Fame, Fortune, or Fun: YouTube's Framework for Creator Products

Most product frameworks sound smart in a meeting and useless in practice. The one that stuck with me from the Berkeley Haas AI Conference is from YouTube — and it's so simple it almost seems too obvious. Until you start applying it and realize how many product decisions it clarifies.

The Framework

Heather Christmann, who leads creator-facing products at YouTube, shared that they evaluate every product decision through three lenses. Creators ultimately want one (or more) of three things:

If a product delivers at least one of those things AND has daily utility (what Google internally calls "the toothbrush test" — will you use this every day?), it's worth building.

Why It Works

The power of this framework is that it cuts through feature-level debates and gets to what the user actually cares about. When you're in a design review arguing about whether to add a particular button or workflow, the question becomes: does this move the needle on fame, fortune, or fun? If you can't answer that, maybe you shouldn't build it.

Heather described using this in practice: "We're in design reviews and I'm like, I don't know about this. But I'm not the user. I'm not designing for fame, fortune, and fun in some of these." The framework gives you permission to step outside your own perspective and evaluate from the user's actual motivations.

It also explains why features that seem great on paper sometimes fail: they might be technically impressive or aesthetically beautiful, but if they don't advance fame, fortune, or fun, creators won't care. Their time is their currency — they'll go to another platform, go back to a day job, or create somewhere else.

Broader Application

Here's what makes this framework more than a YouTube-specific tool: the categories generalize. Replace "creators" with any user base and the structure holds:

The specific words might change, but the structure — understand the 2-3 fundamental motivations driving your users and evaluate every decision against them — is universally useful.

The Intersection Is Gold

Heather's key insight: the magic happens at the intersection. A product that delivers fame AND daily utility? That's a keeper. Fortune AND fun? Even better. All three plus habitual use? You've built something durable.

This is a useful filter for roadmap prioritization. Instead of ranking features by effort vs. impact (the standard 2x2), try mapping them to which motivations they serve. Features that hit multiple motivations are more durable than features that hit only one — even if the single-motivation feature has higher estimated impact.

The Anti-Feature Test

The framework is also useful in reverse. When you're overwhelmed with feature requests or trend-chasing ("we should add AI because everyone else is"), ask: will this AI feature increase fame, fortune, or fun for our users? If the answer is "it'll be cool and we'll get press" — that's fame for you, not for your users.

Heather made this point directly: "One of the things we fall into as a trap is to ship more features. But actually there's a learning curve. What people might want is an improved product that solves the need they were working towards, as opposed to just churning out so much."

Sometimes the best product decision is to make what you already have better at delivering fame, fortune, or fun — not to add something new.

Takeaway

I keep coming back to this framework because it passes my test for useful product thinking: it's simple enough to remember, specific enough to apply, and general enough to use across contexts. Three words that force you to stay anchored to what users actually care about, even when the market is screaming at you to chase the next shiny thing.