Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo & Tuomas Artman

Linear

Linear: Создание трекера задач, которые разработчики действительно любят использовать

$100M ARR

Current revenue · as of January 2025

Growth Letter

1 year

$100K ARR

Сарафанное радио

Канал роста

Сооснователи

Основатель

Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo & Tuomas Artman

Сооснователи•Технический•USA

Занятость

Полная занятость

Опыт

Опытный

Продукт

Linear

Инструмент отслеживания проблем и управления проектами, созданный для высокопроизводительных команд разработчиков, которые заботятся о скорости и дизайне.

Тип

SaaS

Отрасль

Инструменты для разработчиков

Модель

Маркетинговая стратегия

Как Karri привлекал клиентов

Канал роста

Сарафанное радио

Также использовал

Twitter / XProduct Hunt

Tech Stack

Инструменты, использованные для создания Linear

ReactTypeScriptPostgreSQLElectron

Полная история

TL;DR

Трое друзей из Airbnb, Uber и Coinbase потратили год на валидацию своей идеи перед тем как уйти с работы, чтобы создать Linear — теперь оценивается в $1.25B.

В Airbnb я был разочарован Jira. Так разочарован, что я создал Chrome extension, который полностью перестилизовал его. Он получил 100+ установок внутри компании.

Разговор в баре

Годы спустя я встретился с Jori (из Coinbase) и Tuomas (из Uber) на пиво. Они имели такие же разочарования. В ту ночь мы решили: давайте создадим что-то лучшее.

Один год валидации

Мы не спешили уходить с работы. В течение года мы встречались каждую среду в баре рядом с нашими офисами, обсуждая с коллегами, что их разочаровывало в существующих инструментах. Самая большая жалоба: все было слишком медленно.

Создание для себя

В марте 2019 года мы ушли и начали создавать. Мы были чрезвычайно придирчивыми — как Apple, мы предоставляли сильные настройки по умолчанию вместо бесконечной кастомизации. Цель: создать что-то, что мы действительно хотели бы использовать ежедневно.

Избирательные ранние пользователи

Мы запустили приватный бета-тест с листом ожидания из 10,000 писем. Но мы приглашали только около 10 человек в неделю — тщательно отобранных на основе ответов на опрос. Мы хотели самых мотивированных пользователей, которые соответствовали нашей цели: IC product builders в быстрорастущих стартапах.

Прибыльность с самого начала

Мы достигли прибыльности рано и остались прибыльными. Это дало нам свободу сосредоточиться на качестве вместо метрик. Никаких компромиссов. Мы прибыльны уже 4+ года.

Основана: 2019
Пользователи приватного бета: 1,000 DAU перед публичным запуском
Seed: $4.2M (ноябрь 2019)
Оценка: $1.25B
Команда: 70 человек (удаленно)

Ключевые выводы

Потратьте время на валидацию перед тем как уйти с работы — год не слишком долго

Будьте своим первым клиентом и создавайте то, что вы действительно хотите использовать

Избирательные ранние пользователи дают лучшую обратную связь, чем массовые регистрации

Ранняя прибыльность создает свободу сосредоточиться на качестве

Изначально опубликовано наFirst 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

Сарафанное радио

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 Сарафанное радио
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.

Вдохновились путём Karri? Сгенерируйте бизнес-идею в сфере Инструменты для разработчиков с помощью AI и реальных данных от основателей.

Зарегистрируйтесь бесплатно, чтобы попробовать

Путь через milestone

Karri достиг 3 milestone на пути к $100K ARR

Первый клиент

1 month

April 2019

Среднее: 1 month

+11 months до следующего milestone

$10K MRR

1 year

March 2020

Среднее: 1 year

+6 months до следующего milestone

$100K ARR

1 year

October 2020

На 25% быстрее

против медианы 2 years

1 year

Общее время пути

Достигнутые milestone

Against every documented journey

Karri Saarinen, Jori Lallo & Tuomas Artman reached $10K MRR in 12 months, faster than 48% of the 295 documented $10K journeys (median 12 months). The amber bar is this journey.

See the full distribution

Путь Karri к $100K ARRПремиум

История, решения и контекст, стоящие за этим 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

Откройте полный путь Karri

Смотрите полный разбор: стратегия запуска, методы валидации, стартовые затраты, экспертный анализ, replication playbook и другие практические инсайты.

Перейти на Premium

Мгновенный доступ ко всем историям основателей

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?

Инструмент отслеживания проблем и управления проектами, созданный для высокопроизводительных команд разработчиков, которые заботятся о скорости и дизайне. It operates in Инструменты для разработчиков.

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 Сарафанное радио.

What industry is Linear in?

Linear operates in Инструменты для разработчиков.

Поделиться этой историей:

Другие истории, которые вам могут понравиться

Основатели со схожими путями или стратегиями

Pieter Levels

Nomad List

How I turned a spreadsheet into a $2M+/year business as a solo founder

In 2013, I sold all my possessions, packed a backpack and a laptop, and flew to Thailand to begin my digital nomad life. I was once a lost musician ea...

$456K/год·$10K MRR в 1 year·Соло

SaaSПутешествия🌍 Remote

Tony Dinh

TypingMind

How I made $22K in 7 days with a ChatGPT UI tool

On March 1st 2023, OpenAI announced the ChatGPT API. Right on that day, I came up with the idea to create a new UI to solve my own pain points with th...

$1.7M/год·$10K MRR в 4 days·Соло

SaaSAI / ML🇻🇳 VN

Marc Lou

ShipFast

From Paris waiter to $250K in 5 months selling a code boilerplate

My journey took me from being a Paris waiter to an $80,000/month solopreneur over seven years of persistence. After 17 failed projects, I found succes...

$240K/год·$100K ARR в 5 months·Соло

ИнфопродуктИнструменты для разработчиков🇫🇷 FR

Понравилась эта история?

Получайте больше историй основателей прямо в ваш почтовый ящик каждую неделю.