Public vs Secret Roadmap

Separate user requests from breakthrough innovations with two distinct roadmaps

Gaurav Misra
Mastering onboarding | Gaurav Misra

Public vs Secret Roadmap

"We have what we think of as the public roadmap. This is basically what people have asked us for... But these are all features that every competitor knows about. If a user is asking us for it, they're asking everybody for it. It's not going to be a game changer in terms of winning against your competition. So we have a second roadmap which we think of as a secret roadmap." - Gaurav Misra

What It Is

A dual-roadmap system that separates feature requests (public roadmap) from breakthrough innovations (secret roadmap). The public roadmap contains what users explicitly ask for—features every competitor also knows about. The secret roadmap contains ideas nobody has asked for yet, based on unique insights about users and technology.

The framework recognizes that user requests, while important, represent known opportunities that competitors can also pursue. True differentiation comes from ideas that emerge from deep understanding—innovations that users might initially not understand or think they need.

How It Works

Public Roadmap:

  • Contains features users have explicitly requested
  • Aggregates feedback from support tickets, reviews, surveys
  • Prioritized by standard methods: frequency, impact, market size
  • Features every competitor also knows about
  • "Sure you can win a little by extra nicely prioritizing it or execution, but it's not going to be a game changer"

Secret Roadmap:

  • Contains features nobody has ever asked for
  • "If a user were shown something on it, they might be like, 'I don't need this. I don't know what this is.'"
  • Based on unique vantage point, understanding of users, and technology capabilities
  • Goal: "Truly change the behavior of the user"
  • "Once they try it, they never go back"

How secret roadmap ideas emerge:

  • Quarterly company-wide brainstorming (not just product team)
  • Includes engineering, recruiting, marketing, everyone
  • People vote on and rank ideas
  • Product team evaluates feasibility and technology fit

How to Apply It

  1. Create explicit separation - Maintain two distinct lists or documents so the distinction is clear

  2. Treat public roadmap as table stakes - Recognize these features are necessary but not sufficient for differentiation

  3. Invest in secret roadmap discovery

    • Quarterly brainstorms with the entire company
    • Include non-product people (they have valuable external perspectives)
    • Vote and rank collectively before product evaluates feasibility

  4. Define the secret roadmap bar - Ideas should pass this test: "Given our unique vantage point, our unique understanding of the problem set, the user space and the technology, we've come up with some special ideas that we think will completely revolutionize how something is used."

  5. Never announce secret roadmap items - "These are things we never talk about publicly, never tell anybody about, and we announce them and just give them to users and see the effects."

When to Use It

This framework is particularly powerful when:

  • You're in a competitive market with many similar products
  • Technology is advancing rapidly and enabling new possibilities
  • You have deep user understanding beyond what they explicitly say
  • Your team has diverse perspectives (engineering, design, operations)

The secret roadmap approach yielded major wins for Captions:

"The eye contact feature... we were actually the first company to build this. We worked with Nvidia on this... It was a huge success. The ad we made was made in basically every language around the world. It still till today gets millions of views."

Source

  • Guest: Gaurav Misra
  • Episode: "Mastering onboarding | Gaurav Misra"
  • Key Discussion: (00:26:17 - 00:32:10) - Explanation of the dual roadmap system and the eye contact feature example
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

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