Jon Linton

Building I'm mostly just here for the snacks.

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

The fallacy of this is that more creates more. More hours, more hiring, more something.

And it is true in a sense. If you put in more work, more work will happen. But I think for most startups, the leverage is really in how differently you approach the problem, how well you cultivate your team, and the strategy.

Any large company can outspend you on hours. They have thousands or tens of thousands more people, spending more hours. If hours worked were the metric, every large company and government organization would always win and do the best work. More hours, better output.

This thinking is often representative of younger founders, where the startup becomes their identity and life. They have a hard time doing anything else, and cannot understand that your work is not the person that is you. But activities outside of work can grow you as a person too and make you do better work.

I’ve never worked this way. As a designer, I always saw the need to take a step back, to take a break. At times, I might work 12 hours or 16 hours, or whatever amount was needed, but it wasn’t the norm. You just can't grind design, you need inspiration. But taking that step away from the work, would give me more perspective, inspiration and I could approach the problem differently or I could just see the solution.

Grinding is never good for any creative problem, and startups or creating new products are often mostly about creative problem solving. Grinding works ok for email jobs, or where you just executing on very clear playbook.

With Linear, we’ve never worked this way. We work reasonable hours, 5 days a week. All of us founders have families. Many of our employees have families. I personally stop every evening, spend time with the family, cook dinner for the family, eat dinner together, and focus on things outside of work. Sometimes I work in the late evenings or weekends, but to me the pride is that I don’t need to. Company should be succesful without it.

My goal is to build a company that is sustainable in the long term, and doesn’t require heroics or personal sacrifices every single day.

There are times when our team is heroic. Launches, incidents, some other work that just needs to be done. They will work late into the night because they know it is the right thing. But we don’t require that every day or every week, and the more this happens, the more I think it is a failure of our company and leadership. The team and the leaders should always keep a reserve to use when something is needed.

Our thinking was also that quality, which we value, doesn’t emerge from working more or stressing people more. It emerges when you create the conditions for it to emerge. Often it is the appreciation, space, time, and how the person feels. A person who is rested will do better work.

I wouldn’t attribute much of our success to working a lot. The success came from having clear thinking, ideas, and focus to do the right things.

I sometimes wish we could move the culture more toward a Zen master.

Real mastery is not exerting the most effort. It is achieving the outcome with the least necessary effort.

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

A bespoke software revolution? I don't buy it.

It'll exist. It already exists. Small consultants and big consulting firms have made custom software for years. It almost always sucks. It’s bloated, confusing, and because the client pays, it’s built wrong in all the ways.

Who’s excited about bespoke software? Software makers! Of course they're excited about building bespoke software — that's what they do. X is full of them. Your feed is full of people who love making software talking about making software. Of course they’re excited about the revolution. Echo, echo, echo...

Most people don’t like computers. Nobody in tech wants to say that out loud. People tolerate computers. They use them because they have to. Given the choice, most would rather not think about them at all.

So when someone suggests that AI means everyone will build their own custom tools, ask who "everyone" is. The three-person accounting firm drowning in client paperwork? They want the paperwork gone, not a new system to maintain. The regional logistics company with 40 trucks? They want the routes optimized, not Joe spouting off about this new system he’s been messing around with. The law firm billing 70-hour weeks? They want leverage on their time, not a software project to design.

They don’t hate technology. But building and maintaining their own critical systems isn’t their wheelhouse, regardless of how much faster and easier it’s become. It's another job on top of the job.

Will these people use AI? Absolutely, for all sorts of things. Will some outliers go deep and build real custom systems? Sure, but they're almost always people who already had some pull toward software. The curiosity was already there. They were dabblers before.

Giving everyone access to software building tools doesn't mean everyone becomes a builder. A powerful excavator doesn't turn a homeowner into a contractor. Most people just want the hole dug by someone else. They don’t want the responsibility either.

[Jon Linton @Jlin13]

@samtayyari This is what’s missing from the way people produce and consume. What Farmer Focus did for Poultry (traceable farm-to-table), @samtayyari’s doing for product manufacturing, and making the world a little smaller while doing it. Awesome documentary.

@ProductHunt should take a look.

[Sam Tayyari @samtayyari]

A few months ago while I was in China someone sent me a special request. They finished building their custom home and wanted custom wooden hangers to match. I immediately got on a high speed train and headed to this hanger factory with my camera. Here’s what I shot that day.

[LABCOAT @labcoatlabs]

LABCOAT public beta is live.

Turn your prompt into a physical product.

https://t.co/MTQXkd5JiP

[malinvestment.jpeg @malinvested]

Of course that's your contention. You're a first-time SaaS bear. You just got finished listening to some podcast, Dario on Dwarkesh, probably. Now you think it’s the end of white collar work and seat-based pricing is screwed. You're gonna be convinced of that til tomorrow when you get to “Something Big is Happening”. Then you’ll install ClawdBot on a Mac Mini, vibe code a dashboard on top of a postgres database and say we’re all just a couple ralph loops away from building a Salesforce competitor. That’s gonna last until next week when you discover context graphs, and then you're gonna be talking about how the systems of record will be disintermediated by an agentic layer and reposting OAI marketing graphics.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I won't, because ultimately the application layer is just ….”

The application layer is just business logic on top a CRUD database. You got that from Satya’s appearance on the BG2 pod, December 2024, right? Yeah, I saw that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or...is that your thing? You get into the replies of anyone posting a SaaS ticker. You watch some podcast and then pawn it off as your own idea just to impress some VCs and embarrass some anon who’s long SaaS? See the sad thing about a guy like you is in a couple years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One: don't do that. And two: you dropped thirty grand on Mac Minis and LLM API calls to come to the same conclusion you could’ve got for free by following a handful of VC accounts.

[Jon Linton @Jlin13]

@samtayyari 🤯 wildly cool.

[Sam Tayyari @samtayyari]

Last year I went on a spec trip to Guangzhou for Canton Fair to see the world’s largest consumer manufacturing hub. I had no idea this trip would turn into my life’s work.

Describe any product. We manufacture it and ship it to your door. Try it free at https://t.co/rxNAx2JATn

[Sam Tayyari @samtayyari]

I want to make it as easy to order your own custom product ideas as it is ordering something from Amazon.

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

Incredible.

[Jon Linton @Jlin13]

@minimalistbaker Try making this with some Slow Churned Halva and you’ll never look back - https://t.co/1Vnc1a7GCW

[Sam Tayyari @samtayyari]

Just announced, China’s great trade experiment is here. 🇨🇳

Hainan FTP just activated island-wide customs independence in a massive strategic play.

💰 0% Tariffs (if 30% value added locally)
• Import parts, assemble in Hainan, and ship into China tariff-free.
• Think: SE Asia components → final electronics assembly in Hainan → seamless entry to 1.4B Chinese consumers.

📄 15% Corp Tax
• That’s startup-territory low. Below Singapore. Below Hong Kong. You want a legal beachhead into China? Set it up here.

🛜 No Firewall
• Register your company in Hainan and you can apply for full global internet access.
• Think about what that enables: real-time comms, tools, stacks, uncensored R&D.

🛂 Visa-Free Entry (86 countries)
• One of the most open doors in Asia. Fly in, set up, operate.

⚕️Global Medical Access
• If a drug is approved anywhere, it can be used here, even if it’s banned in the rest of China.

This isn’t just policy, it’s a sandbox for an evolving China. A separate rulebook on a tropical island, custom-built for 21st-century trade, capital, and talent.

[Jon Linton @Jlin13]

@johnrushx @johnrushx This writing has gotten really quite good.

[Sam Tayyari @samtayyari]

Figma’s cease and desist to Lovable is one of the nicest and most respectable ones I’ve ever seen.

Iron fist in a velvet glove.

[Riley Walz @rtwlz]

I scraped millions of Google Maps reviews, and gave each reviewer’s profile pic to an AI that ranks attractiveness

Introducing LOOKSMAPPING

[@levelsio @levelsio]

most freelancers are just wrappers for metabolism

[Jason Cohen @asmartbear]

These are the good old days.

Enjoy them a little more, even in the face of whatever is making them difficult right now.

[NASA @NASA]

New observations of asteroid 2024 YR4 helped us update its chance of impact in 2032. The current probability is 1.5%.

Our understanding of the asteroid's path improves with every observation. We'll keep you posted. https://t.co/LuRwg1eaCv

[Jon Linton @Jlin13]

@samtayyari Largest generational grift in history playing out in US now.

[Julian Shapiro @Julian]

One startup figured out how to make the sun shine AT NIGHT.

They're putting mirrors in space to direct sunlight toward the Earth at nighttime 😂

Here's a video of it, plus a thread on why the science is so interesting: