Karri Saarinen: 10 Rules for Crafting Products That Stand Out | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

Linear CEO Karri Saarinen argues that exceptional products stand out through deliberate craft, not merely speed or feature delivery. Quality must be embedded in leadership, team structure, collaboration, and product decisions. The goal is not perfection, but a consistently high quality bar that earns users’ attention and trust.

Quality Starts with Leadership

• Leaders must explicitly prioritize craft and create the conditions for teams to pursue it.
• Declaring quality important is insufficient; companies need to explain how it supports the business.
• Design can make complex products more approachable, as Saarinen observed at Coinbase.

Build Small, High-Quality Teams

• Smaller teams reduce excessive debate and preserve execution quality.
• Hire people who already demonstrate strong craft rather than focusing only on measuring output.
• High standards should be established through the quality of the team’s work.

Eliminate Handoffs

• Product managers, designers, and engineers should share responsibility instead of working in isolated stages.
• Removing “handoff to development” prevents teams from treating quality as someone else’s responsibility.
• Understanding implementation constraints helps everyone contribute to the final result.

Avoid Rigid Product Silos

• Too many specialized teams can create inconsistent quality and fragmented cultures.
• Rotating responsibilities keeps ideas fresh and prevents teams from becoming narrowly focused.
• Users care about the overall product experience, not the organization chart.

Treat the Specification as the Starting Point

• Meeting requirements is only the minimum standard, not the definition of a great product.
• Teams should add care and judgment beyond what the specification explicitly demands.
• Craft is what turns a technically functional product into a memorable one.

Quality Is Not Perfection

• Products should pass a clear quality bar before reaching customers, even if they are not flawless.
• Beta users can help teams iterate from a solid initial release toward greater polish.
• Defects are measurable, but excellence is often judged qualitatively through user perception and organic praise.

Design with Strong Opinions

• Products work best when designed for a specific audience and purpose.
• Flexible products that serve everyone moderately well often fail to excel at anything.
• A clear point of view strengthens the product’s value proposition and helps earn user trust.

The practical recommendation is to make quality a company-wide operating principle: hire carefully, keep teams connected, exceed the basic specification, and design decisively for a particular user.