Aspirin vs. Vitamins

January 8th, 2007

Andy Monfried, who writes the excellent You Ain’t Gonna Learn What You Don’t Wanna Know blog, has a great post titled Finding Pain and Creating Value.

In start-up speak, being an aspirin is much more attractive than being a vitamin. Aspirin solves a customer’s pain while vitamins help maintain wellbeing. Aspirins are a must have, vitamins are nice-to-haves.

In this letter providing guidance to HBS students on business plans, Paul Baier lays it out nicely:

Entirely too many of the business plans clearly do not identify and clearly segment the **pain** the target customer is feeling. How bad is this pain? What is it costing in terms of dollars or time? What are the implications of not solving this problem? Too many of the plans address â€œvitaminâ€ or nice-to-solve problems (e.g. my garage is dirty) and not â€œaspirinâ€ or must-solve-today problem.

I don’t know Andy, but he’s had a successful career in online advertising and writes well-informed posts - this guy knows his stuff. His new company, Lotame, appears to solve a real problem for both social networks and those advertising on them by utilizing the tremendous amount of information available to accurately target ads.

The inability to effectively monetize social networks continues to be a pain for both the networks and advertisers, good luck to Andy and Lotame on their quest to solve this problem.

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Fraser 3 years ago 1 point
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Abhijit, that's a good way of thinking of it as well. Many of the best aspirins don't break a constraint - they present an entirely new path/direction to follow.

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http://www.disruptivethoughts.com

Abhijit Nadgouda 3 years ago 1 point
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A very interesting perspective. Aspirin v/s Vitamin is probably the best way to put it. I always consider constraints of the user, and breaking a constraint provides the maximum benefit.

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http://ifacethoughts.net

Fraser 3 years ago 1 point
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Abhijit, that's a good way of thinking of it as well. Many of the best aspirins don't break a constraint - they present an entirely new path/direction to follow.

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Abhijit Nadgouda 3 years ago 1 point
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A very interesting perspective. Aspirin v/s Vitamin is probably the best way to put it. I always consider constraints of the user, and breaking a constraint provides the maximum benefit.

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Fraser 3 years ago 1 point
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Nice thought Nathan. Instead of being a vitamin/aspirin, instead do you think the internet is a platform/conduit ("series of pipes":)) that introduced us to many more vitamins/aspirins?

i.e. certain web services are aspirin while others are vitamins? (and still others are neither, they're simply cool technologies)

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http://www.disruptivethoughts.com

Fraser 3 years ago 1 point
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Nice thought Nathan. Instead of being a vitamin/aspirin, instead do you think the internet is a platform/conduit ("series of pipes":)) that introduced us to many more vitamins/aspirins? i.e. certain web services are aspirin while others are vitamins? (and still others are neither, they're simply cool technologies)

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nate archer 3 years ago 1 point
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Great post and a really interesting metaphor. I think it comes down to knowing your user. Most businesses and products solve a problem but it is essential to find out whether your user actually needs to solve that problem.

I also see things that are maybe "essential vitamins", these are things that meet a non-essential need but do it so well that they become an essential supplement to our lifestyle. The best example of this is the Internet, although It wasn't at first essential it become a "vitamin" that we needed to maintain our health.

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nate archer 3 years ago 1 point
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Great post and a really interesting metaphor. I think it comes down to knowing your user. Most businesses and products solve a problem but it is essential to find out whether your user actually needs to solve that problem. I also see things that are maybe "essential vitamins", these are things that meet a non-essential need but do it so well that they become an essential supplement to our lifestyle. The best example of this is the Internet, although It wasn't at first essential it become a "vitamin" that we needed to maintain our health.

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Andy M 3 years ago 1 point
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You said it better than I could...

Thanks for the kind words and the props.

The "aspirin vs vitamin" comparision is 110% dead on precisely what my company is based on.

Rock on, and keep up the great work.

Andy

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http://www.lotame.com

Andy M 3 years ago 0 points
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You said it better than I could... Thanks for the kind words and the props. The "aspirin vs vitamin" comparision is 110% dead on precisely what my company is based on. Rock on, and keep up the great work. Andy

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