Emmett Shear on Resolving Product Roadmap Disagreements

Twitch founder Emmett Shear believes that real product disagreements inside startups are actually rare—at least once everyone has talked to users and looked at the data. Most conflicts happen because people jump straight into brainstorming features without doing that groundwork. As he puts it, “You talk to your users first, and then you have ideas about your product. Almost everyone does it the opposite way.”

Shear is clear about how opinions should be weighted: if someone hasn’t spoken to users or studied the data, their opinion simply isn’t equal to the person who has. “If you haven’t talked to users and you haven’t looked at data, you don’t get to have an opinion about the product,” he says. You can still suggest ideas, but the person who gathered the insights should be the one who decides.

In the rare situation where both sides truly have done the work and still disagree, Shear says the answer isn’t to avoid conflict. Teams should talk it out, argue it out, and then let the designated decision-maker—often the CEO—make the call. Otherwise, you end up with endless debates and slow decisions.

Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman adds two lines he uses all the time when disagreements show up: “I don’t want to argue about it if we can just test it,” and “I’m very willing to be surprised on this.” It’s a mindset that keeps teams focused on learning instead of winning arguments.