The Streamer Motivation Interview
Interview your core users about their real motivations, then use those motivations as the only filter on what you build.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 92%
At Justin.tv, Shear had spent four years building products for video game streamers and had an epiphany that he had no idea why any of them streamed at all. He first made a hard prioritisation call - the product is ultimately about streamers, and if it does not work for streamers it works for nobody - reversing the previous position that streamers and viewers were equally important. He then interviewed roughly 40 people out of a small universe of about 200 who were already streaming games. He deliberately did not ask them what to build, on the logic that if they knew what to build they would have his job, and he had already spoken to enough of them to know their product ideas were not good. He asked about origins, prior tools, dreams, and wishes - and treated the wish only as a setup for the real question: if I built you that, what does it do for you, why is your life better. That follow-up surfaced three motivations - money, audience, and what he calls love, the reassurance that their creative work was wanted - which explained about 98% of behaviour. Anything that did not move those three, such as live polls, was never built.
Origin
It came out of an epiphany moment at Justin.tv when Shear realised that after four years of building for game streamers he genuinely could not say why any of them streamed.
Core principles
- 01Pick which side of the market the product is actually for
- 02Users are experts on their reality, not on your roadmap
- 03The stated wish is a setup, not an answer
- 04Motivations, not feature requests, are the durable output
- 05Care fanatically about the people while having no regard for their solutions
How to run it
- 1
Choose the side of the market that wins ties
Shear's first move was abandoning the Justin.tv position that streamers and viewers mattered equally, and deciding that the product is ultimately about streamers - if it does not work for them, it works for nobody.
Pro tip This decision is what makes the interview set finite and the answers actionable.
- 2
Admit the ignorance out loud
Name the thing you have been inventing. Shear's phrasing was that he saw he was just making it up, that there was an answer out there, a bunch of people knew it, and he did not.
Pro tip The admission is what converts a vague research urge into a concrete list of people to call.
- 3
Interview a large share of the real universe
Out of roughly 200 people already streaming games, Shear did about 40 interviews. The point is coverage of a known population, not a statistically convenient sample.
Watch out A handful of interviews will surface anecdotes, not the motivation structure.
- 4
Ask about their world, never about your roadmap
His question set: why are you streaming, what have you tried to use for streaming, what did you like about that, how did you get started in the first place, what is your biggest dream for streaming, what do you wish someone would build for you.
Watch out Do not ask what you should build - if they knew, they would have your job.
- 5
Run the killer follow-up on every wish
When they name a feature - Shear's example is a big red button - grant it and then ask what it does for them and why their life is better afterwards. That is where the real answer lives.
Pro tip Shear says the follow-up, not the wish question, was the killer.
- 6
Collapse to motivations and use them as the filter
Shear ended with three: money, more viewers, and love. Every proposed feature is then tested against them - live polls fail all three, so live polls never get built, and he considers them potentially net negative.
Watch out Features that sound cool and pass none of the tests will keep reappearing on the list.
In the wild
Shear assumed monetisation was irrelevant to streamers - at the rates of the day, someone streaming around 12 hours a week would make roughly $3 a month, and as a programmer who had interned at Microsoft for many multiples of that, it was not in his worldview that this could matter. In interviews streamers told him it would be amazing. He pushed back to check they were serious, and they were: the idea that they could make money doing this at all was the exciting part.
→ Money entered the core motivation set, and monetisation moved from a dismissed idea to something Shear committed to build.
Everyone asked for live polls and they sounded like an obviously cool feature. Run against the three motivations: they do not grow your audience, they do not make you money, and you do not feel more loved by running a poll than by asking chat and watching it fill up.
→ Polls stayed permanently on the sounds-cool list and were never built properly, because they could not move the needle on anything that mattered.
Common mistakes
Asking users what to build
Shear is explicit that he did not want their product ideas - if they knew what to build they would have his job, and he had talked to enough of them beforehand to know their ideas were not good. Taking the feature list at face value outsources the job nobody else can do for you.
Stopping at the stated wish
The wish is a proxy. Without the follow-up asking what the feature does for them and why life is better, you end up building the big red button and never learn it was about fans, money, or feeling wanted.
Substituting your own economics for theirs
Shear's summer-internship pay made $3 a month look meaningless, which is exactly why he never considered monetisation. Projecting your own worldview onto users hides the motivations that most move them.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and product leaders who have been building for a user type whose motivations they have been guessing at
Not ideal for
Teams whose users can genuinely spec the product themselves, or markets with no reachable concentrated user set
From the transcript
“I have no idea why anyone would stream video games”
“And I did about 40 interviews probably.”
“I didn't want to know like what they thought we should build cuz if they knew what we should build, they would have my job.”
“it was just those three things basically explained 98% of their motivation”
From the episode
Emmett Shear: Life After Twitch, Jeff Bezos Lessons & AI Doomsday Odds
Emmett Shear