Linear’s secret to building beloved B2B products | Nan Yu (Head of Product)
Lenny's Podcast episode, sponsored by Sinch and Paragon, in which Lenny Rachitsky talks with Nan Yu, head of product at Linear, about how Linear builds one of the most beloved B2B products in software. Yu rejects the supposed trade-off between speed and quality: teams that believe in it are over-indexing on rushing and sloppiness, when the real index is competence - watch people at the pinnacle of their craft and speed predicts quality. His operating rule is the ten-percent test: by the time a tenth of any project's time budget has passed, something should exist that works and tests a key hypothesis internally. He explains what Linear refuses to build - exactly the features that create the bloat making ICs hate their lives - and his customer-call method: keep digging until you feel bad the same way the customer feels bad, then design against that emotion. PARTIAL COVERAGE: this summary highlights the operating philosophy; his creativity system and career advice segments are not covered. These are Yu's own methods and views, not independently verified.
Executive Summary (TL;DR)
Lenny's Podcast episode, sponsored by Sinch and Paragon, in which Lenny Rachitsky talks with Nan Yu, head of product at Linear, about how Linear builds one of the most beloved B2B products in software. Yu rejects the supposed trade-off between speed and quality: teams that believe in it are over-indexing on rushing and sloppiness, when the real index is competence - watch people at the pinnacle of their craft and speed predicts quality. His operating rule is the ten-percent test: by the time a tenth of any project's time budget has passed, something should exist that works and tests a key hypothesis internally. He explains what Linear refuses to build - exactly the features that create the bloat making ICs hate their lives - and his customer-call method: keep digging until you feel bad the same way the customer feels bad, then design against that emotion. PARTIAL COVERAGE: this summary highlights the operating philosophy; his creativity system and career advice segments are not covered. These are Yu's own methods and views, not independently verified.