If you’re aiming for a fast-growing startup, and you want to be innovative and disruptive, you should aim for painkillers. Fast-growth requires a lot of people to make big commitments to your product, which means they have to see a lot of benefit to it.
Vitamins and candy tend to be lifestyle businesses. You innovate a little bit on a known good formula, make a slightly better product than everyone else, and slowly grow your market share. That’s a perfectly viable path, people just don’t tend to talk about it very much because it’s not very exciting. The painkiller startups get a lot more attention.
If you’re aiming for a fast-growing startup, and you want to be innovative and disruptive, you should aim for painkillers. Fast-growth requires a lot of people to make big commitments to your product, which means they have to see a lot of benefit to it.
Vitamins and candy tend to be lifestyle businesses. You innovate a little bit on a known good formula, make a slightly better product than everyone else, and slowly grow your market share. That’s a perfectly viable path, people just don’t tend to talk about it very much because it’s not very exciting. The painkiller startups get a lot more attention.