So what does the inverse look like?

Start the company with the goal to be the best for something (@linear is the best tool for software teams to plan and build). Each market can only support 1-2 winners, so if you are not going to be the best, you probably have already lost.

https://twitter.com/karrisaarinen/status/1845158951752708394

To me “best” also means being quality & fitting solution for the need. This means quality and finding the fit should be paramount. Everything should be evaluated from that perspective (does it increase the quality & fit?

This might be the end of @cartainc as the trusted platform for startups.

As a founder it feels kind shitty that Carta, who I trust to manage our cap table, is now doing cold outreach to our angel investors about selling Linear shares to their buyers. Btw "the buyer" would buy the shares exactly at our Series B share price. Not that this information is not unobtainable secret but makes me paranoid Carta's is playing both sides here.

People asking what taste is, or is there a framework ––

It's knowing what good looks like. Person who has taste in certain things, can find good things, create good things and point out how something needs to change to make it good.

Jiro from Jiro Dreams of Sushi: Paul Graham, Taste for Makers: paulgraham.com/taste.html

When Microsoft leadership feels like GitHub layoffs are not bad enough, they have to increase the pain by forcing people to use MS Teams on their 4y old laptops. And why does something like switch to Teams matter?

Top down decisions on minor things like this signal about a culture change.

Steve Blank's classic on this:
steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the…’s-are-no-longer-free/

2019 when we got started with Linear, most SaaS websites at the time seemed to be these "Corporate Memphis" sites with vague benefit statements and weird colorful illustrations. No screenshots of the product and dark sites were very rare in B2B SaaS. With @linear, the brand was about the hope for the future. Tools exist to do a job. It’s about precision and taking the work seriously and getting out of the way.

I was inspired by GMUNK's work on Tron UI and Apple's Pro line products and wanted to bring that style to B2B SaaS.

I’ve seen a lot of takes on the Figma Adobe deal in past week and think most VCs/finance folks misses the point since they don’t really understand the market or tools Adobe and Figma makes. Figma is not a Photoshop killer and Figma didn't put "Photoshop in the cloud". First, Adobe business is making tools for specific creative fields like photographers, illustrators, magazine editors, videographers etc. The talk about some kind of “Adobe” bundle doesn’t make sense since most people only have a need and proficiency in 1-3 of the Adobe tools.

Been designing the last few weeks and realized how simple but effective the @linear design system is. There is no design system team, no councils, no meetings about what we should call it or if it’s “atomic" or not. We have a system which has colors, type, icons and components We have had the system from the beginning which helped to speed up both design and development, and even allow supporting dark, light and custom user themes in the app. We have one file in Figma which describes it and also built in to the code.

I was just reminded that for our Series A, we sent a questionnaire to the investors we were considering to understand if we have alignment.

Then the investor needed to write a doc or a presentation explaining their answers and thinking. It had questions like which other investors they would add to the round and why, what kind GTM they would see effective and examples, how to resolve specific challenge X, Y, Z, key hires and how they help with hiring, how to grow business to ARR, how sales plays etc...

Being a designer, and obviously design was important for Coinbase, this is a bad take even by Twitter’s standard.

(Btw, I was managing the metalab’s work for the landing page. We stopped working with them after that project and I redid the landing pages few months later)

https://twitter.com/awilkinson/status/1376536079117918211

The reality is more nuanced. When I joined as the first designer back in 2014, Coinbase had already hired compliance and legal. They thought about security, banking relations. Things that make or break it. Companies don’t succeed or fail because of a color choice

At @linear_app, we don’t write user stories. They’re unnecessary and slow down the team.

I also always found them very weird to write and read. It’s like the tasks are in ancient Greek instead of English that everyone can understand. Wonder if other people felt this way?

More👇 User stories are a roundabout way to describe a todo. It would be ridiculous to write your todos this way. “As a human, I need to go to the store in order to have food to eat”. You would never write that. Instead: “Get groceries” and list items to buy.

1/ For anyone considering leaving SF, here is my story: After living 7 years in SF, 6months ago finally moved out to San Diego, close to Encinitas 2/ My main worry was losing on the SF scene and ambition but actually been able to keep in touch with many investors and fellow founders and friends, especially now since no-one can meet anyway. Also, I guess in 7 years to learn a lot that stays with you