Inside Linear: Building with taste, craft, and focus | Karri Saarinen (co-founder, designer, CEO)

25:19Is there always an opportunity to build like a significantly better product experience and have it real shot at disrupting and incumbent? Do you have any sense of when design can be enough of a differentiator? And this is coming from like a founder trend aside, should we go big on design and experience or should we invest in distribution or new technology or something along those lines any thoughts there? My belief is that any domain or industry, the more it matters, the more the design matters. I think it's fairly easy to see in different, even in software or in other industries. What happens is whenever there's a new paradigm, I don't know, it's the mobile or the web or something.

26:00The first iterations of those products existing there, they don't have to be super well designed necessarily because they are the first. But then, as you built the hundreds, like, thousands of different email clients, any email client now has to be pretty good to be even considered like a reason of an email client that the bar is so high. So I think, like, today, the startups, like, I don't know if you look at the web page Google launched with, or the web page you to launch with or some of these older companies, they were very basic. If you launch that kind of website today, it's no one really pay attention.

26:41So I think like the design is always like, it's almost like a very basic thing now that from pretty much from the very beginning, you need pretty high level design that people to even pay attention or consider you seriously. And I think it's like it's not necessarily fair because like sometimes it's like maybe the product is really good but they didn't have a designer or they didn't have time to do it and then people just kind of like dismiss it because it doesn't seem like something that interests them. So I think that's the first thing is like I think it is and it's going to be more and more important.

27:18But I would also say like design is never going to be like the reason or like the reason and why the company is successful, it's like, the company still has to have some other things, though the product still needs to be something, it needs to be better in some ways or it needs to be different in some ways. And then like a design is just like enabling some of these things like, and enable a similar to technology, it's like if you have good technology, it's like easier to do certain things and then the product works better in some ways than you having like a bad technology or bad infrastructure.

27:53So similar to design, I think, If you have a good design and people are, or even a good brand, people are drawn into it, and then it makes some user acquisition or user retention, or even people perception of the product better. I think an example is packaging and products like Apple or Blot of Company has spent a lot of time effort into that packaging because it's already set the expectations for the user who is receiving the product, it's like even before you use the product, you start thinking that this is a high quality product and I'm gonna love it. And then when you actually have it, then you actually might feel that way unless the product is really bad and then you wouldn't feel that way.

28:39So I think someone with startups or like SAS is like your landing page or some of the other things it's like they are already communicating something to that user and they setting the expectations. And then I think that can be like very useful thing, especially early on when no one really knows you or knows the product or cares about you. I think like especially I feel like design can be very good leverage in the beginning. I think that's such an interesting insight, especially the first thing you said around how the more often and the more crowded the space is, the more opportunity there is for design to be differentiator?

29:19Is that roughly how you think about it? Yeah, so I mean, like just think about like, I don't know any product category. It's like basically people have then like, a lot of choices and then they like, how do you make choices? Like, maybe there's a specific thing they want, but like a lot of people don't necessarily know what is the specific feature I want from this software. So it's more like, well, what is the best one? Like, what is the highest quality one? And if you put things side by side and you just people see things, people are visual. So like then like the design can be one of those things is like stands out.

29:51It's like well that looks the best or that looks the most like quality product to me. So I'm gonna use that one. Like when people have a lot of choices, they probably will pick the one that looks more interesting. And then I think there is the second part and it's the brand which is something that you, if you can build a brand, then I think it's like, It doesn't really, even the product almost doesn't matter. It becomes this kind of default. Again, Apple or Nike is like, yeah, there's all kinds of shoes you can buy. But there's a reason for someone to buy Nike shoes, other than some brand on brand.

30:29Even if the brand on brand would be actually a better shoe, they still buy Nike because they like, I don't know, like the brand. So then I think like both the design of the product but also the design of the brand can be like very strong like kind of Things that like pull people to your company or to the product. Is there anything you've learned about just building a brand over the course of building Then you're something you find to be really important actually building that Perception that linear is really great and amazing to me. I think like the brand should be always like authentic and and like it should kind of like I think even people who can't articulate it, people start to feel like something is off.

31:11Like I think there can be companies or startups. They think about brand is like, oh brand is the local or the colors of the website or something and then they do the same thing and some other company does and then they think like, okay now we have a brand. But you actually didn't think about what's your brand, what is the message or voice you wanna talk about? And it doesn't have also, like the brand doesn't happen overnight. So it's basically just you start in the beginning and when you start a company, you don't have no brand. And so you have to create it. And you create it over time by the things you do, the things you say, how you say them, and what kind of, how do you approach things, how do you treat customers, how do you build the website or the product, all of these things start to build this idea, Yeah, what does this company mean to me in people's heads?

32:02I know we both work at the Airbnb, and I think Brian Chesky is like, I think the brand was probably the most important thing for him, and I don't know how many hours or meetings or conversations there was about the brand, and it's like the brand was always like, it's like part of everything the company does. Because it's true, it's like, yeah, you could book things like places to stay, a lot of places on the web, But when people think about like, oh, I want to like stay in some cool place, they're going to think about Airbnb. It's like they're not going to think about those other places. So that's like the power of the brand to like people stop thinking about the other things or they start understanding like, okay, this is the thing for this.

32:43And it's part of the reason Airbnb's been able to build a direct destination where people aren't like Googling. I want to stay in a home. They're like Airbnb .com, which gives there being be such a massive advantage. Not having to run ads on Facebook and Google or SEO. It's just like people know Airbnb and they just go straight there. And there's very few sites where people go. Now I'm going to go straight there and look for someone, knowing that they can also compare hotels and all these other sites. Coming back to design briefly, just like very practically, how do you guys do design reviews?

33:14Just like, how do you actually go about reviewing what's going on? And then maybe too big a question. But just whatever you can share is just like, what do you? How do you know when it's done? How do you know when it's ready and approved? with Cari's sealed checkbox ready to go. We've been doing like exploring different ways of doing this. I think like today, I still run the design team. So I do see some of the designs like on a weekly basis and then like I am or one of the other co -founders or one of the, or the head of product, we are basically the sponsors for the projects. So then like we are kind of like responsible, like reviewing the work.

33:54And so we might just have a meeting where we go through, okay, let's go through the demo and like people can explain what's going on and like how they think about it and why and then we might have like feedback, okay, this seems like strange or something. And then I might just after that, I might just like go into the product myself and then like try it out and then what happens sometimes, like it's like in the initial stages, like obviously we're not going to start fixing everything. It's more like let's try to get the main concept there and figure out how it works. But then before we are launching it, I might just go in and try it out and try the different states and click it around.

34:35And sometimes I find things like we were building this threading to comments. And then when it looked all good in the demos and stuff, and then I went to try it and try different lengths of messages and stuff, and then I start to see sometimes the animations are kind of janky, or it's just like off, like they don't go the right way, the screen doesn't scroll exactly right. So then I, it's like I kind of like captured those things and like send it to the team. And so we had to like kind of pull back the release a little bit until those things were fixed. That one was like, it's very like, I think like a simple concept, and it's like very known concept.

35:16Like, okay, this is how threading comments works. So that was mostly about like, okay, what's the execution of this? But then we have projects where we are not true exactly how this should work. And like we can't really like, we can try it ourselves. We also have to see how companies use it. So something like we built this feature project updates. And it's like a common thing companies do is like, you need to write an update on a project. Is it yellow, green, red? And like companies have very different ways of doing this in different tools. And we just thought, well, I think it would be really nice if it's inside linear.

35:52And you can, the team, when they work on a project, they can write the update. Linear can also capture some of the stats, what actually happened. I think with that feature, it's been working well, but then also now, it's like, after using it a while, we think, oh, actually, there could be more robust way of following these updates. Maybe people could, maybe the leadership could just get these updates over email, or like maybe it's when you have a lot of updates, you should have a search or like a filtering system or something. So I think a lot of times we just think like, okay, this is like the scope of it for now and we're okay like launching this and the execution is good.

36:28But we know that like this is not the like fully figured out version and we just need to see people trying it out and like see the feedback. So it sounds like on the decision of whether it goes out or not, it's kind of this intuitive feeling from your actual experience, trying it out, feeling cut level, this is ready, or this needs a little work. Yeah, I would say like a lot of things that we do is more like that, but we don't do AP testing or we don't do specific, go follow certain metrics or something. We might sometimes, we do have telemetry or we can look at how people use certain things and we sometimes do that.

37:04But that's not usually the goal we have in mind. Like, yeah, we should move this number this much. So it's more about like based on the understanding of the problem we have and based on the way what we think is right, is this the right solution and is this a good enough solution to be released to the customers? One more question along this thread is, how do you actually structure these reviews? It sounds like you go straight to a prototype. Is there like a design review phase? Is it all kind of informal and people just review? Here's what we need to feedback on. Yeah, so there's like projects don't like necessarily how like specific states do them, but like I would say like roughly usually do start with designs Oh, there's like did some explorations on the design like okay, there's like different ways of we could like approach this or some less There's just one way because it's like pretty clear clear But then like I think what I said before is that like we do try to like get into the building face as quickly as possible Because then we can also like see is this this this direction actually like reasonable and like what what else does it call Is there some problems it causes or how does it just generally feel here?

38:13So I think that there isn't specific review stages. It's more like, yeah, let's check on this project every week or every two weeks. Then before releasing, let's also make a review of it, and really test it out. Is it the quality we want? Awesome. So that's a good segue to another area. I want to spend some time, which is the linear method. You espouse this way of building product. You call the linear method, which you publish online and willing to in the show notes. And I just want to ask a few questions around this way of building product. One is you are big on this idea of building a opinionated software.

38:55Can you talk about just what does that mean? And then maybe give an example or two of how you actually have done that a linear. So first, like with the linear method, what we, why did we create it in the first place is like, we just believe that there is more of like this modern ways of building software and thinking about it. And we wanted to like share some of our, our thinking on it. And that's kind of like also, it relates to how we build linear as well. Like so you might like understand why we make some choices because this is like the way we think about making these choices. So we're trying to like share our thinking behind the product.

39:30And also is like, here's the product and figure it out. Yeah, so like the Open -Aid piece, I personally have this belief that productivity software should be, and especially company software should be open -Aid, I think that what the productivity software is trying to do is make people productive. And I think what productive means is you actually do something that matters for the company, which is like, I don't know, built something feature or like fix something or design something, like all of those things are eventually, they provide some kind of value for the customer. I think there is this like ideas or notions in the world that like flexible software is great.

40:12I'm like, I think it can be great sometimes, but what happens is like people start spending a lot of time like figuring things out, like how does this feature work? Like you can use it in 10 different ways and then everyone, every team or everyone figures out the different way of doing it. So our thinking is like we like to provide this like cute defaults or good opinions. Like this is how the feature works and this is how the workflow works. So you as a user or as a team don't have to think about it. And you can focus on the work you do. And the other thing is like my design mantra is always like design something for someone.

40:49Like it is very hard to design everything for everyone because you just end up with a very generalized solution. So then what we're trying to do with the opionated solution is that that's the best solution or the most optimized solution we think of. And then when you use it, hopefully you agree and you can feel that it's the most optimized. So being opionated, I think the value, it provides people is that you don't have to think too much or spend some more time on the tool than you do on your actual work. And then another core element of the linear method is something you call cycles and it'll linear all around this idea of creating cycles and working in cycles.

41:31You talk about what is a cycle and how it works at linear. So for example, like the cycles, it's optional. Like not that road team has to use it or not that the whole company has to use it, but it's there as you can turn it on or off. But basically, I think the why we created cycles is that I think any team that works on software or some other products, like you always have almost like infinite list of things to do, and that list gets longer every day. And it can be sometimes very distracting for the individual or for the team to like decide like what, wait, there's a new thing coming in like should we work on that or should we work on this other thing we've decided in the past.

42:11So the cycle is just a way to say that like, like for the next week or the next two weeks or whatever timeframe, We are going to work on these things and like these other things we think like are the priority out of the focus for this time frame. And then the team can try to focus on those things. Now if something happens like, we really need to jump on this other thing. At least there was some initial state that like we decided before we want to do these things and then now something else happened. And so now we have to go on this thing. So you have like an answer when someone comes to you, just like why didn't you do this other thing before?

42:50Then you can say, well, we did decide to do that, but then something happened and we had to do this other thing. So the cycles, it's very similar to sprints, but we like to call it cycles because we are not really sprinting anywhere. The cycles also run on like automated schedule. So it's like you don't have to think about like, which day does it start or like every time I'm like set it up manually, so that's just like runs automatically. And so it's just meant to like, to help the team to focus on, like, let's just like focus on this few things and forget about the infinite list of other things that are in the background.

43:27You mentioned earlier that you don't set metrics goals. And so let me dig into that a little bit. Is that true? You don't really have number of goals for features, for launches and things like that? And so let me start there and then I have a follow -up question. Yeah, so we might have a company level goal sometimes, like for example, weekly active users, like that's a metric we want to increase or something, but in terms of specific features, we don't have goals for those. The reason is that I think product like also a system that is used by different kinds of companies, and it's like a system made of multiple different parts.

44:07And it's not like a very, it's not necessarily like you want to optimize and it's specific thing about it. It's like, and also companies are a little bit different. So like their usage of different features can like differ because they just operate slightly differently or their team size is different or the setup of the team is different or the culture is different. So there's like a, I think for example, I don't know some like Instagram or some of these apps. It's like, yeah, we need to drive engagement and that's like the main feature. that's the main metric for every feature. We don't actually, we don't have that.

44:39We just think that there should be features that help companies. And sometimes we can look at the metrics before we start working on it. They'll like, let's see what's this state of things are. But we don't necessarily want to set like, oh, we need to increase this specific metric by X. It's more like, we want to solve this problem and ideally, the success way it looks like the problem, like customers agree that the problem is solved or they enjoy the solution. And it's not like that the metrics went up. So just to summarize so far, if no metrics, you have no experiments, you have essentially no PMs, just one product leader, you spend a lot of time on design and craft and making things awesome.

45:22I'm curious just what you think it takes to make a company work in that way, because this is pretty different from how a lot of other founders think and a lot of other product teams work. Yeah, we like to talk about this internally like this like a mixture of like magic and science and like how we describe is like There's always some level of science that we do and I think like some companies are very scientific on their product management That like they like to measure everything and they do do a lot of tests and things but like we just decided like and we don't think that's Necessary or that's that's a good for us.

45:58So the science for us means that like we we do you talk to users a lot and the whole, any project we start with, we do some level of user research and us founders, different people on the team, we might have weekly calls with customers or users, we also encourage everyone in the team, go to the customer's lab, they answer people questions, we have shared Slack channels with customers, we go anyone like I sometimes go answer the questions there, I also see when they complain about something. I think the first part is the whole team has to be really understanding the product and the customers and the problems before facing.

46:41And I have that empathy as well as the understanding what is the state of things today. And then we talk about that. And then sometimes we might pull up that and see wonder if there's some kind of patterns we see. like, okay, these kind of companies are using this thing more. And what do we think about it? But usually we have some kind of question we want to answer. It's like, I wonder what is going on. And then we look at it versus like, let's just pull some metrics and then decide that we should increase this metric. And then the magic part is like, what happens when you kind of build this understanding?

47:15Like everyone in the company builds, it's not like everyone has the same understanding, but like everyone builds more of that customer and product understanding. Then we have discussions like what should we be doing or what decision we want to make here. Then everyone is much more informed of the actual reality of the customers or the product. And then we think you can much more like use your intuition or thinking to do those decisions. So you don't have to use data or metrics to back those things up. So that's like, I think the main thing is like the whole company kind of has to like be with the customers or like talk to them and then like understand like where the product might work well or where it might fall short.

48:05That's what I imagined you were going to say and I love hearing that. For someone that wants to create a similar culture, is there tactically anything you find just understand if your employees and engineers designers have enough of that context and really understand the problem? I mean, I think it's always like a different people, like different people in a company will have different understandings. It's not like you can expect what everyone will every day, like go to see everything and like has this. But like we do some kinds of sessions with the team or we do record videos with the customers, we kind of write notes and we share this with people.

48:44I feel like again, it's like fairly apparent. like if people, if you know your customers or the product, like it's a very different way you can talk about it, versus like if you don't have any idea, like I think if you don't have any idea, you probably don't even know what to say. So I think it's like kind of apparently if people have that, and it's not like every project's like we need, like everyone to have this like understanding. It's probably usually enough with one or two people have that understanding or have different understanding of different things. So I think it's again, I feel like it's like a culture thing.

49:19And I think the other thing is like you're going to have to have the, you just have to kind of believe in it. Like I think sometimes people use data a lot or too much because they're worrying or they're afraid that will I make a wrong choice? And like I'm using data to like make the choice for me. But then like you might still feel like this is not the right choice, but the data is telling me the right choice. And then turns out maybe it was the right choice or not, but it's more like, again, like a practice thing like you need to be, I think the company and you need to be okay, that like, sometimes we make mistakes and like we've made the wrong choice and then we just can fix it.

49:57But at least we made that choice and the data didn't make that choice for us. What's interesting about this is if you've heard the episode on ramp and how ramp built product with Jeff Charles, there's such a different ways of building product ramp is all about velocity, shipping all the time, metrics, measuring everything. And your approach is almost the opposite. And I think what's interesting there is a takeaway is just, there's many ways to do it. You just have to do it almost fully. And you have to have really specific people. I feel like the people want to work in a certain way. And a lot of it, I think, also, is the founder has to be natural to the way the founder operates and thinks of building a company.

50:39Yeah. And for sure, and then if you look at like successful companies and Amazon is very different than Apple and like how they operate and I think both them are successful, but not in the same way. So I think it's again, it's like, yeah, it's a decision you make as a company or a founder like what kind of company you want to build. I do think there is like some aspects of like the domain to cheer in. Like, what does that domain and the problem space require from the company? And for us, I think it's like, we are in the, I think we are in the retention business. Like, it's like, and the trust business kind of that, ideally, we have a company starting use linear for early on and then they stay with us forever.

51:21And I think the only way we can do that is like, we need to continuously kind of deliver or then like good quality product, then like kind of maintain that trust that we are, that we don't like fail them more, or somehow otherwise like mistreat them. And I think like some businesses are much more like transactional where it's like, yeah, we just need to make this e -commerce sale. And then once it's done, like we don't care what happens. So our case, it's more like we really need to like build this relationship over time. And then that's why I think some of the choices we make are also more about respecting the customer versus like, which is wanting to drive the revenue of the company.

52:02Awesome, such an important point. This episode is brought to you by Pendo, the all -in -one platform for product -like companies building breakthrough digital experiences. With all the tools you need, all in one simple to use platform, Pendo makes it easy to answer critical questions about how users are engaging with your product and then turn those insights into action. With product analytics, low -code in -app guides, user feedback and session replay, customizable roadmaps, and AI -generated insights and campaigns, Pendo is the only solution you need to build, ship, and optimize a successful product led motion.

52:38But don't take my word for it, create your free Pendo account today and start building better experiences across every corner of your product. Yes, want to take your product led know -how a step further? Check out Pendo's lineup of certification courses, led by top PLG experts and designed to help you grow and advance in your career. Learn more and experience the power of the Pendo platform today at pendo .io slash Lenny. That's p -e -n -d -o dot I -o slash Lenny. Something you're really good at personally is focus. I find that just trying to get you on this podcast was a lot of like, hey, Gary, are you you thought about this yet?

53:15And I know that a lot of VCs are just like reaching out to you all the time, all these really fans, CVCs that are just like trying to talk to you and get close to you. And I just know you're really good at avoiding shiny objects and staying really focused and really heads down. And I've always wanted to just ask you, what do you, how do you do that? Do you have any tricks, systems, processes, approaches to staying focused other than just ignore, ignore the inbox mostly? Yeah, I don't think there's any like complicated processes. And so I think like one of of things like I was in YZ in 2012 and one of the things, the main thing they say there is like what you should be focusing on when you build a startup is like talk to customers, build the product, exercise.

53:54And like if you're not, if you find yourself doing something else than those three things, it's probably like the wrong thing to do. And then when you said exercise or yeah. Yeah. And the exercise is that like it's important for you to be healthy or just not just like burn yourself out. So I think there is like, it was like a balance, like, advice to that. So I'm doing those three things. And so I think the thinking there is like, I think we often as a company also to talk about this and like very early on. And I use this the same way. And like, I think the company can use it the same way. It's like, I think there's always things that you're supposed to do or like it sounds like a good idea to do and like it could be like yeah like come to this podcast and I actually think like before I wasn't like or like I always have this questions like is this important to do now or is it important to maybe do later.

54:53So I think like for some both question on this podcast it's like I didn't feel like it was important to do it earlier because we weren't at the stage or scale or something that it I think would be like as interesting or or something. So I think it was a better timing to do it later. Similar, when we built the product, we'll initially, we were just very focused on, is this really important thing to do? There's always like, yeah, you could get like, SOC2, security, certificate. And eventually, we need to get it, but we don't need it today. So we just say, no, to that, and if customer asks for it, we don't have it.

55:32and we will have it one day, but not now. And see, a lot of times people are like, okay, that's fine. And then in journal, we also talk about this, like, you know, like RPG games, you have the main quest lines, and then you have the side quest lines. And we often talk about the company, it's like, avoid the side quest. It's like, there's always ideas people have. And it's a good thing, and so people have ideas, but then it might be like, yeah, let's make this t -shirt. So like, let's make this thing. and then we're like, well, does it help the customers? Does it help the product? This sounds like a side quest to me, and basically means we shouldn't do it.

56:08This doesn't progress the main quest line, which is building this product, and making it awesome for these customers. So it's similar to me, it's like, I operate this way personally, too, that I think about, is this important for the main quest line in building this company for me, or is this something that I can ignore for now or something I can do later, and it makes more sense then. I just such incredibly good advice. Basically, ask yourself, how important is this to do now? And is this the main quest or is this a side quest? Amazing. Okay, so let's talk about hiring. As with most areas, you're very, very, very deliberate about hiring.

56:54The bar is so insanely high, a linear and you also hire very few people. So just a few questions along these lines. One is when you're hiring people, what do you look for that you think maybe other people are not looking for enough? And where do you spend a lot of time? I think one of the things we all of us founders kind of saw in this high growth companies that sometimes like the high growth is like especially on the employee side is not that great. it can create a lot of gay also or just messiness or, or just generally in my, his past and working in companies, it's almost never, it was always easier to work with a smaller team, very high quality people, than a very large team of more average people.

57:38It's almost like it's always faster and better output when you have more and much smaller team. So that was kind of like the thing you're with linear too is like we just believe that you can actually build better with less people than you can with more people. So that's like the basic belief we have. So then when it goes to hiring, we've been like taking very kind of like slow steps on it that like in the almost like the first year we'd hire anyone. Then like the second year we highlight a couple people and then the second year we hired more few more. We never doubt more than double in a year and that's kind of like being our like guideline that we shouldn't more than double.

58:15And this might be something we change in the future that we actually might do less than that. But what we look into hiring is a couple of things. One is also that it obviously depends on the role. But basically I would say with every role we often talk about, there needs to be some taste or some understanding of how things are done or or what's the, like, people have more like a broader perspective than like whatever their role is. So, like, we talked about the engineering before, they do need to do some of this BM type of stuff. And so, what we look for in them is that, like, they have some of this, like, skill set or product thinking or they can articulate why some choices are better than some others or, like, in their past, like, did they disagree with some of the company's choices or the team's choices?

59:08or like so we want to have this like obviously they need to be good developers but also like do they have this like a product sensibility or can't do they have like a judgment around that. And then this goes similar to like for example like a marketing hire as like we think about like yeah we do need the marketing skill sets but then we also want to see that this person also like Like maybe it's a good storyteller or like they have like this like kind of appreciation for Writing or stories or like they have a taste of what's what's like interesting and what's not So I think like with or like when we hire like operations person We also like to see that they they may be like have understanding on HR and maybe that it's not their role But they they understand it and what happens is like when you have this people that are a little bit more than their title.

1:00:03It's like the company is, I think, much more easier to manage because it's like people can pick up things more easily or they can work to get our more easily because everyone has more like a shared area or it's not like, it's not, you rarely get to the point like people say it's not my job. It's more like people understand, okay, yeah, I'm kind of in operations, but today I kind of need to help on this HR thing. So, which is okay. And so, that's kind of like what we look for people is like they are more than they can take more scope than their skillset would assume or what normally is expected from them.

1:00:45So essentially you're looking for kind of these Venn diagram overlapping across different functions and teammates. Yeah, and I think it's the other thing is like I said before, it's like we want to build much I think like a company that has less employees which means that it's like like what's it before we don't want that many like specialized roles or like two specific areas of ownership or something we just think that we could build this like we could have less people and those people can take on more scope and they can own more scope I think like traditionally I feel like in companies like how do you get more scope is that you advance in the levels of the company because there's like a lot of different teams and different levels.

1:01:29And then to get any kind of scope, you need to like rise into this like higher levels. And what we try to do is like, you don't actually have to have that many levels. But like people can't just like already when they when they start, they can start like owning more areas. And I think that can be like much more like also like interesting, not to everyone. But like I think interesting to many people. And it's kind of like how I also like always felt about us being a designer is like, I don't, I didn't feel like my job is purely like just looking at the designs that I also thought like I actually need to be helping this business or helping this other area as well.

1:02:07So I think it's just going to also like natural to me. Awesome. So one thing you didn't mention is you have a really unique way of interviewing which is a paid work trial. Can you just talk about what that is? And also just while you're in that area, you talked about testing for product sensibility. So whatever you can share, how you actually do that would be awesome. Yeah, so we do with all of the employees, we've done like a bait work trial and depends on the role, what it looks like, how long it is and depends on also some of us on the person. But basically, we do failure, like standard, like interview loops where we test like, we have some like hiring manager interviews and then like skill interviews and or tests and then the last step of the process is the work trail.

1:02:53Basically, yeah, we basically come as a mini contractor to the company and we give them a very usually fairly vague problem statements. If you're an engineer, it's like, hey, there's this feature that needs to be built, how would you build it and go build it? So basically, they need to first understand the problem, then they need to scope it down to something that they can do in the time frame that they have. And then they actually go, they get the access to a code base, they can actually go and build a version of it. And then at the end, they can present the work they did. And why we do this is that we just see that it's a very good way to see for both us, both for the company and the candidates, to see how we work together.

1:03:41And I think for the candidate, what they can see is that, what kind of company are joining? like what is it like to work here? And how are the, what is the my ownership? Or like, how do I approach this? Like, I think a lot of engineers also like that. They see the code based and they're like, oh, wow, this is like really clean. And like, it's not like some kind of spaghetti, code type of thing, a situation. So I think like it helps the candidates as well understand, like, what are they signing off for? Which I think can be like very risky sometimes with, especially with startups. like it's really hard to tell like how the startup is operating just from the interviews.

1:04:21And in a large company, I think things are more standardized. So it's like, I think they're more similar on it's easier to make that choice. But with startups, it can be like very like different how companies operate. Yeah, that is so unique. And I rarely hear of a company being able to hire that way. Imagine one of the reasons you can get away with that where people are like, don't have a full -time job for a while or doing a pay trials because linear such a in a enticing place to work. Imagine a lot of companies they can't really do that, but I guess any thoughts on just maybe more companies can actually pull this off.

1:04:51Yeah, I mean, I think it's also like, if you don't ask, like you don't know, like I think we can, okay, it's just being the standard and we try to work with the candidate, like let's figure out maybe we do it on the weekend or maybe we do it some other vacation holiday or something. So there can be ways we can like schedule it and so that it causes as little kind of problems to the candidate as possible. And I think we only have like only a few people, but we have ever declined it. Like it's not like, I think everyone else has been. At least after the fact they've been happy that they did it because they felt like they had a much better sense of the company that they're joining.

1:05:31And then also like doing that work job, they can actually join our meetings. They get access to our Slack and notion. and they also have one -on -one chats with the rest of the, like, some of the other people in the team. So they already get to know people. So it's a good way for them to, like, evaluate us as well. And then for us, it's obviously, we can see, like, what is important for us to see is, like, how does this person operate in this kind of environment and, like, how do they approach problems, like, how do they think? And, like, are they able to make progress in a very short time frame, which I always think is very important for startups.

1:06:07In a large company, you have maybe all time in the world to do stuff, but I think any kind of startup, even with us when we take our time doing things, sometimes it's still important. We can do things quickly if we have to. It's super cool. Just to close the thread on product sensibilities, anything you could share of just how you actually help understand someone's strengths and and ability there? Yeah, we have like someone a very scientific or some like special way figured out for this. So I think it's a lot of it. It's like a discussion of and I often think of like ask people that like ask about their projects.

1:06:46And I try to go deeper. It's like, what was this decision made? Like, what do you think the decision was made? And like, I might ask like, do you think it was the right decision? and like, or do you agree on it? Or ask about what you think you would have done done differently or something. So I think it's more like I'm trying to see if they do, do they have thoughts in this area? And like what their answer is? And then people's answer is going to be very like different levels. Like some people might be, yeah, just like, I didn't like it, which I don't like, yeah, it's an opinion, but it's not based on anything.

1:07:21It's just like you didn't like it. You should be able to expand on it, saying like, Well, I don't like it because in this case, it would not work well for these kind of users or in this kind of context or for this kind of purposes. So they have more of this reasoning or some kind of rational why they think this way and they can articulate that. So I think that's kind of what I'm using testing for is can they do this and how well they can do it? And it's going to be like very, yeah, there can be like very wide ranges of how people do it. And when you see someone who really thinks about this stuff, it's very clear to see that they can just like talk about it forever.

1:08:07And they can go deeper and deeper. And then some people that maybe don't haven't had the experience or don't think this way, they're like, yeah, I don't really know. Like I just, I just build it and then seem fine. Let's transition to the third area. I wanted to spend some time on which is growth. Basically, I'd love to just understand how linear grows and what you figured out around growth, especially in B2B. SAS. The first question here is just how long did it take from starting to work on linear to launching, say, V1, something that a number of people can use? So we started like official in 2019.

1:08:44Some, I think, months before that we were already exploring and prototyping the product. So it wasn't. So I think we prototype different kinds of designs a little bit and then we also one of the things we really wanted to solve is like we wanted to make the application really fast in the way we figured out we do that is like we have more of this like a local based data structure where all the data lives in the client and then and then it gets synced on the on the back ends like with this delta packets and and back then we were exploring like different off -the -shelf solutions and systems, but there was nothing really there.

1:09:23So we ended up like building our own. And so we spent on time prototyping that. And then once we officially, I think, started working on a company in April 2019, and then we announced a company, like, roughly meet April. And we had this like little website up with the waitlist. And then I think by I may, we could use it ourselves and then we already, we started inviting some friends, like, try it out. But then I think in June, I think we started more like inviting people from the wait list and around June, July, I think we had about, I don't know, 100, 200 users on it and maybe like about 10 companies or something.

1:10:06And then we were in this private beta stage for almost a year. And the way we did it was just like we had this wait list of people on the wait list. There was like few survey questions like what kind of tools you use today and then like why do you want to use linear and then we just and what's the company size and We invited people based on like we invited more like smaller companies using the tools We we currently supported and then also like I was trying to see like who is more like interest that versus us land I don't know, I just want to try it out, type of purple. And then a year later in June, we launched it publicly and back then maybe we already had like, I don't know, several hundreds of companies using it.

1:10:52And then we also launched the pricing and I think like almost all of them, maybe one company didn't subscribe, but everyone else subscribed to that paid plan. Okay, there's a number really interesting things here. So one is your private beta for a year and then a year later you launched. How was long was that period between starting to like incubate and starting to build to that private beta? Myelstil. Yeah, I think just like few months, like I think the few months of building the V1. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I thought it was a lot longer. That is so interesting. Okay. What a team you've got over there.

1:11:30Okay. And then this survey piece is really interesting. I've heard a little bit about the story. So essentially, you launched it on Twitter. You had kind of a following. Your founders had a bit of a following. Say, I think that helped build up the initial wait list. But what you did there wasn't just like, hey, you go sign up for a wait list, and you just add email addresses. It's a survey asking them what tools to use, like whether it's GitHub or something else. And then also the size of the company. And they're interested. And that helped you basically prioritize who to go after and who to onboard.

1:11:57Is that right? Yeah. And the reason we did it because we know So that like we didn't support everything and like what was that before and the focus is like we want to like also like be focused on like let's just like build a version that can work for some people or some companies we don't have to try to address everyone in the world in the in the first months of the of the business and even before after that. So it was very like selective process and I think we yeah we were fortunate that like we were able to get people sign up on a wait list and I think after after a month or so we had like maybe 4 ,000 people on the wait list.

1:12:37And then we had this like internal, I think initially it was just like a very manual process, but eventually we built this in like invite tool that we could just send invites. But in the beginning I would go read the actual surveys, like in a spreadsheet, then I copy that email and then I email them, they invite link from my personal email. And then like I would just like email them like after like a few days or a week and it's what do you think? And the reason we, and so we would invite only like in the beginning, maybe in what, like 10 people a week and like eventually we increased those amounts, but the reason we did it that way was that we thought that like if you just invite everyone at once or a lot of people at once, all of those people are going to probably hit the same problems in this kind of software that is a very early stage.

1:13:27So like, I don't know, they hit the same bug or the same problem in the software. So then they will all send us feedback like, hey, there's this problem. And then we felt like it was kind of like a waste of the effort. So we would just do this cohorts. Like let's invite these people and then they say like, okay, this is a problem like, I don't, this doesn't work or something. Then we go fix that. Then after we fix that, we invite the next cohort of people and they say like, well, there's this thing that is needed or this doesn't work. Then then we fix that. So for that year, we did this cohorts and then always get the feedback from the cohort saying like this is like wrong or this doesn't work and then we will fix that.

1:14:05So eventually I think it was much more like a effective way of doing the initial development than just like inviting or letting everyone to use the product right at the beginning. There's so many interesting lessons from this. I wanted to ask how you got your first 10 customers and what I'm hearing essentially was from this wait list. You launched it on Twitter, people signed up, you picked people to let on board. You worked with them over the course of a year to make it what they needed and then eventually started charging. Yeah, I think like the first 10 people companies using it, I think maybe a little over a half, maybe there was like three friends that like friends that I have started up some day used it and then I think the majority of them were just from this wait list but they didn't like Bay or anything, like we didn't have pricing in the beginning or doing the private beta.

1:14:58At some point we start building the payment function. So we just added a page in the settings that you can optionally pay. And then we just give you a slider that like how much do you want to pay? Proceed. And then we just like see like, I don't know some people pay like $28 per seat and some people pay like $1. So by like a dilly matter, we just wanted to test the functionality and see what people think. Then like, yeah, after a year, when we launched, we already had, I mean, the first week of launching, we have probably some hundreds of customers. I've never heard of the approach to pricing as just an actual sliding scale, where people can slide the scale themselves and how much they want to pay.

1:15:44Did that help you figure out what to charge, or is it mostly just an experiment? I don't think it gave us enough data to decide. I think it's, but I think it was good to see that it's like, there was some people that went, I think that 20 was probably the maximum that people could pay. So I think there was some people that went to it and they felt like, actually, yeah, I really love the products. I'm happy to pay like $28. So I think at least it gave us some confidence that if we charge for this and it's like something under $20, or there's going to be market for it. I want to hear about the story of how you've started to feel product market fit, whatever that means to you.

1:16:23When did you start to feel like, oh wow, this is actually going to work, and maybe this is going to be a real business? Yeah, I think we've always been going to know some like Baron or I don't know, maybe a Baron or a good way about the product market fit. I think it's like, Baron or I didn't know where we always wondering, do we really have it? And with who do we have it, then I think it's true in our business that I think we started feeling it very early on and when people first started using it and we could see like, oh, now the whole company's using it and they seem like happier using it than the feedback is good.

1:17:01And they might have some additional asks for them for us. But we started feeling that there was definitely like market fit with certain kind of customer and this were like smaller, like early stage companies, maybe where still the founder is still running the product and they care about the speed of the shipping or they kind of have like a certain values in a way. So it was like a good fit with them. And then I think we always like know that we wanna like address the whole market than not just like these early stage customers, But we knew that like I don't like if if a fortune 500 company came to us then or even like today We might not be like I don't think we can like provide them the solution today that works for them So I don't think the fit is there So for us like the way I think about is like do we have that?

1:17:55Do we have the fit in this specific segments and like how strong that fit is and so like in the in the company is like I think the first year we focused on like, can we get the fit in the first two years we focused on like, can we get the fit in the early stage startup segment? Basically, the goal was like, we want to be the default for startups, like the default tool that the startups pick. I think we were able to accomplish that, but we just purely focused on that segment and getting the product market fit there. And then like after or at the same time we started getting some larger companies and we saw like yeah It's not like really great for you right now, but like let's work on it making it better And so I think the last two years we've been like focusing on that and it's like how do we make the software work better?

1:18:47How do we get the product market fit better like stronger in this larger company segments like Out there are like thousands of people or like hundreds of people or like a thousand people. I think this is such a a good way and smart way of thinking about product market fit. A lot of people see product market fit as this binary. I have it or I don't and like when am I going to really feel product market fit and what you're describing is what I often hear is it's more of this spectrum of like more and more confidence that there is product market fit and even more specifically it's like product market fit with segments of the market.

1:19:17It's kind of like this map of the world and you're just like slowly acquiring territory in the market with specific elements and then over time it grows and grows. Yeah, I think like a spectrum is a good way to think about it too. I feel like there is this blog post and written in the past where it's like, you know, when you have product market fit and I think it's probably, wait, it's like that for some, I don't know, social consumer apps, like, you know, like if it's staking off or not, then you don't really have a lot of different segments or if you don't really think about it, like you just have users and do you have millions of users.

1:19:53And then you see it's taking off and so you have a product market fit. But I think like in a more like a beach, if we world, I think there's always like you can have different sizes of customers. You can have different domains, the customers are in or there's different kind of like categories where it's like you might be doing a little well in one category and then not that well another. And I think maybe the countering to do things is that actually if you're doing Louisville in some category, it's just like kind of doubled down on that. This is something like I talked to the Zoom founder Eric at some point in the company's lifecycle.

1:20:31And this is also what he's like. He's like when they were building Zoom in the early days, they would get this one type of customer, like I don't know, maybe it's like a university, and then they like really, it worked really well for them. Then they're like, well, how do we get more of the universities? is so they would always like focus on the certain kind of customer rather than like let's just try get everyone like so let's focus on everything which is not possible. So again, like it's about the like the focus is like if you have some like you see that something is working really well then it's almost like you should focus on doing that more until you hit some kind of points like okay now we do have that category like captured or handled as much as we want and we should like expand to to new area.

1:21:15Essentially look for pull and just follow that and pay attention to that. Yeah, and I think there's like a for us itself then like there can be sometimes like for example now we have most of the AI companies are like are using us. So I think like it's always and before that it was like a crypto company. So I think there's like when we see this kind of things happening then we'll just start to think like oh could we do something differently or like should we get more of these AI companies on board? So, such a great lesson. Just a few more questions. You mentioned that you launched on Twitter and that led to a large wait list and a growing wait list.

1:21:55Is there anything you did before that to kind of build this following? That sounds like really amazing. Cool, we just announced that on Twitter and we have this large wait list and then we grow and we get all these customers. Is there anything you did ahead of time in anticipation of this launch? would you recommend people work on building some kind of following online before they were going to start it? Was it just like, hey, we happened to have this kind of following and it worked out anything along those lines you would recommend to founders these days? Yeah, I mean, I think definitely if you have a following and like Oh, this is the best one what kind of following but I think like my my background as a designer I was like at that Airbnb and Coinbase and other places and I did some like talks and conferences and write some blog posts.

1:22:36So I just definitely like out there and then kind of had that some of that following, which was helpful, but it wasn't like I have like thousands of like a hundred, a thousand of followers or a million or something, I had maybe like 10 ,000 or something, which is like a significant number. But then I think like the other thing is, I think with the announcement, like one of the things we did, I think well, I think sometimes startups do try to emulate successful large companies too much. You do this fancy announcements where it's like, okay, now we're doing this fancy thing. It sounds very corporate or something.

1:23:19I think with our announcement, we try to road it more direct or authentic to us. like, this is like what are we going to do? And this is why and like this, these are some of the things we're going to do. Then on on the Twitter, we did the same thing like all of us founders, we wrote our own reasons why we're doing this. And I think it was like just much more like, and I think like people could dress and people like us could resonate more with it. So we were kind of writing to the right audience. And like, I think that's the probably the first thing you're like, when you're announcing your company, it's like you think about who is my first audience, like who would be the best users, like early users for this product, and like where are they, and then like how do they think about things, and like what kind of language they use.

1:24:07So for us, it was like very, it came very naturally because we are this people, we've been building software and this companies, and we've seen, like other people have seen similar things, we have seen, so I think that the way we announced it, like resonated with a lot of people. And then I think we did have some friends and as it like we got some data like angel round where we got some like friends involved. And the main reason we did it was that we just felt like it's in the early days it's good to have like you feel like a real company in a way that like you have someone to answer for in a way even though the investors don't really run your company or they don't have that much power, or it's more like, well, I took someone's money so I now need to make it worth it kind of.

1:24:54But then, I think with the announcement again, we could use some of those people to express the message as well. To kind of close out our conversation, just a couple more broad questions. You have a pretty unique culture at linear and I know you want fun thing that you do is you have this kind of baking competition. Can you talk about that and what did you do there? Yeah, so since we are a fully remote and distributed company, so we have people in Europe and US, a lot of group gatherings are kind of challenging. Remote group sessions are kind of challenging because the time zones are so different.

1:25:32Some of the basic things, happy hours, it doesn't really work that well. Also, Zoom happy hours is really not that fun anyway. So, I think a lot of people in the company watched the Great British Baking Show. And so we decided maybe we'd do something like that, like where basically we would just pick a recipe. Firstly, it was like baking. Now we expand it to cooking recipes too. And so we just pick a recipe that is somewhat reasonable to do in a few hours and a couple of hours. And it doesn't require tons of equipment or skill or something. And then we, we just tell people I go by the ingredients, use the company card, everyone has a company card.

1:26:17And then, um, then like hop on Zoom on this day and, and for me, it's usually like, since I'm in California, it's like 8 a .m. in a morning. So, so we start like the baking or cooking then. So, so we've made things like like a roll cake and, um, lemon marring pie and we made some like bustle, nut, which is like a Portuguese, like a pastry. And then like we just hope on the Zoom, everyone's like doing their thing, following the recipe and then like some nice people have like questions like, hey, I don't know, stock with this. So like my dough looks weird, like does your dough look like this? And people can kind of like help each other.

1:26:58And then also like teach at about whatever random things at the same time. And then like we do the thing and then we everyone takes pictures and post this on this like Slack channel and it's like what they achieved and I think we have like kind of friendly competitions like who did it better and like or who did it best. So people sometimes put a lot of effort into the decorations and visuals. So in a way it's again like a craft thing that we do. It's like I think baking and cooking and this kind of things is also a craft. So we like it that way. And yeah, we've been basically doing it quarterly since the beginning of the company.

1:27:36And yeah, the latest thing we were a little bit like, I think, didn't have that much time. So we decided to do like easier thing, which is like a summer drink recipe. So I think it was like people made like much drinks and some like coconut drinks or like iced tea or something. So even that was kind of like interesting to do. Have you ever wondered one of these competitions yourself? We don't. I don't know if we declare winners that much, but I do think like I do since I'm a designer, I do have some advantages on the visual presentation. So I think that I generally do well on that. And obviously that's like with this remote competition, that's the only thing you can really look for.

1:28:23It's not not necessarily about the taste or the texture because you can't really taste it through the zoom Maybe is the last question just again broadly You've gone from being an IC designer or manager of designers to the CEO of very fast growing company What's something that you've learned about leadership over the journey of linear that maybe you didn't expect? For some reason it was surprisingly to me I think that like being a CEO or some of this like leadership role says that But you end up doing so many different things. And I think when I was a designer, even if I would be some high -level designer in some company, it's still like you're mostly focusing on the design and that's your job.

1:29:07But then when you're CEO, every week or every day, there's some different thing going on. And sometimes they can be problems, but a lot of times it's like, hey, we need to figure out how are we going to do this? like how are we going to do this like compensation or how are we going to do this marketing plan or like how are we going to do this like off -site thing and so it's like to me what it's like challenge like definitely like a challenging for me is handling that like different kinds of things that that come to you and like staying somewhat focused still on something so I think it's haven't necessarily fully figured it out, but I also like learn, figure it out of like a hiring and delegation helps with this, that like if you can find other leaders that can like take on certain areas, that's helpful.

1:30:00That's the like the main thing that, that like how what is the, it's like a very wide range of things that you maybe didn't have experienced before. But also I think it's interesting to me to learn about these things and like you learn about financials and you learn about legal things. And then you start to feel like, oh, actually, I know something about these things over time. For the actual final question, before we get to very exciting lightened round, what's just the future linear? What's coming? What's happening in the future? Anything you can share. Yeah, I think there's always things we're working on and improving.

1:30:32One like a newer thing we're working on is this feature called Ask's. and basically what it is is that we see that in a company, there can be a lot of different people that needs to interact with the product team or different people that needs to interact with this team, but they're not necessarily like in -linear or part of this team. So we've been building this like an ask future, which is like integration to Slack, where you can very easily go to a Slack channel and then ask like, so your question, and you need something from this team. Like maybe it's an IT team, not like you need like a laptop or maybe it's like the infrastructure team and you need help them, like you need something from them.

1:31:16Then the team that this is handling the request, they can very easily extend it to linear into this like triage that we have. And then like they can start like doing stuff with it. And if they have like questions or like additional questions to the actual person who requested it, we can send those messages back to the person through Slack, so they don't actually have to go to linear or they don't have to be a linear user to use it. So we think this is just a good way for the company or the whole company to be more potentially involved in the product operations without having to be a power user of linear or because not every functionably uses it or needs to use it.

1:32:04Awesome. What a cool peak at something coming out soon or maybe all by the time this comes out. And with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got a bunch of questions for you. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready. All right. Well, what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? Timeless way of building by Christopher Alexander. He was really an architect, but I think thought in Berkeley. He has this interesting thoughts about building things, and he focuses on buildings and towns and these kind of spaces, but I think there's a lot of things that are also interesting for building software.

1:32:46The other book that I like is the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, because it's also talks about the quality of things. And I think that's one of the main themes of the book. And the thing is also that quality is so hard to define. It is like, if you actually start thinking about it, it's like how do you define it? It's kind of like, it's really hard to be in down. But it's kind of like when you try something or see it, then you kind of know if it's quality or not. What are some recent movies or TV shows they've really enjoyed? I think that the movie is like probably the John Wick for I think it's it's like kind of feels like I mean, it's like there's no store in that movie, but it's like I think it's very true to its nature.

1:33:33So I like that fact. And then also recently I started watching the silo on Apple TV and I think I kind of like it. It's like a good mystery. And then also it's kind of reminds me of the Fallout game so I kind of like it that way too. I actually read the silo books and I was really excited for the show to come out but we mentioned this on a previous podcast. The show is like so little to do with actual books like the core ideas are the same but there's always stories that they're just making up on the show so I kind of stop watching because I was just thinking that's not what I was hoping for but maybe I need to check the books later like once I watch the show.

1:34:10Definitely read the books but there's three of them and only the first one is actually good the other one they're not actually good and I should not have read them because it just went off the rails a little bit. Anyway, next question. What is a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates when you're interviewing them? I think usually I like to ask, what is the kind of most proud of and why? Like what on their professional life or otherwise? Like what they're most proud of and why? And then I think we can go deeper on that, but I think it's kind of like, gives you a little bit of indication like what the person values and how they think about things.

1:34:43and I also like it, I think it's always nice that people can share something like they think they do it really well and we can spend time on it versus just like asking something like more like negative things. What are some favorite products you've usually discovered that you really, really like? Not sure if I discovered them recently but like I've recently been in this home office, I've been installing some of these hue lights and I really like them because like throughout the day, I can have more harsh lighting because since I'm in meetings or something, and then in the evening, I can change the temperature.

1:35:20I make it much more red or orange or something. It's nice to have transition to space, working and doing something else, and you can use the lights to indicate that. That is so cool. Do you automate the scheduler? You manually change the color. Yeah, it's just manually changed. So I have like on my home app, I have like scenes that like, so there's the night scene and then there's the day scene like the morning scene. And so I just like click that button and then it turns, changes the lights. That is extremely cool. I'm gonna try that myself. What is a favorite life motto that you like to repeat yourself or share with people, something you kind of come back to a lot?

1:36:03And go slow to go fast is, I think for me, it's about that sometimes people have tendency to rushing to things and especially in I think in startups, but other places too that you kind of have this like, I think urgency is important, but then sometimes you have like too much urgency and you are rushing things and what happens is that you rush it and then now you need to come back to fix it. So I think sometimes we, I like to think that like you should take some time to actually like think about it and look what are you going to do and then do it because then it's Indian is going to be faster that way than like going back and forth and fixing things.

1:36:44What is the most valuable lesson that your mom or your dad taught you? I think it's like respecting people and things so I think it's, I mean I think the people respect is pretty obvious but I think that I think with the things you have also I think like you should take good care of them. Like when you use them, you're just like, I don't know, clean them or put them away. And then they're like ready for the next time. So I think I like that though, like you, rather than like you treating things like that they are a trash or kind of like not that valuable. You should kind of like treat things that they are valuable.

1:37:19Final question, you were born in Finland. I think you grew up in Finland. What is a finished food that people should definitely try to get as soon as they can? One is like this salmon soup and it might sound weird like a fish soup. Like maybe it's not going to be that interesting, but it is like a creamy soup with some like potatoes, carrots and other things. And it's kind of like almost like a sweet little bit like sweet flavor to it. So that's one thing like you can make it yourself at home or you can like if you go to Finland, there's probably like always few restaurants that offer it. Okay.

1:37:56Amazing. Is that something we could get here? Or you have to go to Finland to get it? I don't think I've ever seen it here in the US and in any restaurant, but it's not very hard to make it yourself. You can probably Google recipe. It's basically you just need some salmon and some like basic spices and some cream and some fruit vegetables. All right. Next episode, we're going to do a cooking show with Kari. Kari, thank you so much for being here. You're building a very special company in a really unique way. and I think many founders and many product builders can learn a ton from watching you operate in the business that you're building.

1:38:31So again, thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. We're can folks find you online if they want to reach out, maybe ask you some more questions. And how can listeners be useful to you? Yeah, so I'm on Twitter. My name, Kari Sarn, and, and, and we also have the linear account, which is I think is interesting. So that's the smart linear. And then, yeah, I think like, I hope they won't go and like check out check out linear and see if it could work for them in their company and figure out if there's a pilot. I think we always happy to assist on those things that if you just want to try it out, then try it with the team.

1:39:07We can help you to set it up and help you to understand how they used the product. Awesome. It's just linear that app. Is that the URL? Yes. Awesome. Easy peasy. Amazing. Again, thank you so much for being here. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or a leaving review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny'sPodcast .com. See you in the next episode!