## The CEO Who Says 'No' to the 996 Grind

Karri Saarinen, the 38-year-old CEO of project management startup **Linear**, is challenging Silicon Valley's notorious **hustle culture**—and his company's $1.25 billion valuation proves it's working. In a recent interview, Saarinen dismissed the **996 work schedule** (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week) as ineffective, stating, "We haven't implemented that kind of culture, and I don't personally believe it produces the outcomes I want."

## Linear's Remote-First Philosophy and Generous Perks

Linear operates as a **remote company** with 100 employees spread across 10 time zones, from the U.S. to Finland. The startup offers **five weeks of paid time off per year** and **four months of paid parental leave**, emphasizing that building a world-class tech business doesn't require sacrificing worker wellbeing. Saarinen explains, "With remote work and working from home, you have the ability to participate in family life as well."

## Building a Profitable Business Without the Rush

Linear's core product includes project management and code review tools, used by over 2,000 companies like **OpenAI**, **Cursor**, and **Block**. The startup was valued at **$1.25 billion** in June after raising $82 million in a Series C round, bringing total funding to $134.2 million. Despite this growth, Saarinen prioritizes **quality over quantity**, noting, "People are rushing too much and launching things that don't quite work. In our company, we always try to err on the side of quality, not quantity."

## The Personal Touch: Work-Life Balance in Action

Saarinen himself practices what he preaches. He starts his day playing with his 3-year-old son instead of commuting, logs on remotely at 8 a.m., and ends by 4 p.m., with occasional extra hours for emails. This approach contrasts with proponents of in-person work, like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who argue for office-based learning and tradeoffs between work and life.

## Why Remote Work and Slow Hiring Pay Off

Linear was founded as a **remote company** in 2019, before the pandemic boom, allowing it to tap into global talent and let founders live where they want. Saarinen, based in Southern California, co-founded with team members in New York and Finland. The company's culture emphasizes **autonomy**, with flexible work hours and trust in employees' judgment.

By hiring slowly and deliberately, Linear avoided the pitfalls of hyper-growth, leading to **profitability for the past four years**. Saarinen says this financial independence lets the company control its own path without relying on external investors.

## The Core Belief: Great Products Come from Fulfilled Lives

At the heart of Linear's success is the conviction that **great products don't come from nonstop hustle** but from a balanced life. Saarinen concludes, "If your life is a little more balanced, you'll feel happier, more fulfilled—and it shows in your work. You're not just grinding; you're inspired."

![Karri Saarinen](https://assets.entrepreneur.com/images/misc/1765312846_Karri-Saarinen-Linear.jpg?width=1000)
*Karri Saarinen. Credit: Linear*

Karri Saarinen has prioritized work-life balance while building Linear, a $1.25 billion company.

How a $1.25 Billion Startup CEO Is Redefining Success by Rejecting Silicon Valley's Hustle Culture

## Why Business Success Comes From Structure, Not Hustle

Entrepreneurship isn't limited by ambition but by the absence of systems that turn effort into sustainable growth.

### Key Takeaways
- **Anchor your business to a stubborn, real-world problem customers cannot ignore.**
- **Replace hustle with systems that standardize decisions, data flow and accountability.**

Ambition isn’t what holds entrepreneurs back. If anything, it’s the one thing we never run short on. Entrepreneurs write the big plans, stack their reading lists, invest in masterminds and show up to every event hoping for that next breakthrough.

Yet by Friday afternoon, most of them feel the same familiar pressure settling in, the sense that, somehow, they’re still behind. The problem isn’t effort. It’s the **lack of structure** around it.

Without systems, you fall back on willpower. You pack more into each day, say yes to almost everything and try to outwork every challenge. Eventually, the calendar fills, energy drains and the business still leans too heavily on you. That is not a path to freedom; it is a slow path to burnout.

Real freedom as a leader **does not come from a sixty-hour week**. It comes from deliberately building systems. The leaders who **scale** their impact and still have a life outside the office create these three structures that multiply their time, protect their focus and deepen trust across their teams. Everything else sits on top of this foundation.

### Start with a Problem Worth Solving

Every company that truly worked for me began with a specific, stubborn problem that refused to go away.

In one industry, I kept seeing leaders attempt to run their entire operation through disconnected tools. Each department had its own software stack, reports and its own view of the customer. Teams retyped data, argued over whose numbers were right and lost deals because nobody could see the whole picture. That did not look like a simple technology issue. It looked like a structural problem that wasted time, hurt margins and frustrated customers at every step.

I did not start with a product roadmap. I spent time with operators who lived inside that mess. I asked them to walk me through their actual day, not their ideal one. I studied the points where handoffs broke. I watched the workarounds people created just to get through the week. Those details told me more than any survey ever could.

That level of focus changed the conversation. At some point, we stopped asking, “What can we build and sell?” and started thinking, “What would it take to make this problem disappear?” Once we framed it that way, the solution started to feel like an obligation.

If you’re a founder who wants sustainable growth that lasts, **get close enough to the problem** that you can describe it more clearly than anyone else in your market. When you reach that level of understanding, whatever you build has a far better chance of mattering.

### Build Systems, Not Just Momentum

You can’t scale chaos. Once you are anchored to the right problem, the **next challenge is how you grow.** Momentum feels great in the early days. You jump into every detail and make decisions on instinct. For a while, that feels like a great strategy. Then one day, you realize you are not really running the business anymore; you are just reacting to it.

I hit that point when growth outpaced our structure. On the outside, the numbers looked fine. Inside, we felt every crack. Too many one-off decisions. People work hard but spend too much of that effort chasing answers and fixing breakdowns that never should have happened.

The way out was **not more hustle**. We slowed down long enough to map how work actually moved through the organization, put it in writing and held ourselves to it. We pushed routine decisions into clear rules and systems instead of another meeting. We leaned more on automation and shared data than on memory and instinct. When we had that in place, reporting became straightforward. It showed where we were ahead and where we were behind, without spin.

### Stay Curious and Keep Reinventing Yourself

Most companies don’t get wiped out by some dramatic new competitor. They wear down because their own people start going quiet.

As a leader, one of the scariest parts is the **blind spots** you stop looking for. I’ve watched strong operators drift into that without noticing. Customer conversations get shorter. The sharpest people in the room stop pushing back. The wins get airtime; the hard feedback gets smoothed over, parked, or spun into a “non-issue.” The story about “why” the business works turns into something sacred, and any data that doesn’t fit just gets shrugged off.

The only thing I know that really cuts through that dilemma is **staying curious on purpose**. For me, that means I pull the people who actually move the business into the same conversation. When they point out friction, you can either defend yourself or treat it as free consulting. The second option hurts less over the long run.

Every time we sat and listened, something had to change. Sometimes it was a feature. Sometimes it was a process. A few times, it was the entire strategy. That practice can keep you, as the founder, honest about what’s real right now, not what used to work. It stops the team from coasting on an old story and keeps leadership in the habit of asking, “What are we missing?”

That’s how you build a company that can still stand up straight when the market shifts under it.

Entrepreneurship isn't limited by ambition but by the absence of systems that turn effort into sustainable growth.

The Secret to Scaling Your Startup: Ditch the Hustle Culture and Build These 3 Systems Instead

## The Rise of Capital Efficiency in Startup Hubs

As investors shift their focus from rapid growth to **sustainable scaling**, a new frontier is emerging in the startup world. The **Southeastern United States**, often called the **"Third Coast"**, is proving that building successful companies with less capital isn't just possible—it's becoming the new standard.

## The Third Coast Advantage: Built-In Discipline

Founders in cities like **Houston, New Orleans, and Raleigh** have long operated with a different mindset than their Silicon Valley counterparts. Without the luxury of endless funding rounds, they've mastered the art of **capital efficiency**—generating higher returns with significantly less investment.

This isn't just a recent trend; it's been their operating reality for years. While investors are now prioritizing **Burn Multiple** as a key metric, Third Coast founders have been living by these principles out of necessity.

## Understanding MOIC: The New North Star

**MOIC (Multiple on Invested Capital)** has emerged as the most straightforward measure of investment success. The formula is simple:

**MOIC = Total Value ÷ Total Invested Capital**

Unlike complex metrics like IRR, MOIC provides a clean, direct answer to one crucial question: *For every dollar invested, how many dollars came back?*

### Performance Benchmarks:
- **<1× MOIC**: Loss-making, value destruction
- **1–3× MOIC**: Modest outcomes, smaller exits
- **3–5× MOIC**: Solid venture returns
- **5×+ MOIC**: Outlier, fund-maker status

## Real-World Examples of Third Coast Success

The discipline of Third Coast founders translates into impressive real-world outcomes:

- **Lucid** exited for **$1.05 billion** on just **$64.6 million raised** (≈16x MOIC)
- **Global Data Consortium** exited for **$300 million** on only **$3.5 million raised** (≈85x MOIC)

These aren't isolated cases—they represent a pattern of **outsized multiples** achieved through careful capital management.

## Structural Advantages That Can't Be Ignored

### Cost Comparison: Third Coast vs. Silicon Valley

**Salaries:**
- Houston: ~84% of San Francisco rates
- Raleigh: ~90% of San Francisco rates
- New Orleans: ~75-80% of San Francisco rates

**Office Space:**
- San Francisco: $62/square foot
- Houston: $35/square foot
- Raleigh: $33/square foot
- New Orleans: $22/square foot

These **30-50% lower fixed costs** mean Third Coast startups don't need nine-figure funding rounds just to survive. This creates a culture where **every dollar must earn its place**, leading to leaner, more resilient companies.

## The Founder Mindset Difference

Third Coast founders develop unique skills out of necessity:
- **Harder negotiation** tactics
- **Intentional hiring** practices
- **Earlier revenue generation** focus

This mindset creates companies that **scale on their own terms** and deliver cleaner MOIC outcomes. Less dependence on outside capital means exits return higher multiples on invested dollars—not as austerity, but as **deliberate strategy**.

## Fund-Level Validation

Data from Limited Partners reveals a compelling story: Third Coast-heavy funds and Bay Area funds from 2015-2020 vintages deliver **nearly identical median returns** (TVPI ~1.6–1.8x, IRRs in the mid-teens).

The key difference? **Risk exposure**. Bay Area funds carry more mega-round risk, while Third Coast funds achieve steadier multiples with significantly lower burn rates.

## The Balanced Approach to Growth

True capital efficiency isn't about starving your company—it's about **resourcing adequately at the right times**. It means funding the hires, campaigns, or product pushes that actually move the needle while maintaining discipline to avoid wasteful spending.

**MOIC brings clarity** to this balance. It doesn't reward reckless blitzscaling or celebrate penny-pinching for its own sake. Instead, it measures whether every dollar invested produced multiples on the other side.

## The Future of Venture Capital

We're entering an era where **capital efficiency is no longer optional**—it's essential. The Third Coast's approach, born out of necessity, is now becoming a competitive advantage in a market where funding is harder to secure.

This represents more than a regional trend—it's a **fundamental shift** in how successful companies are built and scaled. The future of venture is brighter and more intentional, with the Third Coast leading the way in demonstrating that disciplined growth can deliver exceptional returns.

As investors turn to capital efficiency and sustainable scaling, there are lessons to be learned from the Southeast — where founders have long built successful companies by doing more with less.

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