Tactical insights for first-time founders to outsmart the burn, the churn & the breakdown.
Hey Founder,
Let’s bust a myth: Customers don’t actually buy your “product.” They buy relief.
Your vision might inspire you, but for your customers, it’s irrelevant unless it makes their day easier. What they’re asking themselves, consciously or not, is simple: “Did this solve my pain today?”
Because at the end of the day, your customer isn’t waking up worrying about your roadmap, your market size, or your exit strategy. They’re trying to get through a pile of small frustrations that slow them down. Remove enough of those pain points, and suddenly, you’re not just another option; they stop Googling alternatives.
And that’s when you own their wallet.
Not sure that’s true? Stick with me…
The Margin
Vitamins vs Painkillers
Back in 2010, making a decent Facebook post was a headache. Hire a designer (expensive) or wrestle with Photoshop (painful).
Then Canva showed up: ready-made templates, drag-and-drop editing, a library of assets, accessible straight from your browser. Anyone could create something in minutes.
The result? 220M+ users. A $43B company.
Not because it sold software, but because it killed the pain of clunky design. Once people tasted that ease, they couldn’t go back.
That’s what painkillers do.
(How your customers should react)
Netflix killed late fees.
Dropbox killed file panic.
Stripe killed integration hell.
Amazon killed last-minute shopping stress.
Even that Chrome extension you swear at when it’s down, that’s a painkiller. You need it.
Where teams go wrong is spotting a real pain, then burying it under features, fluff, or “nice-to-haves.” That’s how you end up building vitamins instead of aspirin.
So ask yourself: Are you building something people like… or something they can’t live without?
Tiny Reframe
Features don’t earn loyalty. Relief does.
Stop saying what your product is. Show the headache you kill.
True positioning: “We kill [pain] for [people], so they never [suffer/risk/lose] again.”
Dropbox: not “encrypted cloud storage,” but “Find, organize, and protect your work.”
Wise: not “cross-border APIs,” but “Transfers that arrive in minutes.”
If your copy sounds like a slide deck, rewrite it in your customer’s panic language. Kill what’s costly or humiliating, and your product sells itself.
One tool I swear by: the Positioning Canvas from Antony Pierri at Fletch. It forced me to strip my own service down to pure relief. Worth trying.
Why You Should Care
Personas stop being fiction. Anchor on real pain, and your ICP isn’t a slide; it’s the person bleeding time or money today. That clarity sharpens targeting, messaging, and even pricing.
Positioning stops sounding fluffy. Pain turns “we’re a platform” (ignored) into “we remove so can _.” Every headline, deck, and ad points to one promise: relief.
Growth follows the painkiller→vitamin path. Win trust by killing the urgent problem. Keep trust by adding nice-to-haves once they’re in.
Margin Moves: From Pain to Positioning
1. Find the Pain People Google
Ask 3 paying customers: “What did you Google before finding us?” Make that pain your homepage headline.
2. Rewrite Your Hero With Real Words
Ask: “What would you call us in a group chat?” That’s your hero copy. Ditch jargon.
3. One-Question Poll
“What were you about to lose, miss, or mess up before us?” Use those words for headlines and CTAs.
4. Pick a Relief KPI
Time saved, errors avoided, money kept. Collect before/after data. If the gap’s big, brag about it.
5. Testimonial Heatmap
Highlight reviews that mention pain solved (“saved $$,” “never worry again”). Drop the rest.
Tough Love Corner
Founder DMed me on Linkedin:
“I’ve been steadily posting on LinkedIn 2–3 times a week, sharing my real experiences as a founder, stories from clients, and some lessons. Despite being consistent and trying to show actual value, nothing’s really changed: I’m not getting leads or meaningful conversations, just a few likes here and there. What am I missing?”
The issue isn’t consistency. It’s content–market fit.
Where founders slip:
1️⃣ Muddy positioning → If it’s not clear who you help + the pain you kill, no one self-identifies. “Operational excellence” = fluff. “Your ops are bleeding cash” = pain.
2️⃣ Wrong language → Tips and lessons aren’t enough. Speak in your ICP’s frustrations, not your frameworks.
3️⃣ No bridge to you → Likes don’t pay bills. Make the next step obvious (DM, guide, chat).
And remember: LinkedIn is a long game.
It took me 6 months of testing, crickets, and near-quitting before I found the overlap between what my audience cared about, what I loved writing, and how it tied back to my work. That’s when real conversations started.
Got a burning founder question?
Send it my way, just hit reply.
Founder’s Toolbox
✅ Painkiller Checklist (by Burak Buyukdemir): Test if your product/service is a real aspirin or just a vitamin.
✅ 10 Positioning Tools: Proven models to sharpen your narrative so you pitch relief, not features.
✅ Customer Pain Guide: A roadmap to uncover, classify, and eliminate real pains.
Before you go…
Pain-solving isn’t a one-off epiphany; it’s a system. Figma proves it:
Comments + FigJam kill feedback lag
Browser access kills install headaches
Real-time collaboration kills file chaos
Small pain-killers stacked = a $20B disruptor. The moat wasn’t features. It was the absence of friction.
And that? That’s the real moat.
See you next Thursday,
— Mariya
What did you think of today’s issue?
Hit reply and let me know. I read every single one (for real).
About me
Hey, I’m Mariya, a startup CFO and founder of FounderFirst. After 10 years working alongside founders at early and growth-stage startups, I know how tough it is to make the right calls when resources are tight and the stakes are high. I started this newsletter to share the practical playbook I wish every founder had from day one, packed with lessons I’ve learned (and mistakes I’ve made) helping teams scale.
