Key Takeaways Saarinen is the 38-year-old CEO of project management startup Linear.
Linear, which was valued at $1.25 billion in June, is a remote company that offers five weeks of paid time off per year and four months of paid parental leave.
At the heart of Linear’s success is the belief that great products don’t come from nonstop hustle, but from a fulfilling life outside of work.
Silicon Valley’s infamous 996 work schedule (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week) holds little appeal for Karri Saarinen, the 38-year-old CEO of project management startup Linear.
“We haven’t implemented that kind of culture, and I don’t personally believe it produces the outcomes I want,” Saarinen says in a new interview with Entrepreneur.
Instead, Saarinen asks employees to work the standard 40 hours, with generous perks. Linear, a remote company that offers five weeks of paid time off per year and four months of paid parental leave, is proof that it’s possible to build a world-class tech business without sacrificing worker wellbeing. The startup’s 100 employees are spread across 10 different time zones, from the U.S. to Finland.
Linear’s core product is a system to coordinate work in companies. It offers a project management issue tracking tool as well as a code review tool. The startup was last valued at $1.25 billion in June after raising $82 million for a Series C funding round, bringing its total funds raised to $134.2 million. More than 2,000 companies, including OpenAI, Cursor and Block, rely on the startup’s software tools, according to Saarinen.
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Saarinen sees the urgent rush in AI as a race that won’t end soon, and says companies that adopt 996 work schedules and other “hustle culture” methods risk burning out staff in pursuit of speed. Plus, the output from demanding companies is “actually not that good,” Saarinen says.
“People are rushing too much and launching things that don’t quite work,” he says. “In our company, we always try to err on the side of quality, not quantity.”
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