The question I ask before building any app

April 09, 2026

Hey there,

Before PuffCount, I built mobile games.

Grid was my first real win. 

It was a puzzle game, averaging 50,000 downloads a month.

And it made $10k in ad revenue at 17 years old.

But I could never scale it the same way I scaled PuffCount. And for years I didn't understand why.

Games are fun. People download them, play for a week, and uninstall. 

But there’s no urgent problem behind them. 

No transformation on the other side. No pain driving the decision to download.

Therefore games are vitamins.

Nice to have, easy to put down, and easy to uninstall when something shinier shows up.

On the other hand, PuffCount was a painkiller. 

People downloaded it because they were addicted to something they wanted to stop. 

That urgency changes everything: 

  • how fast it grows

  • how easy it is to market 

  • how much people are willing to pay

So here’s a question I ask myself before building anything:

Is this a painkiller or a vitamin?

A vitamin is nice to have, maybe useful, but never urgent. 

Nobody wakes up at 3am desperate for a puzzle game.

Painkillers solve urgent problems people will pay to fix right now. 

Vaping is ruining their health and they need to quit.
Calories are derailing their diet and they need to track them.
Period symptoms are unpredictable and they need to understand their cycle.

Posted (my current app) passed the same test. 

Influencer marketing was broken and brands were paying upfront for content that never performed. 

Painful problem, proven market, urgent need → that’s why it scaled to $150k/month

Every app I've scaled passed this test first. Every one I see failing is just a vitamin.

Validate the pain before you start building your app.

Peace,
Steven