Click to expand the mind map for a detailed view.

Key Takeaways

Speed and Quality: There is no inherent trade-off between speed and quality. Speed is achieved through competence, not rushing. Aim to have a working prototype within 10% of the allocated time.
Avoid Bloat: Prioritize features that enhance the user experience for individual contributors (ICs) over middle managers who often request reporting and customization features that lead to software bloat.
Customer Insights: Dig deep during customer calls to understand the emotional pain points and avoid building features that don’t address real user needs.
Early Feedback: Release early versions of features to internal users and gradually expand to beta users to validate assumptions and avoid building unwanted features.
Emotional Hooks: Focus on solving emotional pain points in the user experience, as these often lead to more impactful product improvements.
Deadlines: Treat deadlines as P0 issues, cut scope aggressively, and ensure the team is fully focused on delivering a shippable product by the deadline.

Detailed Summary

No Trade-off: Speed and quality are not mutually exclusive. Competence allows for both speed and high-quality output.
Iterative Process: Aim to have a working prototype within the first 10% of the time allocated for a project. This allows for early hypothesis testing and iteration.
Example: Linear ensures that by the end of the first week, they have a functional version of a feature that can be tested internally.

Feature Prioritization: Linear avoids adding features that cater to middle managers, such as extensive reporting tools, which often lead to software bloat and degrade the user experience for ICs.
Customer-Centric Design: Focus on features that improve the workflow for ICs, as they are the primary users of the product.
Example: Linear rejects feature requests that would make the product more cumbersome for ICs, even if it means turning down potential sales.

Deep Customer Understanding: During customer calls, Linear digs deep to understand the emotional pain points of users. This helps in building features that truly solve user problems.
Example: Linear’s feature for managing customer requests was born out of understanding the emotional frustration of users who had to manually track customer feedback.

Internal Testing: Linear releases early versions of features to internal users first, then gradually expands to beta users before a general release.
Validation: This approach ensures that features are validated early, reducing the risk of building something users don’t want.
Example: Linear’s draft-saving feature went through multiple iterations based on feedback from internal and beta users.

Solving Emotional Pain Points: Linear focuses on solving emotional pain points in the user experience, such as frustration with deadlines or miscommunication.
Example: Linear’s feature for setting target dates at different levels of granularity (e.g., Q4, December) was designed to reduce the stress of false precision in deadlines.

Deadlines as P0: When a deadline is set, it is treated as a P0 issue, and the team focuses exclusively on delivering a shippable product by that date.
Scope Cutting: To meet deadlines, Linear aggressively cuts scope, ensuring that the product is functional, even if it lacks some features.
Example: Linear avoids extensive estimating and instead focuses on shipping early and iterating based on feedback.

“There’s not actually a trade-off between speed and quality. People talk about this as if there were a trade-off because when they think about speed, the thing they over-index on is rushing or being sloppy.”
“The stuff that we absolutely have to say no to is the exact kind of thing that leads to this bloatedness that makes ICs hate their lives.”
“My goal is to feel bad in the same way that customers feel bad.”
“If you look at people who are at the pinnacle of their craft, you can basically tell how good the output is going to be of their work product by how fast they’re going.”
“The correct amount is too much minus one.”
“We don’t have any expectation that the first version of it is going to be great. That is not in the cards.”
“The moment you start going down this path, and you make the IC user experience worse, they’re just going to disengage.”
“People talk about empathy like, ‘You need to have empathy as a PM.’ I think it’s such a succinct and powerful way of describing what empathy actually looks like as a product leader.”
“The best solutions are always obvious in hindsight, and it’s just like you have to develop a process internally that to eventually find your way there.”
“When you adopt that tool, you’re not just adopting the actual software, you’re adopting the idea that this is a practice that you ought to be doing in the first place.”