Linear

Copying Linear's better UX failed where buyers weren't blocked by UX. Rob Snyder tried a Linear-style better user experience in HR software and it failed, because the buyer did not care about user experience. His rule is that a better or cheaper copy of a category winner won't sell unless some customer is blocked by the incumbent.

Snyder says Linear beats Jira only if some people are blocked by Jira's experience. He calls building the same product as a visible winner, with no theory of a different customer being unblocked, a common tar pit. Quote: "You could give me a 100x better printer for my house, and I won't buy it cuz I'm not blocked."

Lenny's Podcast

Taste means aesthetics plus systems thinking and context, not just polish. Andrew Ambrosino names Linear as his favorite software product until his own team's. He notes that last year every new website copied its look, and that its head of product tweeted about taste.

He defines taste as more than visual polish: how something fits the system, which theme it belongs to, how it is presented, and whether an animation's feel matches its meaning. His example is Paul Graham, who wears cargo shorts yet clearly has taste. The real question, he says, is what a thing should be when anything can be built.

Lenny's Podcast▶ 39:39

Zevi Arnovitz files bugs and ideas into Linear without breaking flow. He runs a /create-issue command that tells Claude he is busy and should ask only a few brief questions. Claude then files the issue in Linear via MCP, and he dictates it with a voice tool.

In the demo, a spoken description became ticket STU88 with a TLDR, current state and expected outcomes. The goal is to capture the idea fast so he can keep working and explore it later.

Lenny's Podcast▶ 35:40