Karri Saarinen

Karri Saarinen is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Linear, a modern software development and issue-tracking platform, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to establishing Linear in 2019, he served as a Principal Designer at Airbnb from 2016 to 2019, where he directed core product design initiatives. Before his tenure at Airbnb, Saarinen operated as the Founding Designer and Head of Design at Coinbase, shaping the cryptocurrency exchange's initial user experience. His earlier entrepreneurial background includes co-founding Kippt, a collaborative bookmarking application that participated in the Y Combinator Summer 2012 batch. Additionally, he co-founded ArcticStartup and Rails Girls, a global non-profit organization dedicated to teaching thousands of women software programming worldwide. Saarinen's current professional focus centers on advancing B2B SaaS developer tools and optimizing software engineering productivity through design-driven user interfaces.