Karri Saarinen
CEO, Cofounder at Linear.app
California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolKarri Saarinen is a founder and design-led product leader with 15 years of experience building and scaling consumer and developer-facing products from early startups to category-defining companies. As co-founder and CEO of Linear, and previously Principal Designer at Airbnb and Head of Design at Coinbase, he blends product strategy, UX craftsmanship, and engineering collaboration to improve how teams build software. He has a strong front-end and UI/UX background—contributing to open-source projects like Jekyll-based company blogs and Rails Girls guides—and a track record of shipping award-winning redesigns and design systems. Karri also co-founded impactful community initiatives (Rails Girls, ArcticStartup) and a YC-backed startup (Kippt), showing a consistent pattern of turning design sensibilities into scalable products and communities. Based in California, he brings entrepreneurial rigor, a systems-level view of product design, and a hands-on approach to execution.
15 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Management and Organizations, School of Economics, Management and Organizations, School of Economics at University of Vaasa2012, Startups, 2012, Startups at Y Combinator
Finnish, English
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (12)
html10
css10
javascript10
jekyll10
ui-design9
bootstrap9
bootstra9
ux-design8
user-manual4
rails3
ruby-rails3
ruby3
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
kippt/jekyll-incorporated
Oct 2013 - Feb 2014
Modern Jekyll based blog for companies
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:21 commits in 4 months
Contributions summary:Karri primarily focused on front-end development within the Jekyll-based blog. They made changes to the layout files, likely customizing the blog's presentation and author information display. Additionally, they implemented a zoom feature for images and removed a sticky header, indicating UI/UX adjustments to improve user interaction and visual design. These contributions suggest a focus on enhancing the user experience and visual aspects of the website.
liquidjekyll-basedjekylljekyll-theme
railsgirls/guides.railsgirls.com
Apr 2012 - Aug 2012
Rails Girls Guides
Role in this project:Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:35 commits, 1 comment in 3 months
Contributions summary:Karri primarily contributed to the front-end design and layout of the Rails Girls Guides website. They implemented styling using CSS, including both custom CSS and Bootstrap. Key contributions involved modifying layouts, fonts, and colors. Furthermore, they made additions to the homepage content and structure, creating links to different guides and improving the overall user interface.
ruby-on-railsrails-girlsrailsrubygirls
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