Candy, Vitamin or Painkiller: Which One Is Your Product?

“That's a cool idea. We should do it!”

Everyone in the room seemed to be excited. Except for me.

The engineering team had just watched a presentation on a proposed plan to add new features to our product. And everyone seemed ready to get to work building those new features.

I could see why everyone was so excited. It was a tough technical challenge. It would allow the engineers to flex their development muscles. And it would impress their peers and senior management.

But I couldn't help wondering: would our users even care?

“What problem are we trying to solve for our users?” I asked.

Silence. There were blank stares around the room. Eventually, the presenter gave a vague answer about ‘making life easier for our users’.

Fast forward six months. The team went ahead with the plan. The new features shipped but never got any traction. And they were quickly forgotten.

These were incredibly smart and talented people. So what went wrong?

It's because the ‘cool’ idea was a vitamin, not a painkiller. Most of our users didn't care about it and could happily get by without it.

I'm sure you've heard people talk about vitamins vs. painkillers. It probably isn't a new concept for you. We should always build painkillers, right?

Well, I don't think it's that simple. Let me explain why.

Candies, Vitamins and Painkillers

Kevin Fong, a venture capitalist in the Bay Area, was known for saying:

“We divide business plans into three categories: candy, vitamins, and painkillers. We throw away the candy. We look at vitamins. We really like painkillers. We especially like addictive painkillers!”

Candy That Generates $1.5 Million a Day

Candy is sugary and sweet. It seems like products that are ‘candy’ are things people can live without. But is that true?

I'd argue that most video games are candy. But the mobile game Clash of Clans generated $1.5 million in revenue every day in 2015. Nobody would call that a painkiller. It's pleasurable and fun.

That's our first clue. Sometimes you can build a successful product by giving people pleasure.

Candy is not always bad. Especially if you're the one selling the really good stuff.

Vitamins Can Be Painkillers Too

A vitamin is your ‘cool’ idea. It makes things better but isn't always essential. If you don't get enough vitamins this week or this month, you may not notice the effects.

If your product is a vitamin, then it can be hard to sell. People will tell you “I think that's a great idea” and then forget about it.

But vitamins can become painkillers.

Who would have considered Twitter to be a painkiller when it launched in 2006? At best, it was a vitamin. Today, it was used by researchers to predict flu outbreaks and was critical during the Egyptian revolution of 2011.

So we can't ignore vitamins. Because tomorrow they may become painkillers.

Painkillers Aren't Necessarily the Holy Grail

A painkiller solves a painful problem. If you're in pain, you can't live without it. You need it now.

If your product is a painkiller, you'll find it much easier to sell.

But what if your product solves their pain forever? They don't need your product again. So that's probably not going to be a great business.

Have you ever tried Unroll.me? Great product that makes it easy to unsubscribe from email lists. It solved a pain for me once. But after that, I didn't need it again.

So there's our next clue. Having a product that's addictive is probably more important than whether it's candy, vitamin or painkiller.

Does It Matter Which One Your Product Is?

You can build a successful product with candy, vitamins or painkillers. It's also possible for a product to be candy, vitamin and painkiller at the same time for different people.

Take Facebook. For the guy in his twenties bored at his job, it's probably candy. For the working mom wanting to stay in touch with friends, it's probably a vitamin. For the widowed grandmother desperate to connect with family abroad, it's probably a painkiller.

So I think better questions to ask about your product are:

1. If we have candy, are we offering something that gives people real pleasure?
2. If we're offering a vitamin, can we see how it could become a painkiller down the road?
3. How addictive is our offering? Will people want to keep using it?
4. Are we focusing on the right group of customers? A vitamin for one person could be a painkiller for another.
5. How much urgency do people have for using our offering?

Bottom line: you don't always have to offer a painkiller. Obviously, having an addictive painkiller will probably increase your chances of success.

Whatever you have, be honest with yourself. There's no point deluding yourself that everyone's going to love your ‘cool’ idea.

And the sooner you discover that, the better.