Linear Growth Playbook

Karri Saarinen and his team realized that Jira had become a bloated, slow, and frustrating 'Manager Tool' that hindered rather than helped the 'Builders' (engineers and designers).

The 'High-Velocity' Technical Moat & The 'Product-as-Art' Viral Loop: Linear tacticaly won by obsessing over performance. Their growth engine is 'The Milliseconds-Matter' UX—building a local-first, keyboard-centric interface that feels like an extension of the developer's brain. By maintaining an extremely high bar for 'Craft' and publishing their 'Linear Method' (a set of opinionated principles on how to build software), they created a cultural movement. Their growth relies on 'Developer-First Word-of-Mouth'—becoming the default choice for the world's most elite engineering teams, who then talk about Linear as a 'Competitive Advantage' for talent acquisition.