Transcript: 'If SaaS Is Dead, Linear Didn't Get the Memo'

The transcript of AI & I with Linear cofounder and CEO Karri Saarinen is below. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Timestamps

1. Introduction and how Every first discovered Linear: 00:00:39
2. Why Linear waited to ship AI features instead of rushing to chatbots: 00:02:00
3. Linear’s agent platform and becoming the system that guides AI agents: 00:05:06
4. Why “SaaS is dead” is a simplistic narrative: 00:07:42
5. How Linear adopted AI coding tools internally: 00:12:18
6. AI’s impact on product building workflows—speed versus thoughtfulness: 00:17:45
7. The value of conceptual work and thinking before shipping: 00:22:18
8. How AI is reshaping Linear’s product strategy: 00:29:30
9. Demo: Linear’s agent skills, shared context, and code review workflow: 00:37:18

Transcript

Dan Shipper

Everyone will have many agents and companies will build their own agents. Linear becomes kind of a system for guiding the agents and building this context.

This is the perfect business for this era because it’s still SaaS. You’re the one who has this sort of sticky interface, because it’s where everyone is kicking things off from and where they’re recording all the information, but you don’t have to pay for any of the actual tokens.

Karri, welcome to the show.