#15 – Tuomas Artman: Linear, sync engines, rethought startup MVP

The guest of this episode is Tuomas Artman, co-founder and CTO of Linear. Prior to Linear, Tuomas had already built sync engines for over a decade at companies like Groupon and Uber. This conversation will explore how local-first and software quality was crucial for Linear’s success and how the concept of a startup MVP should be rethought. 00:00 Intro 03:39 Sync Engines 11:44 Linear origin story 17:55 Initial focus: Command menu, native feel, real-time 27:02 Rethinking the Startup MVP 35:52 Hiring and Company Culture 40:12 Values and Vision 43:59 Advice 49:16 The Importance of a Sync Engine 01:00:04 Outro Mentioned in podcast: Tuomas Artmanr: https://x.com/artman / https://github.com/artman Linear: https://linear.app Scaling the Linear Sync Engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo2m3jaJixU&t=10s Rethinking the startup Mvp: Building a competitive product: https://linear.app/blog/rethinking-the-startup-mvp-building-a-competitive-product Unexpected benefits of going local-first - Tuomas Artman (Local-First Conf): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLgmjzERT08 Links: Website: https://localfirst.fm X/Twitter: https://x.com/localfirstfm Thank you to https://www.powersync.com/ and https://rocicorp.dev/ for supporting the podcast