You are more likely to get a VC interested in you if you have a painkiller, not a vitamin. Painkillers are necessary things with easy-to-communicate value propositions that solve urgent problems. They create high, devoted demand. Vitamins on the other hand are unnecessary nicetiess. Even when people think they need them – they really don’t. 

Here’s how to incentivise your startup, regardless of its ‘stage’, into becoming a painkiller.

🛝 Create a go-to-market strategy for continued growth. Team up with businesses that position your product as an essential component of theirs. Either give away your solution cheaply to new accounts, build in integrations, or bundle services, offer exclusive deals as a unique go-to-market strategy to dominate the market.

🧞‍♂️ Create a unique value proposition. Prove that your product is worth paying for with market research and customer feedback. Show that it addresses key pain points that your customers need solved. Back up your pricing with testimonials and case studies demonstrating a greater willingness to pay for your product and a clearer need. 

🐋 Develop a detailed mission statement that paints a very specific picture of the future, describing how your solution leaves users better off. Document not only how your solution works but also what keeps users coming back for more and how your startup can scale to fit evolving user needs. This helps to build an emotional connection with users.

🌿 Concentrate on increasing user retention. Develop a strategy to get users to stick around. Prove to investors how you’ll maintain a base of loyal users for whom your product provides fundamental relief. Make it an indispensable tool for your users. 

Consider Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. None of these services were a necessity when they launched. However, each of them crafted routines around their product that made it a daily necessity. They turned a vitamin into a painkiller.

Airbnb began as a gimmick: no one needed to stay in someone else’s home. But the idea reframed travel, imaginatively addressing new pain points – like authenticity, cost, great spaces and community – unrecognised as needed until Airbnb helped people feel they were essential.