Are You Selling a Vitamin or a Painkiller?

The Insight

Most founders don't fail because they build a bad product. They fail because they build a product nobody urgently needs. There's a difference between something that's nice to have and something that's a must-have. And the speed at which customers show up tells you everything.

Adam Markowitz built two companies. The first, Portfolium, was an edtech platform that helped students showcase their skills. It took years to gain traction. Over 500 universities in 2.5 years. Respectable, but grinding.

Then he built Drata, a compliance automation platform. 100 customers in 6 weeks. 1,000 in the first year. Same founder. Same co-founders. Same playbook. Completely different speed.

Adam put it best: "We went from selling a vitamin in edtech, like a nice-to-have, to a painkiller, a need-to-have in SaaS."

The difference wasn't talent or execution. It was the problem.

How They Did It

Adam didn't just stumble into a painkiller. He recognized the difference because he'd lived both sides.

1. He felt the pain firsthand. At Portfolium, a CIO at Cal State asked him to prove his security posture during a sales cycle. He couldn't. That memory stuck. It became the seed for Drata.
2. He validated with dozens of conversations. Even with personal experience, Adam spent 6 months talking to companies before writing code. The same words kept coming up across every conversation.
3. He measured the urgency signal. At Portfolium, those first 5 university customers were brutal to close. At Drata, he had 12 companies lined up before launch. And the moment they put up a website, inbound flooded in.
4. He picked the narrowest wedge of a massive problem. The compliance space (GRC) had been around for decades. Adam didn't try to solve all of it. He said: "We're going to take an automation-first approach to the C in GRC." Just compliance. Just automation. That was the slice.

The pattern: if people are pulling the product out of your hands before you're ready, you've found the painkiller.

What Trips Up Founders

Confusing interest with urgency. People will tell you your product is cool. They'll sign up for a waitlist. They'll take a demo. But if they're not asking when they can buy, you might be selling a vitamin. At Portfolium, students used the product for free but universities didn't have a budget line for it. It took 3 years to find the feature (learning outcomes assessment) that was tied to actual budget.

Falling in love with the first version of the problem. Adam spent years helping students prove their skills. That was a real problem. But it wasn't urgent enough to build a fast-growing business around. The urgent version of that same core belief (proving trust) showed up in a completely different market.

Ignoring the sales cycle as a signal. Long sales cycles aren't always a sign of a big deal. Sometimes they're a sign of a vitamin. When Adam sold Drata, companies were buying hand over fist. That speed is data.

When This Doesn't Work

Some markets are inherently slow. Enterprise sales, government contracts, healthcare. Long cycles don't always mean vitamin. The signal to watch is whether buyers are actively looking for a solution before you show up. Adam's Drata customers already knew they needed SOC 2. They just hated the process. If you have to educate the market about why the problem exists, you're probably selling a vitamin.

The Question

Before you spend another month building, ask yourself: are customers pulling this out of my hands, or am I pushing it toward them?

If you're pushing, you don't necessarily have a bad product. But you might be solving the wrong version of the problem. Adam solved the same core belief (proving trust) twice. The first time was a vitamin. The second time was a painkiller.

You'll know the difference fast.