How did Linear launch its beta waitlist?
Linear launched its beta waitlist with a blog post on 18 April 2019. The founders, Karri Saarinen (a designer who had worked at Airbnb and Coinbase), Tuomas Artman (Uber) and Jori Lallo (Coinbase), had spent about a year testing the idea on the side, meeting every Wednesday at a bar to compare notes from friends and colleagues, according to a 2025 First Round Review interview with Saarinen. In March 2019 they decided to quit their jobs. A working prototype took about a month and went to 10 friends; one friend's entire 10-person team switched to it.
The launch itself had three parts:
| Piece | What it did |
|---|---|
| Announcing Linear, Medium, 18 April 2019 | Explained why issue tracking needed rethinking, said Linear was starting to accept teams and companies into a private alpha, and linked to a sign-up |
| Tweets from the founders | Each founder wrote their own reasons for starting Linear; Saarinen had maybe 10,000 followers at the time |
| The linear.app homepage, archived May 2019 | An email field with a Request access button; after submitting, a thank-you note offered early access to anyone who would tell Linear more about their team's needs |
First Round reports that the follow-up survey was designed to seem optional but was really how Saarinen picked the most motivated users who fit their ideal customer profile. Saarinen told First Round the founders wrote the post to themselves, in the language they would want to read. On Lenny's Podcast in October 2023, Saarinen said the following helped, but credited the direct, authentic tone of the announcement, which reached people like the founders.
What questions did Linear's waitlist ask?
The waitlist asked a few short questions. In the October 2023 podcast, Saarinen listed them as what tools you use today, why you want to use Linear, and the company size. First Round's 2025 account phrases it as why you want to use it and what your current problems are.
| Question (as Saarinen or First Round paraphrase it) | What Linear used it for |
|---|---|
| What tools do you use today? | Inviting companies that used the tools Linear already supported |
| Why do you want to use Linear? | Separating more interested people from people who just wanted to try it out |
| What is your company size? | Favouring smaller companies early on |
| What are your current problems? | Spotting the most motivated users who fit the profile (First Round's wording) |
The filter matched a narrow ideal customer. First Round describes it as individual contributors, not managers, who build products (developers, product managers and designers) at fast-growing startups like the ones the founders came from. Saarinen said the reason for screening was simple: Linear did not support everything yet, so it made sense to build a version that worked for some companies first.
One constraint shows up in the archived homepage: in May 2019 its Sign in link went straight to Google sign-in. First Round confirms the whole login was built on Google authentication, which shut out teams that didn't use Google Workspace.
How many users did Linear invite each week?
Linear invited about 10 people a week at first. Saarinen told Lenny Rachitsky in 2023 that in the beginning the team maybe invited 10 people a week and later increased that; First Round's 2025 piece says Saarinen handpicked people from their survey answers, adding only around 10 per week.
The process was manual. Saarinen read the survey answers in a spreadsheet, copied each email address and sent the invite link from a personal email account. A few days or a week later came a short check-in: "Hey, what do you think?" Linear later built an internal invite tool.
The reason for small batches was practical. If many people join early software at once, they all hit the same bug and send the same report, which Saarinen called wasted effort. So Linear invited a cohort, fixed what it reported, then invited the next one.
These are the numbers Saarinen and Linear have given. All are company-reported, and most are estimates made years later:
| Figure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Waitlist after about a month | Maybe 4,000 people | Lenny's Podcast, Oct 2023 |
| Users by June or July 2019 | About 100 to 200, at about 10 companies | Lenny's Podcast, Oct 2023 |
| Waitlist by November 2019 | Thousands of companies; hundreds using Linear daily | Linear seed announcement, 21 Nov 2019 |
| Waitlist in total | Around 10,000 emails, roughly 10% of them users in the first year | First Round Review, Jul 2025 |
| At public launch | Roughly 1,000 daily active users | First Round Review, Jul 2025 |
Weekly builds: what changed between cohorts?
Saarinen describes a new version of the product every week. As told to First Round: "With each new cohort of 10 users, every week we basically made a new version of the product." The public changelog, as archived in June 2019, lists entries dated 12 and 26 April, 5, 10, 20 and 27 May, and 21 June 2019: 5 to 14 days apart until the 27 May entry warned of fewer updates for a few weeks while bigger features were built, then a 25-day gap. So updates came every week or two, and most of those entries predate the waitlist invites, which began in June.
The work fell into two buckets, as Saarinen described them to First Round:
- Enablers: features that make existing users extremely happy. Most early work went here.
- Blockers: gaps that stop people who fit the profile from joining. Google-only sign-in was one, so a general email sign-up was planned for the public launch.
The founders stayed close to daily users, emailing people who were in Linear every day once a week and tracking feedback sent from inside the app. Saarinen's advice to First Round was to learn from why people like the product, and not to overindex on why some don't.
Linear held pricing back until the public launch. It had no pricing during the private beta, Saarinen told Lenny's Podcast; a settings page let teams pay optionally, with a slider to choose a per-seat amount, mainly to test the payment system. When pricing launched with the public release, Saarinen recalled that maybe one beta company did not subscribe and the rest did.
How long did Linear keep the waitlist open?
Linear ran its private beta for about a year: invites from the waitlist began in June 2019, and Linear opened to everyone on 30 June 2020. First Round says the team kept it up for almost a year, and Saarinen told Lenny's Podcast that the private beta lasted almost a year before the public launch in June. The deciding signal was retention: Saarinen watched for steadily high retention, reasoning that if you are losing most of your first users, a public launch only loses more.
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| About a year before March 2019 | Side research with colleagues and friends at Airbnb, Uber and Coinbase |
| March 2019 | Founders decide to quit their jobs and build |
| 18 April 2019 | Announcing Linear; private alpha sign-ups open |
| May 2019 | The team uses Linear itself and invites friends |
| June 2019 | Invites from the waitlist begin |
| 21 November 2019 | $4.2M seed round led by Sequoia Capital, with Index Ventures |
| 30 June 2020 | Linear is now open for all |
The first 10 companies, Saarinen told Lenny's Podcast, were roughly three friends' startups and a majority from the waitlist. Saarinen recalled that in the first week after the public launch, Linear had probably some hundreds of customers.
How to run a beta waitlist for a small B2B product
A 1 to 5 person team can run the same waitlist with a form, a spreadsheet and a personal inbox. These steps are our suggestions, built on what Linear did:
Write the launch post to yourself
Describe the problem the way you felt it, name who it is for, and end with one email field. Each founder posts their own reasons on LinkedIn or X.
Ask three questions after the email
What do you use today? Why do you want this now? How big is your team? Keep them optional-looking, as Linear did, and read every answer.
Score signups against your ideal customer
In a sheet, mark each signup for fit (supported tools, team size) and for motivation (a specific problem in their own words). Our guides to qualifying a lead fast and lead scoring give a simple scale.
Invite 10 a week from your own inbox
Send the top 10 a personal invite. Three to seven days later, ask one question: what's the first thing that got in your way?
Ship weekly, tagged as enabler or blocker
Fix the top issue from the last cohort before inviting the next one, and post a dated changelog entry so the waitlist sees progress.
Write your launch rule now
For example: open to everyone only when most of the last three cohorts are still active after four weeks. Pick the number before you see the data.
The hard part is patience: Linear held thousands of signups to about 10 invites a week at the start. For finding and talking to those first users yourself, see our founder-led sales guide.
Frequently asked questions
How long was Linear's waitlist open?
Roughly a year of private beta. Linear announced itself and opened sign-ups for a private alpha on 18 April 2019, began inviting people from the waitlist in June 2019, and opened to everyone on 30 June 2020. First Round Review says the team kept the waitlist up for almost a year, and Karri Saarinen described the private beta the same way.
How many people joined Linear's waitlist?
Karri Saarinen told Lenny's Podcast in 2023 that the waitlist had maybe 4,000 people after about a month. Linear's November 2019 seed announcement said thousands of companies had signed up. In a 2025 First Round Review interview, Saarinen estimated around 10,000 emails in total, with roughly 10% becoming users in the first year of the beta.
What questions did Linear ask people on its waitlist?
According to Karri Saarinen on Lenny's Podcast in 2023, the waitlist survey asked what tools people used today, why they wanted to use Linear, and the size of their company. First Round Review's 2025 account adds a question about current problems. The answers decided who got an invite.
Did Linear charge users during its private beta?
Not as a requirement. Karri Saarinen said Linear had no pricing during the private beta. A settings page let teams pay optionally, with a slider to set a per-seat amount, mainly to test payments. When pricing launched with the public release in June 2020, Saarinen recalled that maybe one beta company did not subscribe.
Why did Linear invite only about 10 users a week?
Saarinen explained that when many people join early software at once, they all hit the same bug and send the same report, which wastes effort. Inviting about 10 people a week let the team fix each cohort's problems before the next arrived, and by Saarinen's account it made a new version each week. The weekly number grew later.
Sources
- First Round Review: Linear's Path to Product-Market Fit (Karri Saarinen) (29 Jul 2025)
- Lenny's Podcast: Inside Linear, Building with taste, craft, and focus (Karri Saarinen), episode transcript (8 Oct 2023)
- Linear on Medium: Announcing Linear (Wayback Machine copy) (18 Apr 2019)
- Linear homepage, archived 12 May 2019 (Wayback Machine) (12 May 2019)
- Linear homepage script, archived 12 May 2019 (sign-up form text) (12 May 2019)
- Linear changelog, archived 23 June 2019 (Wayback Machine) (23 Jun 2019)
- Linear on Medium: Linear's Next Chapter, Announcing our $4.2M Seed Round (Wayback Machine copy) (21 Nov 2019)
- Linear on Medium: Practices for Building, Linear is now open for all (Wayback Machine copy) (30 Jun 2020)