3 resources from David Cummings on Startups we point founders to, and the questions each answers.
✍️ Essay
✓ Link checkedFreeBeginner
Why we picked it
This is the short, canonical piece that popularized the painkiller versus vitamin test, from a founder who has actually built and funded companies. It gives you a clean three way sort (candy, vitamin, painkiller) so you can be honest about where your idea really sits before you build. Treat it as a starting lens, not a verdict: it tells you the question to keep asking, which is whether people are in enough pain to pay now.
Why we picked it
This short post names the exact trap behind competitor anxiety: studying rivals feels like work but takes almost no effort, while the work that actually moves your product (talking to customers) is much harder, so the easy thing crowds out the important thing. Cummings gives one concrete rule to break the spiral: whenever a competitor announcement is pulling at you, email three customers to book check-ins instead. It is the discipline that keeps competitor monitoring healthy rather than compulsive.
Reading competitor sites is easy and feels productive, which is exactly why it quietly displaces the harder, higher-value work of talking to customers.
The fix is a swap, not willpower: redirect the urge to check a rival into a concrete customer action, like booking three check-ins.
Aim for customer obsessed and competitor aware, not the other way around.
Why we picked it
The cleanest founder-written explainer of the E-Myth distinction, from a repeat founder (Pardot, exited to ExactTarget) rather than a consultant. It names the trap directly, cites Paul Graham's Maker vs Manager schedule as the reason the switch is so hard, and lands on a concrete number: once the business is stable, spend at least 10 percent of your time on the business. Short enough to read in one sitting and set your weekly block against.
Early on almost all your time is correctly 'in the business'; the failure is never making the deliberate shift as you grow
In vs on maps to Paul Graham's maker vs manager schedules, which is why context-switching between the two in one day is so draining
Once you have a working business, hold at least 10 percent of your week for on-the-business work: pricing, hiring plan, positioning, which bets to kill
