Building for Quality: Our Investment in Linear

For the technologies that shape the way we work and live, the rate of change has never been faster than in today’s environment. Physical workplaces have become virtual, wobbling financial institutions have given way to digital banks, and artificial intelligence unlocks creativity in nearly every application imaginable. Today we are excited to announce our investment in Linear, the common thread weaving many of these innovations together. Linear provides a better way to build software, and increasingly it powers the creative process for many of the products you know and love. The companies reimagining the way we work (Remote, Loom, Retool), modernizing the internet (Vercel, Arc, OpenSea), digitizing finance (Cash App, Ramp, Modern Treasury) and advancing AI (Cohere, Runway, Replit) are all organizing their work in Linear. Amidst the dizzying forces of customer demands and market competition, Linear equips builders with the speed, precision and seamless integrations needed to stay ahead of the curve. 

Founders Karri, Jori and Tuomas set out to build not just another tool for developers, but rather a new way of building, rooted in a commitment to thoughtful design and quality product. It would be easy to misunderstand Linear as simply an opinionated new issue tracker, but the simplicity of the tool masks the ambition of the team’s vision: today Linear helps product teams manage projects and roadmaps; tomorrow it will empower them to better understand their customers, communicate their team’s vision, measure the output of their work, and beyond. Linear ties together the workflows of discovery, planning and execution into a core system of building, and it is resonating. We’re pleased to invest alongside a number of founders and builders who share our love for Linear, including: Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson (building for the long term), Job van der Voort (Remote), Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Claire Hughes Johnson (Corporate Advisor and former COO, Stripe), Josh Miller (Browser Company), Andrew Mason (Descript), Immad Akhund (Mercury), Christina Cacioppo (Vanta), Ilkka Paananen (Supercell), and our friends at Sequoia.    

Celebrated creators in their own right, Linear’s Founders have crafted both their product and their company with great care and patience - an ethos which we deeply appreciate. With a steady focus on end-user love, they’ve cultivated a groundswell of adoption which enables Linear to expand rapidly and profitably across a growing number of influential customers, with a total of $35,000 in marketing spend since the inception of the company. At Accel we’ve long believed that innovation thrives well outside of Silicon Valley–in this case in Helsinki, Del Mar, Brooklyn and with a team distributed worldwide –and that the best companies are global from the start. Driven by Finnish design sensibility and an understated confidence, Linear is no exception.  

In Karri, Jori and Tuomas we found talented, humble founders who share our philosophy on building for the long term. We’re excited to support them, and to see firsthand the explosion of innovative products and experiences that will be powered by Linear. 

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