Karri Saarinen at a glance
Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
Role | Co-founder and CEO, Linear (since 2019) (Linear) |
Age | 38 as of December 2025 (Entrepreneur) |
Grew up | Outside Hämeenlinna, Finland, about an hour north of Helsinki (Sequoia) |
Education | Went to business school and dropped out; his first job, at 16, was building websites (First Round) |
Before Linear | Principal designer at Airbnb (2015–2019); first designer at Coinbase, which bought his startup Kippt in 2014 (TechCrunch) |
Co-founders | Jori Lallo (chief product officer) and Tuomas Artman (CTO) |
Lives in | California; Linear is remote-first, and his co-founders live in New York and Finland (Entrepreneur) |
Net worth | No published estimate. Linear was valued at $2.5B in its August 2026 tender offer |
Public profiles | Website karrisaarinen.com; X @karrisaarinen; LinkedIn /in/karrisaarinen; GitHub ksaa; Dribbble karrisaarinen |
Linear CEO email address: how to reach Karri Saarinen
Karri Saarinen doesn’t publish a personal email address. There is none on his website, karrisaarinen.com, which links only to his X account and Linear, and none on his X, GitHub or Dribbble profiles (checked Oct 31, 2026). For the company, Linear’s general inbox is hello@linear.app, which its contact page lists for press, partnerships and other questions (Linear).
Channel | Address | Source |
|---|---|---|
X | Bio: “ceo of @linear 🇫🇮🇺🇸 previously: @coinbase @airbnb, YC alumni” | |
Linked from Kippt’s Y Combinator profile | ||
Website | Essays and interviews; no email address | |
GitHub | Bio: “Co-founder Linear.app. Previously Airbnb, Coinbase, Kippt.” | |
Dribbble | His design portfolio, on Dribbble since 2011 | |
Linear, general inbox | hello@linear.app | |
Linear, support | support@linear.app |
Linear email address pattern
Linear staff mailboxes are on linear.app. Most addresses follow {first}@linear.app, according to LeadIQ (LeadIQ).
Format | Example (fictional name: Maya Chen) | Share of known addresses | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
{first}@linear.app | maya@linear.app | About 90% | Current, most common |
{first}.{last}@linear.app | maya.chen@linear.app | About 7% | Current, less common |
{f}{last}@linear.app | mchen@linear.app | About 2% | Rare |
Linear doesn’t own linear.com, which belongs to Analog Devices, so a guess like maya@linear.com won’t reach Linear. Before emailing any pattern-based address, run it through a verifier: a bounce hurts deliverability for every later send. All Linear patterns, domains and official inboxes are on the Linear email format page.
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Career timeline
Saarinen has built Linear into a $2.5 billion company without raising new money since 2025.
Date | Milestone | Source |
|---|---|---|
Aug 26, 2026 | Linear’s $99M employee tender offer values it at $2.5B; it passed $100M in annual recurring revenue earlier in the year | |
May 26, 2026 | Asks on X where AI’s productivity gains are going, if not into revenue growth outside the model labs | |
Jan 21, 2026 | Marks Linear’s seventh birthday: 118 people, 20,000+ paid business customers, still profitable | |
Jun 10, 2025 | Raises an $82M Series C at a $1.25B valuation, led by Accel | |
Feb 21, 2025 | Publishes “The profitable startup”, on why Linear stays small and profitable | |
Sep 14, 2023 | Raises a $35M Series B led by Accel | |
May 23, 2023 | Hires Cristina Cordova, formerly of Notion and Stripe, as COO | |
Jul 2021 | Linear becomes profitable | |
Dec 8, 2020 | Raises a $13M Series A led by Sequoia | |
Nov 21, 2019 | Raises a $4.2M seed round led by Sequoia | |
Early 2019 | Leaves his job as principal designer at Airbnb to start Linear with Jori Lallo and Tuomas Artman | |
Jul 2016 | Publishes “Building a Visual Language”, on Airbnb’s Design Language System | |
2015 | Joins Airbnb as a principal designer | |
May 6, 2014 | Coinbase buys Kippt, its first acquisition, and he joins as its first designer | |
2012 | Co-founds Kippt, a collaborative bookmarking tool, with Jori Lallo in Y Combinator’s summer 2012 batch | |
Nov 2010 | Co-founds Rails Girls, free coding workshops for women, in Helsinki | |
2006–2011 | Leads the web presence of Assembly Organizing, the Finnish LAN party and esports company |
From Helsinki’s startup scene to Linear
Saarinen grew up outside Hämeenlinna and was building websites by 16. From 2006 to 2011 he led the web presence of Assembly Organizing, the Finnish LAN party and esports company, and around 2008 he met Jori Lallo in Helsinki’s startup community (Sequoia). In 2010 he co-founded Rails Girls, free coding workshops for women (Rails Girls).
In 2012 he and Lallo moved to San Francisco to take Kippt, a collaborative bookmarking tool, through Y Combinator. In May 2014 Coinbase bought Kippt, its first acquisition (TechCrunch), and Saarinen became Coinbase’s founding designer as it grew from a team of 12 to over 100 (First Round). He moved to Airbnb as a principal designer in 2015, where he worked on the Design Language System, the shared set of components behind Airbnb’s apps (Airbnb Design). Tuomas Artman, the third co-founder, was then a staff engineer and architect at Uber (TechCrunch).
The three left their jobs in 2019 to build the issue tracker they wanted to use. Linear opened to everyone in June 2020, was profitable by July 2021 (Sequoia), and by August 2026 had more than 40,000 paying companies and a $2.5 billion valuation (Linear). Linear hires remotely, which let Saarinen move to Southern California while his co-founders live in New York and Finland (Entrepreneur).
In his own words
“Profitability isn’t unambitious; it’s controlling your own destiny.”
— From “The profitable startup”, February 2025 (Linear)
“In our company, we always try to err on the side of quality, not quantity.”
— On rejecting 996 hustle culture, December 2025 (Entrepreneur)
“We keep hearing about 10x or 100x productivity gains in engineering and knowledge work. But outside the model labs, I haven’t seen the corresponding 10-100x revenue growth across the market or increase in quality. So where is the productivity going?”
— Post on X, May 26, 2026 (X)
Linear’s leadership team
Person | Role | Since |
|---|---|---|
Karri Saarinen | Co-founder, CEO | 2019 |
Jori Lallo | Co-founder, chief product officer | 2019 |
Tuomas Artman | Co-founder, CTO | 2019 |
Cristina Cordova | Chief operating officer; previously at Stripe and Notion | May 2023 |
Tom Moor | Head of engineering | Not public |
Casey Bertenthal | Head of sales | Not public |
Jamie Finnigan | Head of security | Not public |
Conor Muirhead | Head of product design | Not public |
Titles as listed on Linear’s about page (Linear), checked Oct 31, 2026.
Full company profile, including revenue and valuation: Linear in 2026: revenue, valuation, funding, CEO.
