Founder Profile
Karri Saarinen
Last reviewed: October 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Who is Karri Saarinen?
Karri Saarinen is a founder of Linear, which was founded in 2019 with Jori Lallo and Tuomas Artman.
- Company founded
- Linear
- Founded
- 2019
- Co-founders
- Jori Lallo and Tuomas Artman
Background
Former Principal Designer at Airbnb and Coinbase.
Founding Story
Karri Saarinen co-founded Linear in 2019. Frustrated by the incredibly slow, bloated nature of Jira while working at massive tech unicorns, he realized developers despised the tools they were forced to use. As CEO, he obsessively focused on building a deeply aesthetic, lightning-fast issue tracker that developers would actually love using, effectively treating B2B software with consumer-grade design standards. Karri Saarinen was born in 1983.
Sources
This profile does not yet cite a source specific to Karri Saarinen. The sources below document the company company rather than the person, so check them against the claims above.