Customers & Research

How do I know if the job I'm solving is a painkiller people will pay for or just a vitamin they'd like?

A starting point

Watch for what they're already doing about it: a painkiller job has people spending money, cobbling together workarounds, or losing sleep, while a vitamin job gets nods and no action. If nobody has a current, ugly workaround for the struggle, the job probably isn't urgent enough to build a business on yet. As a starting point, ask what they tried before you showed up, and how much it cost them in time or money when it failed.

Go deeper

Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time.

3 resources 3 link-checked

Read

✍️ Essay
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

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.

Candy, Vitamins, or Painkillers for Startups

From David Cummings on Startups by David Cummings About a 3 minute read

  • Painkillers solve an urgent, pressing problem people will pay to make go away; vitamins are nice improvements that are easy to postpone.
  • Candy can win big as a fad but is unpredictable, so know which of the three you are actually selling before you set strategy.
  • If you cannot clearly call your product a painkiller, that is a signal to keep digging into the problem, not to keep polishing the solution.
Open davidcummings.org →
📖 Book
✓ Link checked Paid Beginner

Why we picked it The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past behaviour, not your idea, so you can't be lied to. If a founder reads one thing before talking to a single customer, it's this.

The Mom Test

From momtestbook.com by Rob Fitzpatrick ~130 pages

  • Talk about their life, not your idea.
  • Ask about specifics in the past, not opinions about the future.
  • 'That's so cool, I'd totally buy it' is a compliment, not data, dig for commitment and evidence.
Open momtestbook.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean, argues you can always find how a customer solves a job today, and that existing workaround is your evidence. The piece gives you the switching forces (push, pull, inertia, friction) to read whether the pain is urgent enough that someone would actually change and pay. It is a concrete, interview ready way to separate a real painkiller from a vitamin.

Find Better Problems Worth Solving with the Customer Forces Canvas

From LEANFoundry by Ash Maurya About a 10 minute read

  • Every job already has an existing alternative (even a spreadsheet or a manual hack); if you cannot find one, the problem may not be real.
  • How hard the current workaround is, and what would make someone abandon it, tells you the true urgency and willingness to pay.
  • Pull the problem out of the customer's actual recent story rather than asking them to predict future behavior.
Open leanfoundry.com →

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