Linear

"We haven’t used OKRs. For goals, we like to keep it simple and sometimes have more strategic goals, like “Be the default tool for startups” or “Get xxx number of companies,” which we then use as the theme for figuring out the roadmap. I find these types of goals useful to align our team to what we are after without being too specific about how we get there. It’s also much more empowering for them.

Our very secret strategy slide We also don’t have metrics goals for the product or any projects, but we do have a North Star company-level metric goal. For a B2B tool like ours that takes some time for a company to adopt the tool or any new feature, setting specific metrics goals and measuring progress doesn’t seem that useful and more often can lead you astray. To me, product goals should be about how we add value for our existing customers or expand to a new customer base; in other words, how we solve our customers’ problems better."

-Karri Saarinen, Co-Founder and CEO of Linear

• How they prioritize performance and reliability over feature bloat
• Small team (under 70) achieving $400M valuation through relationship focus
• Specific examples of relationship-building product decisions
• How their approach follows the hierarchy pyramid