Stop Calling Everything a Painkiller (Your product isn’t Tylenol — and that’s okay)

Startup people love to ask:

“Is it a vitamin or a painkiller?”

Translation: If your product doesn’t solve an urgent, hair-on-fire problem, it’s useless.

But here’s the thing: Instagram isn’t a painkiller. Neither is Pinterest. Or Spotify. Or Reddit. Nobody woke up screaming, “I need filtered photos of my latte — now!”

And yet… billions of users.

The vitamin vs. painkiller metaphor is broken. Some products are just… useful. Or joyful. Or habit-forming. Not everything needs to fix a crisis.

Think tools: A hammer’s not urgent — until it is. A flashlight’s boring — until the power goes out. You don’t throw them away for being “non-essential” 99% of the time.

So maybe stop forcing fake urgency. Build something that matters — whether it solves a burning pain or quietly earns a spot in someone’s drawer.