Linear’s secret to building beloved B2B products | Nan Yu (Head of Product)

Jan 30, 2025 1h 21m 10 insights Episode Page ↗
Nan Yu, Head of Product at Linear, shares how to build beloved B2B SaaS products by challenging the speed-quality trade-off, prioritizing ICs, deeply understanding customer emotions, and systemizing creativity. He also offers advice on strategic job searching and effective deadline management.
Actionable Insights

1. Prioritize ICs Over Manager Reporting

Absolutely say no to customization features requested by middle managers for easier reporting if they worsen IC workflows, as this leads to bloated software and disengaged users. Prioritize the individual contributor’s experience to ensure product adoption and data accuracy.

2. Embrace Speed for Quality

Reject the notion of a trade-off between speed and quality by focusing on competence and rapid iteration. Aim to have a workable solution that tests key hypotheses within 10% of the allotted time, allowing for early learning and adjustments.

3. Uncover User’s Emotional ‘Bad Feelings’

When talking to customers, dig beyond surface-level requests to understand the underlying emotional ‘bad feeling’ motivating their needs. This deeper empathy helps identify core problems and build solutions that truly alleviate user pain.

4. Systemize Creativity with Extreme Thinking

To generate non-obvious solutions, explore the most outrageous or ‘11-star’ versions of a product idea, disregarding initial constraints like cost or practicality. This expands the possibility space and helps discover innovative choices.

5. Commit to Deadlines as P0 Problems

Limit the number of deadlines, but when committed, treat them as P0 problems where all other work is secondary. As a PM, aggressively cut scope to ensure a shippable product is ready for a go/no-go decision, especially for external marketing launches.

6. Integrate PM with Go-to-Market

View product management as a go-to-market discipline, fostering deep collaboration between PMs, sales, and marketing. PMs should originate product messaging and language, leveraging their deep customer understanding to ensure authentic and effective communication.

7. Recognize Software Teaches How to Work

Understand that adopting B2B software isn’t just solving a problem; it’s also adopting a new way of working and a baseline of competency. Choose tools thoughtfully, recognizing they will shape internal processes and practices.

8. Develop a Dynamic Product Backlog

Maintain a backlog of 20-30 product opportunities, continuously accumulating understanding and re-evaluating conviction without immediately building. Focus on defining how much of a problem to take on, rather than solving the entire problem.

9. Strategic Job Search: Solve Their Problem

For job interviews, identify the hiring manager’s ‘burning problem’ or ‘job to be done’ by asking specific questions like their OKRs. Position yourself as the unique solution to that problem, acting as if you already work there.

10. Apply ‘Too Much Minus One’ Principle

To find the optimal amount or solution, deliberately test the extreme (’too much’) to understand its limits. The ideal is often ’too much minus one,’ helping to pinpoint the right balance after exploring the boundaries.