see the need like hiring this but sometimes this yeah like they just keep pushing this and like I just feel like I don't like I don't care about this like or like I have to do other things like I don't want to think about it like let's think about this in six months or next year or something but like not right now

1:11:12Joubin:i uh i appreciate you doing this this is really fun yeah thanks yeah this is really fun i um

1:11:20Josh Coyne:next time i'm down in san diego i'll give you a shout do you never travel how often you're traveling depends like i think maybe not every month but like sometimes multiple times in a

1:11:33Karri Saarinen:months, sometimes every two months. So like, I think this month I'm, I'm here two times and then I'm going somewhere else. So I'm traveling like three times this month. And then on March, I'm probably not traveling much, at least at this point. And then April I'm traveling again. So it's just gonna, it depends what's happening or like, are there events or customers I need to meet or so, yeah, it's gonna fluctuate.

1:11:58Joubin:Makes sense.

1:11:59Josh Coyne:I guess you don't get roped into a lot of the like bay area work dinners yeah i get the invite but like i don't yeah like usually i don't

1:12:07Karri Saarinen:we we host dinners so like at home no no like um oh linear yeah like when we're in when i'm in san francisco like we will have a dinner tonight and so with founders or what uh with like customers like potential customers so usually we do those like kind of like a customer dinners we find them like the most impactful. And then I do sometimes go to some VC events, founder events. And I think it's like good to, it's partly also those people are potential customers, but also it's good to like every now and then like see other founders and like talk to them. And I do also like just directly talk with founders.

1:12:49Karri Saarinen:Like you can just have a call with them. Like I don't always have to meet them on a dinner or something.

1:12:54Joubin:Totally. cool man well i appreciate it um are you hiring yeah any key roles you want to shout out

1:13:03Karri Saarinen:uh we are hiring another engineering manager so ideally on mid like u.s so like wherever east goes west goes somewhere um what else are we hiring i think we are hiring more on the on the marketing side um and then we're also hiring a legal counsel like in-house legal cool um so this would be like the first in-house legal cool um mostly i think like looking for someone who comes from like a contract or like that kind of uh background like we we do a lot of contracts with customers so it just kind of makes sense to like bring it in-house now and obviously they can help with other like legal matters too um when you hear the word grit what do you think of

1:13:51um like it it kind of like uh reminds me of grind and then also it reminds me of uh

1:13:58Karri Saarinen:there's this finnish word which is sisu which is similar to create sisu yeah there's also two movies with that name so you can go watch them but um i think the sisu in finnish means like it's kind of like the crit but it's like a finnish version where it's but the difference i think it's like it's it's more like a last resort type of thing where you have this like power inside you that when nothing else it works you have to like do that like it's kind of like even even when the odds are like against you that's like what you use kind of like you just like force yourself not to give up or like kind of like um not not to like yeah like not to give up and it's kind of like yeah like in a war or something like you're holding the bridge alone against like 10 or 100 other like attackers or something that's like the kind of like mindset that like you don't care about like the out like the odds or the outcome but you are just like pushing through anyway um So I think that's kind of what I said earlier too.

1:15:07Karri Saarinen:I always look for, if something feels hard, I always look for, is there an easier way to do this? So I'm not the person that I like to just grind it out or brute force it through and have this crit all the time. I think it's a long-term thing. like you should have the crit to see through things but then in day-to-day i'm almost looking for like is there a way i can have some kind of leverage or advantage or is there like a like why is this so hard and like what can i do to make it like easier so like an example is like fundraising is also like i think in my first company i tried to approach like you just do a list of hundred um VCs and then you go email all of them and then you go meetings with all of them and then you kind of like try to run the numbers game and then with with linear it's being kind of like the opposite where it's like okay I meet with few people then I build some relationships and then like I go back to those few people and say like okay now I'm ready to to fundraise and let's try to do this like quickly so kind of like trying to and like obviously it helps if the company is successful and like doing well, but it's also like, I don't, I just, and then like timing it correctly that like you are in a position where that everything is looking really good and like the curls is good or some other things are good.

1:16:34Karri Saarinen:So like making it as easy as possible. So like I have the like best chances of success.

1:16:39Josh Coyne:Cool, man. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Really fun. That was great. That's it for now. If you liked the episode, please leave us a review and check back every Monday for a new guest or go back into the archives where we've done over 200 episodes. This podcast is a Kleiner Perkins production. I'm Jubin. Thanks for listening. That's it for now. If you liked the episode, please leave us a review or go back into the archives where we've done more than 200 episodes with some fantastic folks. This podcast is a Kleiner Perkins production and I'm Jubin. Thanks for listening.