Julian Lehr - How storytelling works at Linear

Summary

Dive Club 🤿

Episode: Julian Lehr - How Storytelling Works at Linear
Host: Ridd
Release Date: July 2, 2025

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Introduction to Julian Lehr and His Role at Linear

Julian Lehr, the storytelling lead at Linear, discusses his journey from discovering the product to shaping his role within the company. Initially intrigued by Linear's resemblance to Superhuman for issue tracking, Julian became one of the first beta users. His engagement deepened when he authored a blog post that caught the attention of Linear's co-founder, Jory, leading to his eventual recruitment.

"Linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. Coming to that word purpose built took us like three years." — Julian Lehr [00:00]

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Defining the Role: Moving Beyond Traditional Marketing

When Julian joined Linear, the role was vaguely defined, intentionally avoiding traditional B2B SaaS marketing responsibilities like customer stories and webinars. The objective was to foster a more creative and unique approach to marketing.

"What we didn't want was sort of like a traditional B2B SaaS marketing role... We want something more creative, something more interesting, something new." — Julian Lehr [02:24]

Within weeks, the team identified effective strategies, starting with a comprehensive readme designed for recruitment. This manifesto not only resonated with their target audience—front-end developers, designers, and engineers—but also received positive feedback for its polished design and innovative CSS animations.

"It was well designed. It had some nice CSS animations that I think people hadn't seen before." — Julian Lehr [02:55]

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Building an In-House Creative Studio

As Linear grew, Julian's role evolved to lead a dedicated creative studio within the company. The team expanded from three to six members, encompassing brand designers, design engineers, and storytellers. Their focus shifted to creating original and engaging landing pages that stood out in a crowded market.

"Design something that people hadn't seen before... we really doubled down on that and spent a lot of time to make these landing pages as original and interesting as possible." — Julian Lehr [03:54]

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The Interplay of Copywriting and Design

Julian emphasizes that effective storytelling is a blend of content, design, and the overall feel of the material. He believes that writing should be treated as a design job, where the aesthetic presentation of copy is as crucial as its message.

"Writing is mostly a design job. Copy can look great in a Word document or in a Notion doc and then you put it on an actual landing page and you realize that it doesn't work." — Julian Lehr [06:18]

When evaluating copy, Julian relies heavily on intuition, considering factors like font weight, size, spacing, and line breaks to ensure the text not only conveys the message but also feels right visually.

"Spacing is probably more important... a page is like a story, and spacing means that you're pausing for a second until you sort of tell the next thing." — Julian Lehr [19:54]

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Evolving the Tagline: From 'Opinionated' to 'Purpose Built'

One of the significant challenges Julian faced was crafting a concise and accurate tagline for Linear. After three years of iteration, the team settled on:

"Linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products." — Julian Lehr [08:36]

This shift from describing Linear as "opinionated" to "purpose built" better encapsulated the company's focus on creating a tool specifically designed for its intended use, avoiding the pitfalls of being too generic or overly complex.

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Creative Process: Navigating the Messy Middle

Julian describes the early stages of a project as chaotic, involving extensive back-and-forth between copy and design. The team collaborates closely in tools like Figma, allowing for rapid prototyping and iteration until a cohesive concept emerges.

"It's a lot of back and forth, a lot of terrible ideas... until at some point it just clicks and you find the right thing." — Julian Lehr [15:19]

To overcome creative blocks, Julian changes his "scenery" by switching tools or mediums, such as moving from digital platforms to pen and paper, which helps stimulate new ideas.

"I like to change scenery... switch between tools. I do a lot of writing in Figma... sometimes I have to switch to a Google Doc or to something else completely." — Julian Lehr [17:15]

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Leveraging AI in the Creative Process

Julian incorporates AI tools like ChatGPT to enhance his writing process. While AI doesn't replicate his voice, it serves as a valuable tool for unblocking creativity and refining ideas by generating alternative phrasings and synonyms.

"I find it really helpful to unblock me and to refine some ideas... It's like playing with Legos a little bit." — Julian Lehr [18:18]

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Packaging Design: Making the Intangible Tangible

Drawing parallels between digital products and physical packaging, Julian explains how Linear's online presence serves as its packaging. The design elements aim to evoke tangible feelings, making the digital tool feel more accessible and relatable.

"Linear is a digital product. It's intangible. But I think it's important to think about what might Linear feel like if you were able to touch it." — Julian Lehr [20:57]

He highlights the importance of materials, spacing, and aesthetics in creating a satisfying and intuitive user experience, similar to how Apple meticulously designs its product packaging.

"There's this sense of, like, polishness... something that's satisfying to touch." — Julian Lehr [22:57]

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The Power of Storytelling in Marketing

Julian underscores storytelling as a fundamental aspect of effective marketing. It serves as a bridge between complex product features and user understanding, distilling intricate concepts into compelling narratives that resonate with the audience.

"Stories are like shared beliefs... the more people believe in a shared narrative, the stronger it becomes." — Julian Lehr [00:44]

He advises finding unique and unexpected ways to present a product, emphasizing that novelty can capture attention and differentiate the brand in a saturated market.

"Find something that's unique and that people haven't seen before... predict what people expect and then do the exact opposite." — Julian Lehr [25:30]

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Building Connections Through Writing

Beyond marketing, Julian leverages his writing to refine his thoughts and connect with like-minded individuals. Sharing his ideas publicly has led to meaningful interactions, collaborations, and personal growth, demonstrating the profound impact of content creation.

"Writing is a thinking process for me... It helps me with my thinking and allows me to meet a lot of interesting people." — Julian Lehr [31:12]

He advocates for the underrated power of writing on the internet, noting that even modest reach can result in significant and impactful connections.

"You can influence people's decision making and their thinking... it's a really powerful medium." — Julian Lehr [32:11]

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Advice for Aspiring Storytellers

Julian offers practical advice for individuals looking to craft effective stories around their products or ideas:

1. Become the User: Immersing yourself in the user experience to understand the core problems and needs.

2. Find Unique Analogies: Use creative metaphors to make complex problems and solutions more relatable.

3. Prioritize Simplicity: Convey your message clearly without overcomplicating it, ensuring it resonates with your target audience.

4. Embrace Iteration: Accept that finding the right narrative may take time and multiple revisions.

"Stories are a data compression algorithm that takes all of that complexity and summarizes it and packages it nicely in a very easy to consume, compelling narrative." — Julian Lehr [39:01]

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Maintaining Craftsmanship as Linear Scales

As Linear expanded, maintaining a consistent and unique storytelling approach became more challenging. Julian explains that Linear treats itself as a consumer brand within the B2B space, focusing its marketing efforts on individual contributors like engineers and designers rather than solely on corporate decision-makers. This bottom-up approach ensures that the product remains user-centric and beloved by its core audience.

"Our marketing is still very much targeted at the end customer... that makes the tool good, is that people actually enjoy using it." — Julian Lehr [48:17]

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Conclusion: The Integral Role of Storytelling at Linear

Julian Lehr's insights highlight the pivotal role of storytelling in shaping Linear's brand and user experience. By intertwining creative copywriting, thoughtful design, and a deep understanding of user needs, Linear has cultivated a strong and loyal community. Storytelling not only differentiates the product in the market but also fosters meaningful connections with users, driving both personal and professional success.

"The magic happens when all three things come together. But those two elements are more important than the written copy on the page." — Julian Lehr [38:18]

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Thank you for joining this deep dive into storytelling at Linear with Julian Lehr. For more insights and episodes, visit Dive.club.

Transcript

[Julian Lear]

The current tagline we have on the website, which is like, linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. Coming to that word purpose built took us like three years.

[Rid]

What's the motivation for investing the amount of time that you do into putting your thoughts out there on the Internet?

[Julian Lear]

Linear is a digital product. It's intangible. You can't touch it. But I think it's important to think about what might Linear feel like if you were able to touch it?

[Rid]

What does effective storytelling look like? How do I even figure out what the crux of my idea is?

[Julian Lear]

I think it's hard to apprec this. We're hard to realize how much of an impact this can have if you've never done it. Like, writing on the Internet is still very underrated.

[Rid]

What are some of those patterns that create either positive or negative signals?

[Julian Lear]

Stories are like shared beliefs. They're kind of like a network effect. The more people believe in a shared narrative, the stronger it becomes. It's like a flywheel effect.

[Rid]

Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Rid and this is where designers never stop learning. This week's episode is with Julian Lear, who's the storytelling lead at Linear. So we're going to step outside of the Pixels for this conversation and instead hear more about how you can get people excited about what you're designing. We're going to go deep into Julian's creative process and hear why he kind of thinks of his role like packaging design. So let's start off by hearing more about how Julian shaped his role inside of Linear.

[Julian Lear]

I randomly discovered Linear on, I think the day the founders announced the product. I was a heavy user of Superhuman at the time and I had this thesis that they should be more Superhuman for X type products. And Linear was basically like Superhuman for issue tracking. So I signed up to startup. I was at the time we became one of the first beta users. So it's quite familiar with the product. And then randomly, like six months later or so, Jory, one of the co founders, read one of my blog posts, which was about Superhuman, I think, funny enough, and he reached out. So we discussed, you know, ways of working together. It wasn't the right thing at the time. And then sort of like I think about a year later, a year and a half later, I eventually joined the company.

[Rid]

What was the original title or role that you even joined for?

[Julian Lear]

I think we put a marketing title on it. It was very unclear what this role was supposed to be. We both knew what we didn't want the role to be. But we had no idea what we wanted it to be.

[Rid]

What did you not want the role to be?

[Julian Lear]

What we didn't want was sort of like a traditional B2B SaaS marketing role. You know, someone who writes your customer stories and does a bunch webinars. Every SaaS landing page sort of like looked the same. We don't really know what we want, but let's just give it a try. We want something more creative, something more interesting, something new. And so it was like Didi was like, let's just throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks. And luckily we quickly found something that worked for us. Sort of like a couple weeks in.

[Rid]

Okay, so tell me that story then a couple weeks in, what you release? What'd you learn?

[Julian Lear]

I think the first project we took on was this, what we called a readme. So sort of like a manifesto about like what Linear is and what it was that we wanted to build. So it's like very much sort of like built for recruiting purposes. So it's like a very long essay that laid out why Linear exists and why you should join the company. This thing sort of like worked really well from the beginning, not because it was different, but it's like it was well designed. It had some nice CSS animations that I think people hadn't seen before. And so we just got a lot of positive feedback on Twitter and seemed like, okay, I think if we put a lot of work and effort into really signed, polished websites or landing pages, that really seems to resonate with people. And it's also like the audience that we want to reach. So, like, especially like front end developers, designers, but engineers in general, what did.

[Rid]

The continuation from that point look like? So you put a team around it. What did you learn from that initial experience that you were then extrapolating into how that team operated and the types of deliverables that you were even responsible.

[Julian Lear]

For, maybe to start off with what the. What the team looked like. So we were a team of three at the time. So we had a brand designer, a design engineer, and then my role was mostly on copywriting, storytelling. What we learned was mostly that if you design something that people hadn't seen before, or if you add some interesting CSS trick that people hadn't seen before, there's probably going to be people on Twitter who will try to recreate that and then share that codepen with all of their friends. And so we really doubled down on that and sort of like spend a lot of time to make these landing pages as original and interesting as possible. I know that that might not seem that way today because the page has been copied, you know, hundreds of times, but back in the days at least it was pretty unique and original and worked really well for us.

[Rid]

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[Julian Lear]

Think the copy is somewhat overrated. I think what, you know, what any marketing material or a website does is basically three things. There's some content of like what it says. There's something sort of like design related. It's like how it looks. And then there's a third component is like how it feels, which is really where sort of like the implementation engineering part comes in. And it's really the combination of all of those three aspects that make things interesting. It matters to me a lot, like how my copy looks and feels because copy can look great in a Word document or in a Notion doc and then you put it on an actual landing page and you realize that it doesn't work. So I feel like writing is mostly a design job.

[Rid]

Can we go a little bit deeper there? Like when you are evaluating the look of Copy, what are you measuring? Or there may be pitfalls or red flags or things that you're avoiding or things that you're striving for. How do you think about what good looks like in terms of the visual element of copywriting?

[Julian Lear]

It's hard to articulate because it's mostly like a gut feeling thing when you see it and it feels right. Sometimes you write copy that works in light mode but not in dark mode and vice versa. They like small things and I couldn't tell you why that is. It's like, you know, maybe it bleeds a little more in dark mode. And so it's like the font weight is too big and so the copy doesn't work anymore. It's mostly a feeling thing. So that's like the visual aspect of it on more of the, like, the content side of it. I think the thing that I learned, and this is really something I learned from one of our co founders, Kari, our CEO, is keep it simple and tell me what it is. There's a trap to make your copy look really creative. But then if someone looks at it who's no idea what you're building, even if the copy is creative, if they don't understand what you're actually building or selling, the copy won't work. There's some really simple writing advice which is like, what are you actually trying to say? And then just write that. Just keep it super simple.

[Rid]

Is there an example from something that you've written at Linear that we could use to kind of point at that rule? And I'm specifically interested in, in your process for whittling down to simplicity, you know, because most of the time simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve and it's much easier to write something that's verbose and uses a little bit too much jargon.

[Julian Lear]

Yeah, I'm not sure if this is the perfect example here, but the current tagline we have on the website, which is like, linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. I think coming to that word purpose built took us like three years. This is not a new value prop. It was always there, but we just couldn't find the right words at the beginning. If you look at the Wayback Machine and you go back to some older landing pages, you will find the word opinionated a lot. Linear is an opinionated tool.

[Rid]

I remember that.

[Julian Lear]

It sort of is, but not really. It's not opinionated for the sake of being opinionated. It's just the difference is that there are general purpose tools that are infinitely flexible. They're all in one tools. Whereas Linear was very specifically built for a very specific use case. And it's purpose built. It's not opinionated, it's purpose built. But it took us a very long time to get there. And so if you look at that main headline, it's very simple. It actually starts with Linea is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. We thought about just shortening it to purpose built for planning and building products, but then this was like this page gets shared a lot on Twitter. And so maybe having sort of like a full sentence of here's what the product actually is is probably the best way to describe it, even in a. In like a long tagline.

[Rid]

It's definitely a different approach. Like the general rule of thumb that I've always been told is starting with maybe some kind of a verb based value proposition phrase, you know, like I wouldn't have written in flight is. But I can see how there is a simplicity that comes from that format.

[Julian Lear]

If it works for us, it doesn't mean that it works for other products or other companies. But coming up with more solutions based messaging can be hard because it's often like too generic and then you look at something and it looks great. But the same value prop might work for 12 other different products that are building something completely different than you are building. And it's not really specific to your product. It works for us. Doesn't mean it's the right approach for other companies.

[Rid]

Okay, so you've been in this role for like over four years, right?

[Julian Lear]

Close to four years, yeah.

[Rid]

Okay, you started off with this very vague title and this mission to throw something at the wall and figure out a unique way to shape this role. So you've been doing that for a while now and obviously there are some things that are working. So what are some of the main ways that your role has evolved over your tenure at Linear?

[Julian Lear]

I think it has evolved in the way that we now have like, I wouldn't call it a playbook, but the way we operate just has become a lot more efficient and faster because we know what works and we now how we best work together. So that has definitely changed. We've grown the team quite a bit. So we are now six people in total. And it has changed in that we now have this formal team, this sort of like in house creative studio that has like a very specific mission and a very like very specific set of, you know, projects that we're working on. And we now also have a more formal marketing team that does things like, you know, writing customer stories and running ad campaigns and more traditional B2B SaaS marketing activities. So I think those are like the biggest differences in my role specifically. I think it has changed a little bit in the sense that there's more project management involved these days. The company has almost 10x since I joined and so there's more like, sort of like being the connective tissue between product marketing and this little in house creative studio.

[Rid]

I want to learn a little bit more about how the in house studio works and maybe we could look at the recent agents release and use that as kind of a lens to understand what collaboration, collaboration looks like. So can you kind of just talk us through honestly, maybe even starting at the beginning of that project once that opportunity came up? What is the role of storytelling to figure out a set of deliverables, Messaging, what is that process? Anything that you can use to shine a light there? I'd love to learn more.

[Julian Lear]

Yeah. So this project I think had sort of like two phases. We came in before we had actually launched the feature and there's some features that we're working on where we have a very clear idea of what the feature is going to look like. And then you build that feature and it's very clear what the feature is going to look like. It's pretty clear what the messaging is going to look like. And then there's very little change after you release it with agents just because it's such a new thing. It's not just the product that is changing, but the messaging that is changing too. I think the feature will look completely different in three months from now and in six months from now. We came in just before the initial release or the initial beta release and the idea was really to just generate some hype around it. So the goal was not to explain what agents was or what it was supposed to do because honestly, honestly, we didn't know what it was supposed to look like. And the idea of the whole beta test was really like, how are people going to use these agents and what are the main workflows and the main value adds for our users? So the idea was really just to generate some hype around the concept and get people to sign up to our beta test. From a storytelling perspective, there's not a lot of explaining what this feature is or what it does. It's more like keeping it vague and generating interest that way while still maintaining some clarity of roughly what users might be able to do with it. We eventually came up with this Hands of God visual that felt like an interesting way to visualize the feature. I don't want to say struggle with, but this is the most challenging part of the job, is to visualize the product in an interesting way. If you look at linear, it's very information dense and that's on purpose because that's a great user experience. From a marketing perspective, it's terrible because whenever you put a screenshot of the app on a landing page, there's so much going on that it completely distracts from any of the copy. So the main job is always to simplify, simplify, simplify, and come up with sort of interesting ways to abstract away complexity and highlighting the main thing. Anyway, in this case we came up with this Hands of God concept that felt interesting because in a sense that's what AI is, right? Like we sort of became God and created this new species called artificial intelligence that works with us on projects and in companies. We think of these agents as teammates that work alongside you.

[Rid]

You use the word eventually, so you obviously didn't land on that visual immediately. How wide was the spectrum of things that you're exploring? I'm kind of curious to get into some of the messy details. While it's still a little bit unclear, what is the role of storytelling in that process? How are you exploring different ideas and even getting buy in from the team to get to the point where it's like, yeah, this is what we want to put out into the world?

[Julian Lear]

Yeah, it's a good question. At the beginning of any project is always the hardest phase of a project and also the messiest phase. We typically work on these things together as a team from the very start. I think a lot of people think about, oh, copy comes first and then there's a designer who puts some nice designs around it and then someone's going to implement it. I don't think that works very well for us because like I mentioned earlier, these things are all very connected. And so you have this sort of like chicken and egg problem at the beginning where it's, well, I kind of want to have the design first and then write some copy around it and vice versa. And so we typically start just throwing a bunch of stuff in a Figma doc. Figma is definitely the tool that we spend most of our time in. And so at the beginning it's just a lot of back and forth, a lot of terrible ideas, a lot of ideas that seem great at the time. But then you look at it the next morning like, this is a terrible idea, this doesn't work. And so it feels like the first couple of weeks of a project often feel like you're not getting anywhere, there's very little progress, and then at some point it just clicks and you find the right thing. And I wish I could tell you what triggers that point, but I couldn't. And I guess that's like the biggest question in creativity is like, how do you get to that point where all of a sudden you get to the right idea that really works.

[Rid]

I'm not going to let you go from this quite yet. I want to go a little bit deeper and keep pushing on it. So like very practically, when you're in that two week window where it's, it's hard and you feel like maybe you're going in circles, nothing is really creating that aha feeling of like, yeah, we've landed on the concept of the metaphor or the idea. What are you practically doing as someone in a storytelling role to cycle through ideas? Are you writing in certain ways in certain places? Like what is your creative process look like when you're in that really messy of time?

[Julian Lear]

I can't speak for the rest of the team, but for me, I like to change scenery. And when I say change scenery, I don't mean, you know, go to a coffee shop and work from coffee shop for a couple of hours. I mean scenery in terms of like the app or the environment that I write in. So I often switch tools. I do a lot of my writing with like pen and paper notebooks. I feel like that's a good way to focus. There's no Twitter app in a physical notebook that you can, you know, you can open just like, oh, let me look at the Twitter feed for a minute, 20 minutes on. So that's like the main benefit of pen and paper writing. But then even if I transcribe those notes into a writing tool, I would often switch between tools. I do a lot of writing in Figma these days just because I want to see how the copy looks and feels. But sometimes Figma doesn't do it for me and I have to switch to a Google Doc or to a Notion Doc or to something else completely. So that change of scenery for some reason does something to my thinking process.

[Rid]

How big of a role has AI played in your own personal process?

[Julian Lear]

I use AI a lot. I use ChatGPT for most of my writing these days. I've never gotten chatgpt to a point where it could write for me because what it produces never sounds like what I would write. But I find it really helpful to unblock me and to refine some ideas, especially as, like, you know, English is not my native language. It helps to, you know, find synonyms. Or just like, I have a sentence and I would throw it into ChatGPT and say, like, give me 10 alternative versions of this. And then sort of like, I pick bits and pieces from those suggestions and put something new together. It's like playing with Legos a little bit. Like, to me, writing is very much sort of like a. Like I said, it's sort of like a design exercise. I think, like, text to me is sort of like different shapes that I have to put together until they feel right.

[Rid]

I'm still trying to figure it out myself. Because you mentioned, like, the contrast and font weight. I would imagine there's probably, like, a shape element too. You know, maybe. I don't know. Do you think about that kind of thing? Or it's like, I want my headings to each one be, like, indented, so it creates, like, a slant. Or maybe there's certain patterns that you definitely want to avoid. I know a lot of it is so subjective and this feel, but. But I think a lot of the feelings that you are now experiencing as second nature are derived from this backlog of pattern recognition that you've accumulated over four years. So I'm like, I'm not letting you go. I'm still trying to dig into what are some of those patterns that create either positive or negative signals.

[Julian Lear]

Font weight and font size definitely play a role in it. Spacing is probably more important. Not just the line height, but also the spacing between a paragraph of text and an asset that supports it. It. To me, a page is like a story, and spacing means that you're pausing for a second until you sort of tell the next thing. Sometimes you need a longer pause, sometimes you need a shorter pause. So that's an important element. And then there are things like line breaks. Obviously, there's things like you want to avoid orphan lines, but the text, how the text flows. A line break is sort of like a short pause or like a short friction point. And sometimes that friction point is great because you want that, like, little pause. And sometimes it doesn't work, and so the line becomes too long, and then you have to rewrite it until sort of like the form, sort of like this balance between form and function that needs to work.

[Rid]

I want to make sure we're not missing anything because you described your role as kind of packaging design almost. So is there anything else that we're not talking about that you think contributes to a great unwrapping experience.

[Julian Lear]

I like it when you think about, like physical products that have great packaging. And the number one example I always give is Apple products because they put a lot of thought and work into their packaging. I think a lot of people don't appreciate it, but there must be someone who remember when you unbox these AirPods for the first time and they came in this slightly translucent plastic wrapper, that the way that wrapper opened was just so satisfying, you know, that someone probably spent like a year perfecting how that plastic wrapper opened. And what I like about it is that it gives you a very good idea of what the core product experience is going to feel like. That's the role of packaging to me. It's like you haven't used the product yet, but just by looking at the packaging, touching the packaging, you get an idea of what the product will look like and what the product will feel like. Like I mentioned, we think about like, feelings a lot. Linear is a digital product. It's intangible. You can't touch it. But I think it's important to think about what might Linear feel like if you were able to touch it. We try to make the product more tangible. And you see that on some of the assets that we put on the website, right, that like a little glass effect, some of like more tilted 3D assets. Like we think a lot about like, how those look and they should give you a sense of what the end product feels like. And so when they talk about branding, they think about like, oh, you come up with a name and the logo and some colors, but branding is a lot more than that. Branding is everything that you do as a company. It's everything that you're, that your product sort of like is about. And so you think about like what makes your product or your company unique and special and then you try to translate those attributes into the packaging. Like in our case, it's mostly websites. Linear is a very fast tool. It's very polished, it's very professional. And so we think about like, okay, how do those attributes translate into the actual landing pages that will eventually ship?

[Rid]

What about the physical feeling piece? Like, what do you hope that Linear physically feels like?

[Julian Lear]

It's very robust. Like it doesn't easily break. And there are materials that you can feel that where you feel like, ah, this is like a little finicky or it might break easily. This is like, it's very robust. So that is one aspect of it. Probably something like, you know, like aluminum or like a very durable glass. And then there's this sense of, like, polishness. There's certain materials that just have, like, a surface area that's not too smooth. There's, like, some friction when you. When you touch it, but in, like, in a nice way. So it's like something that's, like, satisfying to touch, if that makes sense.

[Rid]

It does. And I think that that naturally creates some images in the minds of people listening. Right. Like, you can kind of picture maybe a corner radius on some kind of a card and a material that's used. What are some of the ways that you try to support that feeling that you're trying to invoke? With language, though, we do think about.

[Julian Lear]

Like, the words that we use a lot, and I'll give you an example in a second. But I think it's mostly or it's more about, like, how that copy looks and feels. I think that's more like you can make a copy look elegant just by choosing a different typeface. Right.

[Rid]

Like, I would expect you to defend the very specific words and characters, and yet every time I come back to it, you keep talking about the importance of the aesthetic. It's really. It's noteworthy.

[Julian Lear]

I think they're sort of the same thing, though. Like, to me, they're not, you know, separate elements. They go hand in hand. But I'll give you an example of, like, a small detail that I think spent probably half a day discussing. How do you spell real time? Do you spell it real hyphen time, or is it real time as in one word?

[Rid]

So what did you do?

[Julian Lear]

Yeah, so the grammatically correct way to write real time is with that hyphen, but to us, it just didn't feel right. And real time, to me means something that's really fast. And so having it as, like, one word just felt like the better way to write it. And so when we write real time, it's one word, real time, faster. Like, real time.

[Rid]

Okay, so I want to zoom out and abstract some of the lessons and knowledge that you've accumulated at linear, because I think there's at least some subset of people that are listening who have ideas that they want to put out into the world. And it's a little bit of a black box in terms of what does effective storytelling look like? How do I even figure out what the crux of my idea is? And I'm curious if you have any advice for someone listening who has a product that maybe solves a concrete problem, even, but how to unveil that, how to tell that story? That part's pretty unclear.

[Julian Lear]

I think the number one advice that I would give is to find something that's unique and that people haven't seen before. I've seen a lot of people, or we've seen a lot of people sort of like, copy the linear landing page. And some of these examples, they look great, but they look like, linear. And it's been great for us because people go like, oh, this looks like linear. And then I now have like 10 new people who check out our landing page. But that's not your job. Your job is to create something unique that's, you know, your brand should stand out. It should be something that hasn't existed before in that sort of, like, shape and form. So I think that would be my number one advice. Find something that's unique. And unique could mean in terms of, like, the content, it could mean in terms of design, it could mean in terms of, like, the implementation. Not everything needs to be a polished landing page. I've seen people who share their product in a Google Doc and that works because it's different. You know, like, you want to predict what people expect from a landing page or from, you know, your packaging, and then you do sort of like the exact opposite or you do something that they don't expect. And that's. That's your goal.

[Rid]

One of my favorite landing page examples that I've ever seen out in the wild was a Google Doc and they did a limited release of this bundle and the link, you click on it and it takes you to a Google Doc and it's a one pager. But you had this combination of knowing there are only a hundred spots in this offer, and then you could see the real time of, oh, my God, there's 350 people in this document right now. And I just had this moment of like, this is the best landing page I've ever seen in my entire life.

[Julian Lear]

Yeah, this is. This is great. But again, it only works like once or twice. Right? Like, if everyone did that, it wouldn't work. Like, the novelty wears off with these things, like, very quickly.

[Rid]

I would imagine you experienced that as much as anybody too, because whatever you put out into the world gets copied immediately. So you probably feel a little bit of pressure to have to reinvent yourself on a tighter cycle than a lot of companies.

[Julian Lear]

It's worked in our favor, I would say. But yeah, there's definitely that pressure to come up with new things constantly.

[Rid]

I want to hear a little bit more about how you gather inspiration and maybe as we're talking about novelty, I'm curious if You've come across anything in the wild recently where you're just like, okay, that's pretty good. There's something here that works from a storytelling standpoint point.

[Julian Lear]

I'll give you an example of a landing page that I really liked. But other landing pages are usually not my source of inspiration. I usually try to find inspiration somewhere completely else. Like I mentioned, finding sort of like an analogy or a metaphor is sort of like, the more interesting way to tell a story. Or it's what, like, how I do it.

[Rid]

But I thought, let's start with the landing page then. And then we'll zoom out and we'll kind of talk a little bit more holistically about how you approach inspiration.

[Julian Lear]

Have you seen. I think it's called Anti Metal.

[Rid]

Yeah.

[Julian Lear]

There's one thing that. There's one thing that really bothers me about that landing page, which is that it uses scroll jacking. Your wrist hurts, and it doesn't have to. Scroll jacking is a crime, and nobody should do it. You can do the same thing without any scroll jacking. But in terms of storytelling, I think the page was really well done. So I think that's, like, an example that definitely.

[Rid]

What about it? What about it? You think it was well done?

[Julian Lear]

I think it's often hard to visualize the problems that you're trying to solve and the way they did it with those. So of, like, notifications that popped up in the right hand corner and sort of, like, transforming your Mac bar into this sort of, like, thing that morphed into where I think it exploded at the end or something. That storytelling, I think, was, like, really well done to go for, like, oh, here's a problem that you can relate to. And then now let me tell you how we're doing it better.

[Rid]

I love that example. I just shared it in the newsletter a week or two ago. The same disclaimer at the beginning where I was like, like, my wrist hurts. Don't do this. But this narrative is incredible.

[Julian Lear]

Yeah.

[Rid]

And there is, like. That was the section that stood out to me, too, because they weren't telling you about the problem. They effectively immersed you in the problem where you just felt it from all angles. I was like, man, that tip of the cap, that was really, really well done.

[Julian Lear]

Yeah, for sure. But, yeah, like I said, other landing pages, usually not my source of inspiration. Like, we do take inspiration from other pages short. But eventually you need to create something new and come up with ideas that you haven't seen on another landing page. I'm not sure where that Hand of God idea came from. I think it was more random, but it's like spending a lot of time at the edges of the Internet is where I find my inspiration arena is a great source. Twitter, obviously, and more bizarre blocks or websites that you randomly stumble upon. I think those are better source for inspo for me.

[Rid]

I guess I want to get a little bit more clarity on the types of things that you're saving. Like, is it everything from, like, language to graphics? What types of things are you using for inspiration?

[Julian Lear]

It's a. It's a wild mix of, well, mostly images and text. Those are, like, the two main things I will say. The other thing that I do is when I. When I. When I read, I will underline things in books, even, like, fiction, like, sort of like a sentence that I think was good, underline it and then save that in Obsidian and then sort of like, use that as inspo for things when it's relevant. So I have that sort of, like, sorted under different themes that I would then revisit when I write something that's sort of like, related to those themes.

[Rid]

I want to talk about you for a little bit because, you know, for anyone that hasn't been to your website, we'll link it in the show notes. But you have quite the body of writing that is much more general than anything about linear. Like, it's just the things that are on your mind. So before we get into all the impact of that and what it looks like, what's the motivation for investing the amount of time that you do into putting your thoughts out there on the Internet?

[Julian Lear]

Two things. One is, and this is the main goal here, is it helps me with my thinking. Like, writing is very much a thinking process for me. When I start writing, I start with, like, a very vague idea, and then as I write, it usually morphs into something completely different. Like, sometimes I start with, like, an opinion where, like, I have this opinion and I'm going to write about it. And as I write about it, I realize that, you know, actually that doesn't make any sense, and I completely changed my mind and write something completely different. So just getting that clarity is definitely the main benefit. The other benefit, and the reason why I put it out there, is because it allows you to meet a lot of, like, interesting people who probably have been thinking about the same thing. So whenever I release something, I get at least 10 DMs from people who are building products in the space or have been thinking about the same thing, or they've written something similar and just Connecting with those people and finding things that otherwise would have been hard to discover. I think that's putting out a Bat Signal and see who responds to it.

[Rid]

I'm even just going to underline that too. I've never used Bat Signal. I'm probably going to steal that and claim it as my own ingenuity. I normally refer to it as a magnet for like minded people, but I have so many articles that I've put out into the world that really are just my way of processing an interview and something that stood out to me from a conversation with someone like yourself. I put it out into the world, people slide into my DMs and now I have like all kinds of friendships. I've made investments, I've gotten people hired, and everything has started from me just hitting tweet on one random little article that probably manifested as a shower thought.

[Julian Lear]

I think it's hard to appreciate this or hard to realize how much of an impact this can have if you've never done it. Like, writing on the Internet is still very underrated and you'd be surprised what type of people read your blog posts. Even if it seems obvious to you or if it doesn't seem that great to you, there's probably someone out there who's going to read it. And sometimes you can influence people's decision making and their thinking. It's a really powerful medium. I think not a lot of people realize how beneficial it can be for both you and other people out there.

[Rid]

Especially when the goal is connection. Because then you don't really need that many people to see what you write. Like if the right one person finds it out of maybe n of 15, then you win, you know, like that's a great place to start.

[Julian Lear]

I think that's, that's the other thing that you know. Unfortunately, Twitter and other algorithms all optimized for reach. Reach is not really the goal here. The goal is to reach the right audience and sometimes there's just like five people. But you can find those five people who, you know, might be distributed across the globe up. That's really powerful.

[Rid]

I'm a big believer in the power of video to explain my thinking as a designer. So when it's time to get feedback, I'll drop a loom link in Slack and another link to a Figma prototype and feedback will be scattered everywhere. And I mean, it's a mess. So I'm building the product that I've always wanted to exist and it's called Inflight. You can kind of think of it like An Async crit. It's an easy way to share a video walkthrough along with an interactive prototype or whatever you're designing, and then AI interviews the people on your team to get you the feedback that you need and organizes everything for you in a beautiful insights page. So right now I'm only giving access to Dive Club listeners. So if you want to be one of the first to use Inflight, head to dive, dot club, slash inflight to claim your spot. Did you start off publishing on your own website or were you kind of tinkering or exploring ideas on Twitter or Medium first? Like, what was your kind of journey as a writer?

[Julian Lear]

It's always been my own block. Like I said, writing to me is a very visual exercise. And. And things like Substack or Medium wouldn't give me, like, the visual control that I need to make my blog posts what they are. I also don't think I would get the readership like, you know, it's. It's another packaging exercise. You can trick people into reading your essays just by making them look interesting or different. And so it wouldn't have worked on a more generic platform where my content would have looked like any other content.

[Rid]

Yeah. I appreciate a lot of the things that you were saying earlier, because even the way that you format not only from a spacing standpoint, but also the typography that you choose for your articles right away is unique. And now I'm like, okay, I kind of see how you're arriving at some of those seemingly smaller decisions, but for you, they're probably not small decisions.

[Julian Lear]

No, I mean, that's the whole job. Writing is only half of it. Packaging it is the other half, and arguably the more important half. I think the writing aspect of it is sort of a little overrated. Again, it's like three. There's the core idea that you're communicating, then there's the written aspect of putting it into words and sentences, and then there's the visual packaging side of it. And I think that middle component is kind of underrated. You don't need to be a great writer to do great writing. All that matters is that you have something interesting to say and that you can package it in a way so that people actually read it.

[Rid]

You've been writing over a long time horizon, and you can tell you put a lot of effort into each individual post. It's not something that you're just. Just cranking out every six days. Are there clear ways that you're able to look at where you started as a writer and where you're at now and see growth areas or ways that you've evolved your practice that others might be able to learn from.

[Julian Lear]

I think the writing that like, middle component I just mentioned that I said wasn't as important. That has definitely improved. Like the more you write, like, the better your writing gets, I would say. And I'm not a designer, I don't have a design background, but spending a lot of time in Figma has definitely improved the visual aspect of some of these articles. So if you go back to the first articles that I've published, they definitely look a lot worse than more recent articles. Just in terms of the assets and visual aspects of the post, are you.

[Rid]

Playing a role in any of the visual assets or even doing any initial exploring or prototyping at Linear?

[Julian Lear]

Yeah, I do play around with assets a lot. Often it's more like a scribble. It doesn't look great, but again, it's sort of like a back and forth. Most of these ideas are terrible, but it's part of the story and sometimes I need to, you know, the story is not just a copy. The assets are more important because people like to look at images they don't like to read. They might read a headline or two and if they're really interested, they maybe, you know, maybe they'll read part of the copy. But 90% of it, people won't read. The assets matter a lot more. So I do have opinions on the assets that accompany my copy. And I'm not a designer. What I design won't look great, but it helps me to think and it helps communicate ideas with the rest of the team. The rest of the team has opinions on the copy and on the layout. So there's a heavy overlap between each of our roles. Even though there is a designer, there's a writer, there's an engineer, we all do parts of the other people's job as well because that's the only way to make it work.

[Rid]

And you're working with some people that are pretty good at making assets too.

[Julian Lear]

Yeah, for sure. I'm very lucky to be surrounded by people, people who are incredibly good at what they do.

[Rid]

I'm sure there's somebody listening that is in maybe a somewhat similar role and they're jealous of having a Paco or somebody to bring their ideas to life in CSS 100%.

[Julian Lear]

And I want to make it clear that their roles are more important than mine. Like I said, the implementation side and the visual side are way more important than the copy. I think the magic happens when all three things come together. But those two elements are more important than the written copy on the page.

[Rid]

I want to return to my hypothetical with someone listening who has an idea that they want to put out into the world. And there's a lot of different ways to do that in different forms. And some things that feel like the most simple tweets all the way to, like, I'm going to put a full product demo out there. What is the role that storytelling plays and why does that matter? Even as a pursuit for someone who's trying to figure out how to put their ideas out into the wild? Wild.

[Julian Lear]

I think as with any communication, there are two sides. There's a sender and there's a receiver. On the receiving side of it, you have a lot of people who have an attention span that is effectively zero to get bombarded with a gazillion tweets and product launches and ads and whatnot. So very little attention span. And then on the sender side of things is what you are selling is probably pretty complex. Like your complex organization. You're selling a complex product that has a lot of different elements to it. It like a story, is like a data compression algorithm that takes all of that complexity and summarizes it and packages it nicely in like, very easy to consume, compelling narrative. If it's condensed enough and packaged well enough, then you might get a chance to squeeze it into that, like, very short attention span of a potential user or customer. I think that's the role of it. The other thing is, especially in the age of AI, I think there's a lot of thinking about, like, what's your, you know, what's your moat? What's your defensibility? Stories are very defensible. Stories are like shared beliefs. They're kind of like a network effect. The more people believe in a shared narrative, the stronger it becomes. It's like a flywheel effect. It's almost like a religion, right? You're not in the business of selling a piece of software. You're in the business of creating a belief that a lot of people share. Most people buy products because of a shared belief or they stick with a product because of shared belief. Could be something like, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. You know that old slogan, that's a really powerful story. I'd say those are like the two aspects that I would highlight.

[Rid]

How intentionally have you built a story around craft at Linear? Because it's so quickly become the company that the industry points to as why craft matters, or why you can win with craft. Was that something that just kind of happened or did you all lean into that internally?

[Julian Lear]

I think that was something that's been around since the very start, before I even joined. Like that was a core motivation for the founders to even start the company. Like if you think about linear is where tools in general tools are like this just a means to an end. I think the problem with a lot of tools that we have to use in our everyday lives is that they take. There's too much friction and you spend more time in the tool than with of the job we're actually supposed to do. I guess if you're building a product, your job is not to spend time in an issue tracker. A lot of tools measure success in time spent in app. Like Instagram. Let's get time spent in app up. For us, it's almost the opposite. That's not an actual goal, but it sort of is something we think about. This tool should not be the place where you spend your time. It should be as frictionless as possible. It's almost like know it's like noise canceling for product work. It's like, let's remove all of that complexity so you can focus on your core craft. And so that's been the goal of the product from day one. And so naturally we've leaned more into some of that. And you know, with that whole series, we did it on quality and building. That definitely, you know, that was like a very intentional decision. But it's been there from the very start.

[Rid]

I want to toss a hypothetical your way and I want you to imagine that you have moved on from linear. You've been brought on in the short run as a consultant at a new B2B dev tools company. Somebody that's doing something for agentic flows, you know, real nerdy technical stuff. What would be some of the first things that you would be doing as someone brought in to lead storytelling, to figure out what the crux of the idea is, what matters and ultimately what you would turn into the core story that you're putting out into the world world.

[Julian Lear]

Try to become a user and try to understand the problem that you're solving. I wouldn't be able to do this role at a lot of companies. Linea was of like a natural fit because I had been thinking about, you know, productivity software and tools for thought for many, many years before I joined here. I couldn't do the same for, I don't know, like a security tool because I know next to nothing about the space. Even if I Spent like a year on it. I probably wouldn't be able to really understand the core user or the core problem behind it. But yeah, that would be the number one goal, is become the user, use the tool as much as possible, and try to understand what exactly it is that you're solving. And then as a next step, try to find some interesting analogies to explain those problems and make them more tangible. A lot of both the problems and the solutions are often hard to articulate. And, and this is why I'm like, come on as a consultant and come up with a solution in three months or a couple of weeks. I don't think that works. You'll do your best work after a couple of years. Like I said, that term purpose built took us almost three years to get to that point. And I think we probably needed those three years to think about it in so many different ways until you hit the right, the right language or the right idea. And then as a next step, try to find some interesting analogies to explain those problems and make them more tangible. Both the problems and the solutions are often hard to articulate. And this is why I'm like, come on as a consultant and come up with a solution in three months or a couple of weeks. I don't think that works. You'll do your best work after a couple of years. Like I said, that term, term purpose built took us almost three years to get to that point, and I think we probably needed those three years to think about it in so many different ways until you hit the right language or the right idea.

[Rid]

How big of a role does external research or focus testing or even just general public opinion play in the specific language that you all revolve around, Especially given the fact that you're all kind of building for yourselves, you know, like, you can use your own taste and judgment as a pretty high signal for what's going to work.

[Julian Lear]

Yeah, I think that's. You make an important point here. Like, we are users of the product, and so that makes the job a lot easier. We don't do a B tests. We obviously know when we build the core product. We do work with our users a lot. I think when you look at customer feedback or customer requests, what's important is that you don't. You don't take feedback at face value. The real problem is usually hidden somewhere below what people tell you. And so I guess there's like, similar aspects to the copy that you're writing or sort of like, you know, descriptions of features. I do go through customer feedback that we hear on, you know, calls with customers and try to find sort of like interesting bits and pieces that we can use or react use. We don't run these landing pages by other people before or like external people before we launch them. We do look at feedback that we receive afterwards. And there are certain people that we just respect and if they react positively, then it gives us that gut feeling that I described earlier that we are on the right track, but there's no real process behind it. There's no AB testing or anything like that.

[Rid]

Do you already have an idea rattling around in your brain that's going to turn into the next essay?

[Julian Lear]

You think there's a couple? I always have a couple dozen half written drafts and ideas lying around. Nothing on my personal blog. There's one I want to write for Linear. I can give you the title of it. It's called Ozempic for your product team. And so the analogy here is that as we go up market, the problem that Linear is solving isn't so much just like being a faster issue tracking tool or a better project management tool for a lot of these companies. It's like they have these legacy tools that have exploded into these like huge complex processes. There's a lot of like process fat. I think this is like something that people get wrong with. Like when people talk about founder mode and you know, it's a lot of like, oh, we just need to let go of a lot of people and become a startup again. But I think a lot of that is just like a company is like an organism and an organism grows. It's processed fat that you accumulate. And so a lot of people make the switch to Linear just to get rid of that process fat and to, to switch to something that keeps them lean and focused. So the Ozempic analogy is kind of interesting because that's sort of what it is. Because it's purpose built. There's no way to accumulate that process fat. It keeps that hunger away to add more process layers and additional things that will ultimately slow you down.

[Rid]

I think it's quite impressive because at the very beginning of the Linear journey it was much easier, I would assume, to write very, very pointed titles and headings and things that were unique to what you all could do that other people couldn't easily say. And I think that challenge becomes so much more difficult as the product service area grows and you're adding on all of these different types of value propositions and use cases. And so you often see companies at any semblance of scale have the most generic headings ever. And so you've been able to achieve this level of all encompassing value proposition but do so in a way that is still very pointed and unique. That's pretty hard to do.

[Julian Lear]

It's an interesting problem. As you grow and as your sort of addressable market expands, your identity becomes almost prismatic. You're still the cool tool for a startup, but you also like the serious tool for a big enterprise customer. And it's a fine line to make both of those narratives work for sure. I think it's the same for if you think about yourself, who you are to your parents might be different than who you are to your friends brands, than who you are on Twitter to other people. It's still the same you, but they're like different flavors of it. And so finding something that's consistent across all of those different audiences is sort of like the difficult part without it becoming too generic. I think what helps in our case is that it's almost like linear is almost like a consumer brand that is monetizing with, you know, B2B subscriptions for companies. But our marketing is still very much targeted at the end customer at the IC engineer, the IC designer who's using the tool and it always will be. And it's very much sort of like a bottom up approach. So that makes it a little easier. Our primary audience is not the C level management suite. Yes, you need to convince those as well, but it's easier to convince them if you have sort of like a broad base of ICs who really want to use the tool because that's, that's what makes the tool good, is that people actually enjoy using it.

[Rid]

Well, I would say you've definitely accomplished that as pretty much every week my feed is full of people who are pointing at linear and celebrating the quality and also just the affinity that the community has with the tool. You all have been able to achieve something very special and I think storytelling has played a significant role in that. So I appreciate you coming on today and, and giving us a little bit of a behind the scenes of how the sauce is made and some of the things that you all are thinking through as you just put yourselves out there and celebrate ideas and quality. And this was very enjoyable. So I appreciate it.

[Julian Lear]

Thanks for having me. This was really fun.

[Rid]

Before I let you go, I want to take just one minute to run you through my favorite products because I'm constantly asked what's in my stack Framer is how I build websites, sites, Genway is how I do research granola is how I take notes during crit. Jitter is how I animate my designs. Lovable is how I build my ideas in code. Marvin is how I find design inspiration. Paper is how I design like a creative. And Raycast is my shortcut every step of the way. Now, I've hand selected these companies so that I can do these episodes full time. So by far the number one which is to support the show is to check them out. You can find the full list at Dive Club Partners.