$100K ARRin 1 year

3 milestones

Current revenue

$100M ARRas of January 2025Source

$100M ARR in 2025 with 178 employees. Up from $8.4M ARR in 2023.

Linear: Construyendo el rastreador de problemas que los desarrolladores realmente aman usar

Founder

Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo & Tuomas Artman

Co-Fundadores•Technical•USA

Commitment

Full-time

Experience

Experienced

Product

Linear

Herramienta de rastreo de problemas y gestión de proyectos construida para equipos de software de alto rendimiento que se preocupan por la velocidad y el diseño.

Type

SaaS

Industry

Herramientas para Desarrolladores

Model

Suscripción

Marketing Strategy

How Karri acquired customers

Growth Channel

Boca a Boca

Also Used

Twitter / XProduct Hunt

Tech Stack

Tools used to build Linear

ReactTypeScriptPostgreSQLElectron

The Full Story

TL;DR

Tres amigos de Airbnb, Uber y Coinbase pasaron un año validando su idea antes de dejar sus trabajos para construir Linear, ahora valorado en $1.25B.

En Airbnb, estaba frustrado con Jira. Tan frustrado que construí una extensión de Chrome que lo re-diseñó completamente. Obtuvo 100+ instalaciones internamente.

La conversación en el bar

Años después, me reuní con Jori (de Coinbase) y Tuomas (de Uber) para tomar cervezas. Tenían las mismas frustraciones. Esa noche, decidimos: construyamos algo mejor.

Un año de validación

No nos apresuramos a dejar nuestros trabajos. Durante un año, nos reunimos cada miércoles en un bar cerca de nuestras oficinas, hablando con colegas sobre qué los frustraba de las herramientas existentes. La mayor queja: todo era demasiado lento.

Construyendo para nosotros

En marzo 2019, renunciamos y comenzamos a construir. Éramos extremadamente opinionados, como Apple, proporcionamos valores predeterminados sólidos en lugar de personalización infinita. El objetivo: construir algo que realmente disfrutaríamos usar todos los días.

Usuarios tempranos selectivos

Lanzamos una beta privada con una lista de espera de 10,000 correos electrónicos. Pero solo invitamos aproximadamente 10 personas por semana, cuidadosamente seleccionadas según respuestas de encuestas. Queríamos los usuarios más motivados que coincidieran con nuestro objetivo: constructores de productos individuales en startups de rápido crecimiento.

Rentable desde el inicio

Alcanzamos rentabilidad rápidamente y nos mantuvimos rentables. Esto nos dio libertad para enfocarnos en calidad sobre métricas. Sin compromisos. Hemos sido rentables durante 4+ años ahora.

Fundado: 2019
Usuarios en beta privada: 1,000 DAU antes del lanzamiento público
Semilla: $4.2M (Nov 2019)
Valoración: $1.25B
Equipo: 70 personas (remoto)

Key Takeaways

Dedica tiempo a validar antes de dejar tu trabajo, un año no es demasiado

Sé tu propio primer cliente y construye lo que realmente quieres usar

Los usuarios tempranos selectivos dan mejor retroalimentación que registros masivos

La rentabilidad temprana crea libertad para enfocarse en calidad

Originally published onFirst Round Review (Founder Interview)

Founder proof brief

A one-page proof brief turns Karri's Linear playbook into your next test.

See what it covers before you sign up: the pattern worth copying, the channel to test, and the risk to avoid when you adapt this story.

Pattern

$100K ARR

Channel

Boca a Boca

Output

Action checklist

What a proof brief covers

A one-page brief that turns Karri's pattern into a testable plan
Channel bet: start from Boca a Boca
A risk check before copying the Linear playbook

See what a proof brief covers

See what it covers first. Create an account only if you choose to unlock.

Inspired by Karri's journey? Generate a business idea in the Herramientas para Desarrolladores space using AI and real founder data.

Milestone Journey

Karri achieved 3 milestones on the path to $100K ARR

Primer Cliente

1 month

April 2019

70% faster

vs avg 3 months

+11 months to next milestone

$10K MRR

1 year

March 2020

42% faster

vs avg 1 year

+6 months to next milestone

$100K ARR

1 year

October 2020

49% faster

vs avg 3 years

1 year

Total journey time

Milestones achieved

Karri's Path to $100K ARRPremium

The journey, decisions, and context behind this milestone

How Karri actually did it

7/7 funnel stages sourced

Reconstructed from Karri's own published sources. Quoted claims are the founder's words, verified verbatim; anything marked as our analysis is exactly that.

Where the idea came from

Employer problem

Saarinen was frustrated by how badly designed issue-tracking tools like Jira were at Airbnb and previous employers, and built a Chrome extension that restyled Airbnb's Jira for himself; it spread to about 100 coworkers before he decided to build a standalone product with two friends who had the same complaints at Coinbase and Uber.

“Something that really frustrated me at Airbnb, and many other companies I've worked at, is how bad a lot of exciting tasks/project/issue tracking tools were”

Starting Linear - Karri Saarinen's personal blog

Validation

Validated before building

Talking to usersValidated

Before quitting their jobs, the three co-founders spent roughly a year having informal, unstructured conversations with coworkers and friends at Airbnb, Uber and Coinbase about what frustrated them in existing dev tools, meeting weekly at a bar to compare notes.

The founders describe over a year of informal validation conversations with colleagues before resigning to build Linear.

Per Linear's Path to Product-Market Fit - First Round Review (investor-published interview with Karri Saarinen)

MvpValidated

After quitting, it took about a month to build a working prototype, which they first put in front of 10 friends rather than the public. One friend's entire 10-person team switched over to Linear after trying it, which gave the founders confidence to widen access.

A month-old prototype was tested on 10 friends first; one friend's whole team adopted it, reinforcing the founders' conviction.

Per Linear's Path to Product-Market Fit - First Round Review (investor-published interview with Karri Saarinen)

WaitlistValidated10000 signups

Rolled out an invite-only private alpha (blog post, tweet, email waitlist) in April 2019. Roughly 10,000 people joined the waitlist; the founders screened signups with a survey and handpicked about 10 new users per week who matched their ICP (IC product builders), running the private beta for close to a year before opening Linear to everyone in June 2020.

Roughly 10,000 waitlist signups, with only ~10% invited in during the first year via a hand-screened, survey-gated process.

Per Linear's Path to Product-Market Fit - First Round Review (investor-published interview with Karri Saarinen)

First test users

Personal network~10 usersFree testers

The very first users were 10 personal friends of the founders who tried the freshly built prototype before any public or waitlist access existed.

Per Linear's Path to Product-Market Fit - First Round Review (investor-published interview with Karri Saarinen)

First paying customer

WaitlistFree to paid upgrade

No source describes the specific first paying customer. Linear stayed in a free, invite-only private beta for close to a year, with paid pricing only introduced when it opened to everyone in June 2020, so the earliest paying customers most plausibly upgraded from that existing free beta cohort rather than being freshly acquired. This is our inference, not a founder claim.

Our analysis, not the founder's claim

Acquisition channels, and whether they worked

Word of MouthScalingWorked

Because the product was deliberately built for individual contributors rather than managers, satisfied testers brought their whole teams over.

Per Linear's Path to Product-Market Fit - First Round Review (investor-published interview with Karri Saarinen)

The founders targeted ICs specifically because ICs are the ones who recommend tools to their own teams, unlike the managers and procurement targeted by incumbent tools.

Per Linear's Path to Product-Market Fit - First Round Review (investor-published interview with Karri Saarinen)

SEO / ContentScalingAbandoned

The founder states plainly that Linear never pursued SEO as a growth channel, relying on product quality and organic adoption instead.

“We didn't do SEO or growth hacks.”

Karri Saarinen on X, Series C thread (tweet 4/5: no A/B tests, no SEO, no growth hacks)

What didn't work

Tech choicePre-launchCost: time

The original beta login flow was built entirely around Google authentication, which locked out prospective users whose companies didn't use Google Workspace.

Per Linear's Path to Product-Market Fit - First Round Review (investor-published interview with Karri Saarinen)

What they did instead: Revised onboarding to support general email signup before opening the product publicly.

How it changed as they grew

At launch: 3 people (3 co-founders: Karri Saarinen (design), Jori Lallo, and Tuomas Artman, previously at Airbnb, Coinbase, and Uber respectively.)

Today: 80 people (Roughly 80 people as of the 2025 Series C, after the founders waited six months post-launch to hire their first employee and then roughly doubled headcount per year.)

Series a plus · $82,000,000 · 2025-06

Pricing new tier: Invite-only free private beta → Free for any team size, with paid pricing tiers to upgrade

Linear opened self-serve signup to everyone at the same time it introduced paid pricing tiers, ending the invite-only beta.

“Linear is available for everyone and you can get started for free with as many team members as you want, as long as you want.”

Practices for Building - Linear is now open for all - Linear's Medium publication, bylined Karri Saarinen

What broke as they grew

The founder describes deliberately avoiding paid growth tactics, SEO, A/B testing, and metrics-driven decisions, growing the team slowly and intentionally instead.

“We've grown the team slowly and intentionally.”

Karri Saarinen on X, Series C thread (tweet 4/5: no A/B tests, no SEO, no growth hacks)

Sources (7 in the founder's own words)

Starting Linear - Karri Saarinen's personal blog · founder-authored
Announcing Linear - Linear's Medium publication, bylined Karri Saarinen · founder-authored · 2019-04
Practices for Building - Linear is now open for all - Linear's Medium publication, bylined Karri Saarinen · founder-authored · 2020-06
Linear's Path to Product-Market Fit - First Round Review (investor-published interview with Karri Saarinen) · third party · 2025-07
Karri Saarinen on X, Series C thread (tweet 3/5: on craft and building your own way) · founder-authored · 2025-06
Karri Saarinen on X, Series C thread (tweet 4/5: no A/B tests, no SEO, no growth hacks) · founder-authored · 2025-06
Karri Saarinen on X, Series C thread (tweet 1/5: announcing the raise) · founder-authored · 2025-06
Karri Saarinen on X, Series C thread (tweet 2/5: round size and investors) · founder-authored · 2025-06

Persistence

Projects attempted before finding success

failed projects before this one worked

One attempt before — common among successful founders

Launch Strategy

How they introduced the product to the world

Waitlist

Initial go-to-market approach

Validation

How they tested demand before building

Hablar con Usuarios

Method used to confirm market interest

Launch Pricing

Price point when the product first launched

Gratis

Initial pricing strategy

Common for building initial traction

Starting Audience

Whether they had followers before launch

Existing Audience

Leveraged existing followers

Having an audience accelerates early growth

Time Investment

Average weekly hours during building phase

60 hrs

per week on average

Full-time dedication

Initial Investment

Capital required to get started

$50,000

in startup costs

Significant upfront investment

Biggest Challenge

Convencer a los desarrolladores de cambiar de herramientas arraigadas como Jira de las que todos se quejan pero siguen usando

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Frequently asked questions

How much does Linear make?

Linear reports $100M ARR as of January 2025. $100M ARR in 2025 with 178 employees. Up from $8.4M ARR in 2023. Source: Growth Letter.

What is Linear?

Herramienta de rastreo de problemas y gestión de proyectos construida para equipos de software de alto rendimiento que se preocupan por la velocidad y el diseño. It operates in Herramientas para Desarrolladores.

How long did it take Linear to reach $100k arr?

Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo & Tuomas Artman took 1 year to reach $100k arr with Linear.

Was Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo & Tuomas Artman a solo founder?

No. Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo & Tuomas Artman built Linear with co-founders.

What marketing channel did Linear use to grow?

Linear grew primarily through Boca a Boca.

What industry is Linear in?

Linear operates in Herramientas para Desarrolladores.

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The Full Story

TL;DR

Tres amigos de Airbnb, Uber y Coinbase pasaron un año validando su idea antes de dejar sus trabajos para construir Linear, ahora valorado en $1.25B.

En Airbnb, estaba frustrado con Jira. Tan frustrado que construí una extensión de Chrome que lo re-diseñó completamente. Obtuvo 100+ instalaciones internamente.