How To Design Products That Truly Stand Out

Great design can make or break your product. So to learn more about how to

product. So to learn more about how to prioritize high quality design in the earliest stages of your startup, we're sitting down with Kari Sarnin, the co-founder and CEO of Linear. Kari

worked at Coinbase, Airbnb, and built one of the best issue tracking tools on the market in linear. And today he's going to share some of his advice for how you can design a product that truly

stands out. Welcome to another episode

stands out. Welcome to another episode of Design Review.

[Music] [Music] Ki, thank you so much for joining us.

>> Well, it's awesome to be here.

>> Maybe just to kind of um give people a sense of where Linear is at today, maybe you can just kind of give us a high level of any interesting stats or facts and maybe a quick description of what Linear is.

>> The idea with Lener is that we want to be this purpose-built platform for building products and or planning and building products. It's not a suite of

building products. It's not a suite of tools, but it's more like an integrated workflows. It's a tool that engineers

workflows. It's a tool that engineers might use every day. So, I think it's design is especially important and speed is very important because if if any kind of paper cut or bad experience, it will

multiply a lot of times. Where we are now, like fast forward today, we we have about 15,000 companies as customers. And

then we have growth companies like Mercury, Ramp, Bretool, um, Pre and and like lot of like growth companies and as well as like larger companies like

OpenAI and uh, Block which is a which is a financial company. We wanted to build focus on the quality and keep the focus really tight to build the best product we can for these customers. So that's

why we we done some some of the things differently. You're also a YC founder

differently. You're also a YC founder and I'm curious kind of at all the stops of your career from, you know, founding your first company, going to Coinbase as the first designer there, lead designer

at Airbnb, and then starting your own company again at Linear. What's one

lesson that you took away from each of those stops that's kind of made Linear what it is today? I think linear is very much built with the advice we got from

YC and just make something people want and like talk to the users and simplifying the startup building process or clarifying it that like not a lot of

these things matter that that you see out there and a lot of things can wait.

What really matters is like you find those someone someone you can build something for and you can build it in a good way. So I think like YC really

good way. So I think like YC really helped me to understand that building companies it doesn't have to be especially in the beginning has doesn't have to be that complicated. You almost

just need the singular focus of making progress building something for the customers and then all the other stuff can kind of come automatically or later or or something it can wait. I think the

OIC also helped me with the with the ambition that you could see like hey you can make a lot of progress in a very fast time and also like eventually that progress will lead to like a massive

companies or massive growth. So I think it was really important for me. Coinbase

was actually in the same patch that I was in which was um 2012 summer. Maybe

what I learned there was that you you kind of have to really clarify with the company but also like especially I think as a designer what is the one or couple problems we're truly trying to solve

with the design or with the company itself and for me that at Coinbase thinking about back crypto back in 2014 it was a very different time like

there's a very little trust in the market and also just because it's a new thing you don't have that trust built in so like what I saw that my job as a

designer is like I have to change this company to look like more trustworthy and more professional because they want to go mainstream but we also need to simplify this. We have to we have to

simplify this. We have to we have to make the design really simple so and explain it in a simple way. So we can break out of this like crypto niche

group. I kind of looked around the

group. I kind of looked around the website the product the brand and I basically just made a list of like these things needs to be fixed. So, it's like the logo was this stack of coins like a

little bit like kind of like, you know, like Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge kind of. Yeah. It's like the coins on the

of. Yeah. It's like the coins on the table. One of them is like tipping over.

table. One of them is like tipping over.

It's like why is it tipping over? It's

like that's not that doesn't feel good.

It it should feel like staple or something.

>> I did have some trouble convincing them to like pick up a new locom mark >> and it eventually, yeah, we didn't do it until the IPO. They finally picked one which is like a kind of like a circle

that looks like a C. There's like a thing going into it so it looks like a C.

>> And then I on the website like what it looked like was um so Brian and the team had had that basically built it over the past two years. I think they had like quite a lot of users already. They had a lot of money in the background like in

the in the platform but everything was built with Twitter Bootstrap.

>> I think that the product itself worked quite nicely. It was quite simple. The

quite nicely. It was quite simple. The

problem was that that the the visuals using this kind of standard library made it look like a hack project.

>> So like someone coming to a website thinking, oh should I buy some Bitcoin and like should I store my money in this Bitcoin bank?

>> It's kind of like makes it a little bit uneasy. It's like can I trust this

uneasy. It's like can I trust this people? Like is this a real company? Is

people? Like is this a real company? Is

this some like side project? Is this a hack project? So the second thing is

hack project? So the second thing is like well we need to fix the website like we need to make some kind of visuals to it. And then the third thing is that the the product itself that it

also looked like that it used a bit Twitter bootstrap like I didn't change the layout the the kind of structure of the product but I just changed the visuals and then that way like fairly

quickly we could get got to a state that it like from the outside this company looks more trustworthy and more real or like more like a real company. And then

the third thing like later on in the brand I was using a lot of photos because I think the photos of people photos of the earth like mountains forest

something I found out like crypto and the space is so abstract and ambiguous that like it doesn't feel like crowning you're like what is this like there's

this magic internet money it doesn't exist you know like kind of like it's weird. So I think like some those kind

weird. So I think like some those kind of things like those kind of touches I don't know how much it actually impacted anyone like I don't know if anyone like picked on it >> but that was the thinking in the back

end and then lastly I think with Airbnb >> uh I joined there like much later they were already a huge company uh they weren't public yet but they were se couple thousand people at least what I

learned from Priesky there was that the brand and I think Silicon Valley still a lot of startups don't quite understand brand or design.

>> Mhm.

>> There's I think they logically try to understand it that yeah okay design is important. We see that it makes sense

important. We see that it makes sense and brand is important makes sense but what what is it like they don't have a maybe the language or the experience to to think about it or maybe they just

don't want to think about it. It was

interesting to see with Airbnb is like how much the CEO is actually focused on the brand >> and seeing that certain kind of advantage which turns out it is an advantage. Brand is really like the

advantage. Brand is really like the story you tell like what is this company about like what do we care about both internally and externally and then you try to follow those values or those

action like those that thinking as much as you can and not not kind of like sacrifice on it. So that from the external I could see like Airbnb is f

like this is the Airbnb like brand and their their actions are following that and then over time I can trust them that they're like predictable. They're not

one day it's like Airbnb is great and they're doing everything right. The next

year everything is bad and like I I I don't trust that kind of there's too much volatility in it. So I think that that was interesting to see like how much he he cared about it.

>> Yeah, that's really interesting. So, it

sounds like at those stops, Coinbase and Airbnb, I think a brand is always helpful for building trust, but it seems like the design and the brand, especially for those two businesses where, you know, somebody's going to come stay in your home or you're going

to stay in somebody else's home, it seems like that was incredibly important. And now at Linear, it seems

important. And now at Linear, it seems like your brand, um, at least as an outsider, it seems a lot is about craft and quality and just like a high quality

professional product. And I'm curious,

professional product. And I'm curious, what are the things that you do on a daily basis to try to create that brand and how intentional is it for you?

>> It was something that we worked in these companies and we're working in this industry a while. So sometimes you you kind of get tired of the things that exist and you kind of try to think like would would there be some other way of

doing this thing or other way of thinking about it and that's like a good starting point like you start thinking like what do you personally really care about as a founder >> and then you start going into that like well what should the company then care

about those things should be aligned like otherwise like why you work why do you found this company >> from there we saw that there's a lot of competition um it's it's not super easy

to differentiate with the features I think because I think like people just look at oh it's does project project management whatever like these other tools do it too but like what we see that that none of these companies in

this market actually had any kind of brand you couldn't really say what they're about like you could know that they exist but you don't can't really tell what they're about so for us it was

really that can we be really authentic and kind of direct or honest and also like show that we have this like care or values for certain things and quality being one them like we we are helping

companies to build software and for us personally we find it annoying when things don't work that well and we don't want that to have like our customers to

have that feeling. So we try to like tell everyone internally and and and when we do this work that like we need to strive for the quality. Quality

doesn't mean perfection that you can't have anything rough or anything uh you need to polish everything to like for years. It's it just means that like you

years. It's it just means that like you have this direction or idea in the mind that we are about quality. We want the user to like the customers to have a great experience and that's like the

most important thing. And yeah,

sometimes you you might have to launch something to get feedback and that's okay. But like you should then like

okay. But like you should then like remember to come back and say find like ways to like improve it or fix it if it's rough. In some ways you are

it's rough. In some ways you are building this culture around something internally. So that's part of my job

internally. So that's part of my job that sales is part of the experience of linear. I want it to be a quality

linear. I want it to be a quality experience. What we really want to like

experience. What we really want to like find people that can do like a quality experience and like what I think in this kind of market it is that these buyers are quite sophisticated and they they

already have maybe a product they use.

So they do want to understand like how can they how can linear do it better or differently. And so those people have

differently. And so those people have like the sales people we hire, they have to be they don't have to be engineers or like super technical people, but they have to have at least the capacity or

curiosity to understand the the product really well and the the the customers well and I think it's it's been working and we've been able to hire hire people but I think founders or startups they

just decide well we hire a sales team and then or someone like the investor sells like you need to hire sales then like okay we'll go hire sales >> but they don't ask you questions like what kind of sales like

>> it feels interchangeable, right? All

sales parts are you swap them in now, >> but like companies are very different.

So yeah, you might be an enterprise company, you need someone who can do that like navigate that market really like kind of it's a complicated process.

So you need someone to navigate that or or something like maybe if you're like medical product maybe you need to have someone who has worked in the medical field. So there's like attributes that

field. So there's like attributes that you you can think like how in even in sales that could be how could you like really signal your what your company is about like what you do well it

>> it's interesting to me I think a lot of times founders think about um brand as like the logo the colors I put on the website you know like those types of

things but it sounds like the argument you're trying to make is that actually the brand is like every touch point and it's interesting that you're like down to the sales people like they're the first contact with a lot of your

potential customers and making sure that that is the brand experience that you want them to have with your company is incredibly important and would often be overlooked by a lot of people I think.

>> Yeah. And I think like I like to think it's all kind of follows from the same tree that you have this some kind of brand thinking or it's more like the company values like what are we about

and then you try to visualize that or make it happen in different aspects. So

visualizing means that you make a make your logo and you make the website and you are signaling like we are very like professional or we are trustworthy or something with that design. I would say like the brand is often like what does

the person feel the experiences. I think

a lot of times people think about you know craft and high quality and the things that you talk about and like you said they think of perfection and waiting a really long time to ship something. Um, but talk about how you

something. Um, but talk about how you operate to achieve that high level of quality while still, you know, shipping very frequently and and getting things in the hands of real users before

they're like fully baked in your own head.

>> Yeah. One of the lessons I learned in some of these other companies with that like having more people working on things doesn't necessarily make it better. It's often can make it worse.

better. It's often can make it worse.

you start to lose the thread of like what is this feature even about because everyone has a little bit different opinions and you start into this bike shedding or like a design by committee

that we try to like kind of get everything in there but then it's now the feature is not really for anything because it's too broad or it's like doesn't really quite work for anything.

From the beginning we wanted that the people work in small teams and like there's often like two three people uh it's like engineer maybe a couple engineers one designer and we for a long

time we didn't have any product managers and today we have about two and they are more like the product manager job in in Elina is more that like they're looking

across things not like necessarily specific product project all the time or a specific feature all the time >> and they're kind of like trying to keep the overall threat going like well what is happening and like who is saying what

and like where are we at things and then then like the we want the engineers and the designers to actually run the project it's hard to spec quality or the right solution like you can maybe spec

the solution to some degree but you can't really spec the quality execution of it and I think that's where I think if someone is driving the project and building it they have a lot of

opportunities to like tweak it to make it better like what I think I what I saw sometimes happening other companies is that we had this like nice design or or or some or some kind of spec and then someone starts building it and then they

realize that oh this design doesn't quite work in practice but now no one wants to go back to change it because the design was already greenlighted in this meeting like with the CEO a long

time ago so now we have would have to go all the way back and then like change the design and we have to like approve it again which will add timeline and then now no one's happy because timelines got out of whack. People are

just not taking enough ownership and or cannot use their own agency to to fix things. And so with the features we try

things. And so with the features we try to have like the engineer and designer to drive it like this is like scoping it trying to figure out whether the first version talking to customers, talking to

users, looking at the user research. How

we manage the quality and speed is that we generally just you can do whatever like we use feature flags a lot. So you

can put anything in the app in the internal use like the once you have the idea almost like you can put it in the app and we can try it out like it doesn't have to be good or it doesn't have to be like that polished or

anything. So internally we're very okay

anything. So internally we're very okay like iterating to stuff and then we also have beta programs where we invite specific companies like hey do you want to try this out? It's a little rough but like you can try it out and see if it's

like useful. But then once we get to the

like useful. But then once we get to the final like general availability release, we try to like look through the executions like is the all the animations correct? Like are the things

animations correct? Like are the things like are the details correct? Like does

it feel good? Are we missing something?

So there's like a last check but we don't try to polish it all the time but we're trying to push the team like okay make progress as fast as you can but at the very last step we should just make a

look check that everything is like kind of reasonably in a good shape because we want people to lead these projects. We

also need to hire people who can do that. So we can't hire engineers that

that. So we can't hire engineers that only want to code and like never think about anything else. I just want to look at the editor and like press the buttons or something. But we we are always

or something. But we we are always looking for people who have opinions or they have like some kind of product sensibilities or they have some kind of product taste or they they just like explicit some kind of curiosity. It's

like I think there's a good way of doing things and there's a bad way of doing things. This feature doesn't feel good.

things. This feature doesn't feel good.

This feature does feel good. So we're

just looking for those people that are can think and use their own judgment.

>> I'm sure a lot of people are out there wondering what should I be looking for if I'm trying to hire somebody like that model sounds great. I need the right people. How do I find the right people

people. How do I find the right people and what questions should I be asking to figure out if they're going to be good at that?

>> Yeah. Yeah. I think from the resume experience level it it or like experience you should be looking for something or has this person built anything on their own or like had they built anything large like like a

complete product like they were like maybe like a first engineer somewhere or they >> they built their own open source project or a side hobby or something because I think like that forces you to think about this things like should I do it

this way or that way? But I would say like a flag is someone who's worked at Google for 10 years and I I can like see like well they're probably fairly like boxed in in the specific area and they

probably didn't have to like think about other things. And when I interview them

other things. And when I interview them I I like to ask them about the projects they working on like or something like they're really proud of like what is a project they're proud of and then I just keep asking questions like why why are

you proud of it like why why did you do it this way? And sometimes they say, "Well, someone told me to do it." Well,

so like, well, did you agree that way or did you have a different opinion about it? And like you're just trying to see

it? And like you're just trying to see like did they pay attention? Like did

they feel something like this is right or is this is wrong in their opinion?

Maybe their opinion is wrong anyway. But

I think what what we're really assessing is like do they even want to think about this thing or do they naturally think about these things? I don't think there's like a super surefire way to to

evaluate that, but I think it's more the more questions you ask about the projects they worked on and the more specific they can be in it is usually like a good sign if they just say well

it's like I just did this and I work on the tech and like whatever but if they start going like yeah like I did build this thing but the hard part was this customers were saying this and like whatever so you can see that like they

were paying attention to the business problems too and the user problems not just the technical problems >> I am passionate about encouraging more designers to become founders ers and I think you were just, you know, one of

the top examples of somebody that was a designer and, you know, I guess you were a founder and then designer and then founder again. I'm curious like what

founder again. I'm curious like what skills or like superpowers or unfair advantages do you think you have as a founder based on your design background, design thinking, maybe even the way you grew up?

>> I like to think like design is is finding things that fit and kind of feel good. And I think that in a way when

good. And I think that in a way when you're building products or companies that's kind of like what you're doing ideally like yeah some sometimes companies get built or products get

built really like randomly but I like to find that like what is the com kind of like common ideas or threats like what are we trying to communicate or what are we trying to solve and I think as a

designer it's not always easy to articulate that but I can somehow like sense or feel it that this is the way to do it. I can see that this will work and

do it. I can see that this will work and with designs or or other things I can visualize how they will look or how they will work or like or maybe like even like how the users might react to it and

then I I can try to think like what are the inputs to that output like what is what kind of people we need or what kind of what the brand should be like or what the product should look like. So I would

say like as a design founder I think that the superpower could be that you are more maybe you have like a broader view of things. I know exactly what how like technical founders think about it

but I think they they are very like tech focused and it's like everything is outside of that it's kind of like maybe not in their focus whereas I think like

a designer can maybe be a little bit more broader. What advice would you have

more broader. What advice would you have for designers that are thinking about making the leap and starting a company or maybe they're nervous about it? Um

I'm curious what you would tell them.

>> You should try to like broaden your horizons as much as you can. So what I mean by it that is often I I've seen in companies design like designers working

in companies they get quite narrow focus on the design problems like I was given this task or this project. So now I'm going to do it. I'm going to design it.

I'm going to open Figma and then I'm going to design it. And then like when they go to reviews even about those features like maybe the CEO is reviewing it, maybe someone else is reviewing and you get this feedback and like people are not always happy with the results.

You kind of get into this small like oh I'm not a good designer like I'm doing something wrong. But the problem is

something wrong. But the problem is really like you're maybe not you're kind of overlooking what the other people are looking for like what is their problems

like usually internally the CEO or the other people in in the organization they have their goals or like strategies or initiatives or or some something they

want from this. When you get design feedback it's not always about the design it's about the that this is actually not like kind of solving their problem then it's not solving the business problem. And sometimes it's

business problem. And sometimes it's just like they don't even know what the pro like maybe people maybe the CEO and some like product manager there maybe like even have a different problem in mind like the problem isn't clear to

people it's not people don't are not aligned on it even if you don't become a design founder I think it's useful to start to like expand your mindset like your job is not to sit there and like

put some stuff in Figma but your job is to kind of solve the company's problems >> often that means that you are solving them through sign, but if you don't understand what the problems are, like you're not going to like be able to

solve them. So, the more you can like

solve them. So, the more you can like kind of learn from the people around you. So, if you work in a B2B company

you. So, if you work in a B2B company like well talk to the sales people like they they talk to customers all the time. They're a good resource for

time. They're a good resource for understanding like the customers and and then as well like a company leadership try to ask them like what they looking for like try to understand their problems. And when you do that, you start learning like, oh, this is how

businesses operate or this is this is how people think. This is what the different roles do. This is maybe the purpose of this function.

>> I'm curious like why do you think founders should care about design? And

especially from the earliest days of their company, what differences have you seen between companies that do care about it versus ones that don't?

>> So, you have to think like what is actually the the value of the design that brings to your specific company in this specific market. And then I think

that a lot of times people just don't think through that. So they either copy what other companies are doing or they just don't do it at all. Like they just like well we don't know how to do design

so we'll just not even think about it.

But I do think like the best companies do care about design. You can grow to a big company being without too much design. I think it's possible if you

design. I think it's possible if you just have like a very good technology.

But I do do think like it's it can the design can accelerate the the company and the the how people think about to like it can even help with investors.

Investors are people too. So if they think something is cool or there's a there's a strong brand, they're more likely to to pay more like they they want it more than

>> it's emotional, right?

>> Yeah. So, so I think that kind of maybe the design is is partly it's making things easier for users, but I think it's partly it's also like touching this like emotional

>> needs of people and then I think it can amplify everything you do. So that's why I always think like even a very early stage companies maybe you have like five people or something or three people

maybe you should hire a designer even if it's not that needed right now but I think they can have at that point they can have like very big leverage because the the work if everything is a little

bit nicer everything is a little bit better it will compound over time and like the users will see it and and you don't have to do this big redesign like years down the line because you kind of

ended updated this like horrible place and now you have to like hire more people and like fix everything and then the customers are complaining because things are changing. So

>> yeah, >> I think it's just like a smart thing to do.

>> You wrote um a a really uh incredible uh post around 10 tips for creating products that stand out. I'm curious

like what are the two or three that you think are most important that you know you think all founders should be aware of or think about or consider as they're building their products? I think the whole definition of being differentiated

or being an outlier company or a breakout company is like you really need to show you're better at something like much more than anyone else. Like you

have to be known for it.

>> So then I think that that's starts with that like you have to decide that maybe the one thing you want to be really known of or the best like it can't be the same thing everyone else is doing

because then like you're you're not differentiated. So I would start with

differentiated. So I would start with that like figuring out that like differentiator or like what you really want to be known of. I think my second thing is like it's it's maybe weird but

I would say like the people you hire is probably especially in the product organization if you're trying to build like really good product the people you hire has the most impact on the product.

I feel like we operate quite casually.

We don't have a lot of processes. We

have yeah we have this feature flags and some kind of testing but but we don't have like a lot of rules or processes >> because we want to hire people we can trust their judgment and and taste.

Early on I think we with the founders we kind of played this mind game of like well if we just disappear would would this people know what to do kind of like I think like we done our job well and

hired the right people if we think like well they they would survive and they would like actually make progress. The

second thing is like I think you need to give them some space to do it. Like if

you're like constantly hounding them, it's like where is it? Like

>> do it now. Then obviously they don't have the space to do their work well. So

there's some like balance there. It's

like that you can't be like constantly like micromanaging them or hounding them.

>> Yeah. How do you balance that? I mean I know it's important to you to like give space for people to work and in a perfect world I think everybody would want that and then that's balanced with trying to ship quickly. We try to set

some kind of timeline pressure that we would like to see something at this time and this date and we think that's reasonable and then I think like what it what it what we hope the team will do is

that they will think about that timeline and then they start scoping down the project >> and they start thinking well what can we actually achieve and maybe we we need to really prioritize the things we do which I think in the end is even useful

because >> then you start focusing on the right things anyway so there's this like little bit of timeline measure then we keep track track of the progress like if the progress are good and like things are moving I'm not like I'm not going to

get sad if the like the timeline is not hit exactly I might ask well what is the new timeline or like what is where do you think is now and like how far is from something so there's a little bit

of pressure it's like where is it or like how far it far along it is but it's not like daily so there's some some level of pressure but it's it's like we're not like super timeline >> date driven

>> shifting gears to AI a little bit it seems like Now it's easier than ever to um get design work created by AI or to ship product that AI generates. Is that

a good thing? And what are the considerations that people should be thinking about in a world where it's so easy to just generate new designs and ship new product and new features that maybe people aren't thinking about yet.

>> Yeah. Yeah, I often think with technology, I don't think you should necessarily think is it a good thing or a bad thing because usually technology will happen regardless like you can't I think like we can't go back

>> not having AI anymore. It's it's not going to disappear from the world. So

now their next question is well what what should I think about it or like how should I use it or how should people use it? And I think it will lower the the

it? And I think it will lower the the the the floor on things like design for example. companies that maybe before

example. companies that maybe before couldn't hire designers or they didn't have time for it or something. I think

they can kind of like help prop them a little bit that they can now do like decently good design. Designers

themselves like if they might always not have skills for everything and sometimes they run out of ideas. I think AI can help help with that too. I do think that the the top the the ceiling it will just

keep getting higher. And so if you really want to be the best design company or the best company, you have to still keep pushing the boundaries and you can't just expect that the AI will

solve it for you. Like basically AI you can get to the average level maybe but like going beyond that you still need all the work you've done in the past.

You should understand the danger is that when something is easy to do, you stop paying attention to it. So if it's easy to generate designs and ship them, you maybe didn't think about it this feature

at all. Like I think some sometimes when

at all. Like I think some sometimes when something is really hard, you're constantly thinking about it like is this worth it? Do I still want to do this? Like should we just stop doing

this? Like should we just stop doing this? Like I don't this is so hard. Um

this? Like I don't this is so hard. Um

so I think that the the the kind of like the suffering helps to maybe clarify the design. Maybe sometimes it tells you

design. Maybe sometimes it tells you that it's not the right thing. Maybe it

shouldn't be that hard. maybe you're

approaching it wrong. So I think you should just understand that the danger is that when you outsource the the output too much, you might stop losing control or even like

understanding of the your company or what the product does.

>> Are you worried that AI is going to make designers obsolete?

>> I don't think so. Similar with engineers or or designers, I think the campaign shifts happening like even today like I think it's easy to generate websites. So

maybe the market for website designers will go down. Like I do think people will still have some designers working on websites. And I think like in my mind

on websites. And I think like in my mind like the real problem with websites is not the design, it's like the actual the narrative or the storytelling or the >> the the explanation of things.

>> Yeah.

>> And I don't think the AI can like really solve that for you. Like you really have to understand that. I mean the AI can help with that too, but I think you still really have to understand that what do you what is this website for?

Like who is it for? they can have maybe the AI agents or something can kind of do work for them um on the kind of in the background and you your role might

be shifts more like towards like being a more like an IC lead or like a manager a little bit that >> you are not only doing your own output like an as a

individual contributor but you're also responsible for some kind of AI's output and I think like your shop should be still like is this good is this fitting is does this work and that kind of things. We don't know what's going to

things. We don't know what's going to happen. But my feeling is also that if

happen. But my feeling is also that if if AI makes for example like building software really easy and and cheap. I

think we will just build more software.

I think the industry will grow and you will need more designers like you can't just have AI at this point. We don't

have a companies that are purely run by AI.

>> Yeah.

>> And so yeah. So, so I think until that happens, I think we'll still live in a world where you might have a quite a lot of people in a company, humans doing things and then you have AI also doing

things and I think like because the AI can make things more cost effective, I think you the companies will just decide to do more. That's my I think at least optimistic take that what will happen with the with the AI.

>> And then you kind of have a front row seat to this with a lot of the best product teams using linear. Where do you think things are going in terms of how product and design teams will operate in the future?

>> Yeah. So like with with linear it's it's very focused on the execution or or tracking work or like solving problems and what we have for example been

working on now is like building the agents platform that you could bring agents into linear and they could work for you. You could delegate work for

for you. You could delegate work for them. So there's a bug report comes in

them. So there's a bug report comes in into the triage, the agent can like take a look at it and say, "Hey, I'm pretty sure I can like solve this for you." And

then you just like, "Okay." And then it goes to work and then you review the code. So I think there's a lot of things

code. So I think there's a lot of things I think we can able to streamline and what we see in from the from the customers and market there's a lot of interest for this and all the all the

CTOs basically are saying that AI is their kind of like number one priority and the CEOs are writing this memos about AI and I think like it's clear that on the leadership level they

understand that AI is is useful. I find

that the whole industry so there's this big launches of very broad AI tools like there's the the AI every company very big company they have the chat bot and

they have all the all the different like tool AI kind of set of tools that can do anything for anyone but I think like what is missing there is like the people

who are building it from like more like a crowns up like well what is the problem someone has today like >> for example like triaging issues like a company, they don't always know where

the issue should go. Where should this bug go? So, you could have like a manual

bug go? So, you could have like a manual process, someone looking at it. You

could have some kind of automation or you could have an AI to look at it like, hey, like with the AI could go look at your workspace and code base and like understand like it looks like you have

this kind of product areas. It looks

like these kind of teams or you like people are working on those product areas and it looks like generally when these kind of issues come in that this these go into these kind of teams or

this kind of person. So like our approach with linear is like we're now like thinking more as like what are the specific problems we could directly solve with the AI and it it could be

like a better like more quicker value uh to the customer than having this like very broad spectrum like ask anything or create anything or something that kind of like approach. So that's like what we

are excited about.

>> Well Kyrie, thank you so much for joining. uh so much great in uh advice

joining. uh so much great in uh advice and insight here for uh everybody who's watching at home. So really appreciate you taking the time and and sharing all of your lessons and uh unique things,

counterintuitive things that that you all do at linear and hopefully a lot of those can propagate out through other startups as well. So really appreciate you joining.

>> Yeah, thanks for having me and great to be back at the at the YC office.

>> Awesome. That does it for this episode of Design Review and uh we'll see you on the next one.