原文来着Greylock的合伙人Sarah Tavel。 Sarah曾是Pinterest的高管，她对产品的见解即使已经过去5年仍然值得思考。创始人都想找到有刚需的产品（止疼药），但是如果产品没有刚需怎么办（维生素）？你要做的就是把维生素变成让人上瘾的毒品。

　　People often describe consumer products as as either painkillers (“need to have”) or vitamins (“nice to have”).

　　人们经常把消费者产品描述为止痛药（“刚需”）或维生素（“有也不错”）。

　　Painkillers are products that address existing needs/pain points. Companies selling painkillers harvest demand; the prospects are already searching for someone to fix their problem and take their money. A lot of businesses that got built on PPC were painkillers. For example, Diapers.comwas a painkiller for parents who urgently needed diapers, but didn’t have time to get them. People turned to Google for a painkiller, and Diapers.comaddressed that pain with brilliant overnight delivery. Another great painkiller is Uber. Getting around San Francisco was a giant pain in the butt until Uber came around. The second I heard about it, I (and countless others) downloaded it.

　　止痛药是解决现有需要/痛点的产品。销售止痛药的公司只是收割需求;潜在用户已经在寻找一个人解决他们的问题并拿走他们的钱。很多基于PPC（点击就购买）的公司都是止痛药。例如，Diapers.com是急需尿布但没有时间购买的父母们的止痛药。人们在Google上寻找止痛药，但是Diapers.com通过隔夜交货这个聪明的想法解决了这一痛苦。另一个伟大的止痛药是Uber。在旧金山附近出行对屁股而言是一个巨大的痛苦，直到Uber来了。我听到这个名字的一瞬间就下载了它，我估计无数其他人也是如此。。

　　Vitamins on the other hand must sell someone on how their solution will make the person’s life better, but they don’t really address an immediately apparent need. They’re a “nice to have”. There are a lot of companies in this category that you’ve never heard of, because they could not attract and retain users. The problem with vitamins is that it’s hard to get people to pay for them and once you have them as customers, hard to keep them paying. Painkillers on the other hand are sticky. Once a customer starts using it, they’re hooked. They’ve found something that soothes your pain, so why change?

　　相反而言，维生素的卖点是他们的解决方案将使人的生活更美好，但他们并不真正解决一个急迫而明显的需要。他们属于“有也不错”。这个类别中有很多你从来没有听说过的公司，因为他们不能吸引和留住用户。维生素的问题是，很难让人们为之付费，即使你把他们转化为客户，也很难让持续购买。而止痛药就很有粘性。一旦客户开始使用它，他们就被钩住了。他们发现了舒缓痛苦的东西，所以为什么要改变？

　　The trick is how a great team can turn a vitamin into a third category I call drugs.

　　问题是，atv，atv，一个伟大的团队如何将维生素变成第三类，我称为毒品。

　　Like vitamins, drugs can’t harvest existing demand—they must sell a person on how their solution will make the person’s life better. However, unlike vitamins, drugs become as addictive as painkillers.

　　像维生素一样，毒品不能收割现有的需求— 他们同样必须兜售他们的解决方案如何使人的生活更好。然而，与维生素不同，毒品变得像止痛药一样上瘾。

　　To me, there are two qualities that distinguish drugs from vitamins:

　　对我来说，有两个特性可以区分度毒品和维生素：

Accruing benefit.The more you use the product, the better it gets. This is largely because a consumer adds data to the product, either passively or actively, and then the company uses this data to improve the experience for the user.

收益递增。你使用产品越多，产品就变得越好。这主要是因为消费者被动或主动地向产品添加了数据，然后公司使用这些数据来改善用户的体验。

Mounting loss. The flip-side of the accruing benefit is that the longer you stay with the product, the more you have to lose by leaving the product. It’s becomes a product you depend on, or it becomes a product on which you’ve accrued value of some sort. Going cold turkey is hard.

(责任编辑：本港台直播)