[mseebach]

The examples given for "vitamin" and "painkiller" are poor, or at lease not describing differences in products, but in marketing strategy. Also, the idea that "vitamins" are poor product is betrayed by the success of many, many madly successful "vitamin" products, not least including literal vitamins.

The product-load-feature that is described in the entrepreneur.com article as a "vitamin" mere seems poorly marketed. Keeping your e-business platform up-to-date with your products is very much something that can raise revenue or lower costs (or, if not, it's not actually a product at all, vitamin or not). On the other example, the healthcare payments solution, why would you not expect the provider of the existing invoicing solution to "just" enable some sort of upfront payment to lower bed debts, if this is really a problem?

(Also, dismissing business ideas on the basis that someone else would already be doing it if it's actually a problem seems to be a great way to never be successful in business)

[alfra]

If you haven't read Paul Graham's essay on startup ideas, and why they should address problems that really exit, I suggest: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

Some product like Skype, Facebook, Dropbox spread just by word of mouth. They address pain people really feel (for some, you might need to dig deeper what it is). Other products need national TV commercials and still have a hard time to sell what they have. Big difference.

[alfra]

When you look at how the actual vitamins are marketed in many countries, you discover it's not so rare people claim it is actually a painkiller: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21665064-despite-scan...

[candiodari]

Well, if you compare with what used to pass for health scams, it's quite a good deal :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radithor_bottle_(25799475...

These were outlawed when, after being marketed as improving male libido, someone drank 1400 of these and died. But he did not die before getting a horribly disfigured jaw that actually fell out before the eyes of the doctor. He was buried in a lead lined coffin, after an agonizing death.

I must say I am a bit worried about "poly-unsaturated fats", which I must say I'd be amazed if they weren't bad for you (they result in a great many secondary chemicals, and if just one of those is dangerous, ...), but I doubt they'll make anyone's jaw fall off before slowly and painfully killing them.