031: Yes, every product is a Pain-relief device.
Only “hurting” people might pay money for products.
👋 Hi, I’m Mike and I’m obsessed with startups with no customers. This is the summary newsletter 031.0 📬 for Episode 031 of the Nascent podcast 🎧 (Spotify, Apple, YouTube).
Founders want customers, but ironically, the best way to get customers is by seeing the world in reverse. What kind of people are customers before they buy? Why do people pay money in the first place? Answering these questions will help you avoid the most common problem in startups: wasting a year on a bad startup idea.
The whole reason that a Person in Pain™ might become your customer is for your product to take them on an emotional journey with a beginning, middle and end. First, a person starts with meaningful Pain — they’re “hurting”. This motivates them to pay money for a product to feel better.
We can only see the end of the journey, not the beginning.
The perspective of Nascent is that humans make decisions in a 3-part system: a Person in Pain who is hurting decides to pay money for a product to get Pain relief. Most importantly, money and products are visible, but Pain is invisible. This means that we can only see the end of the journey, not the beginning. For instance, a customer at a shop might pay a dollar to buy ibuprofen to relieve a headache. We can see the money and the packet of ibuprofen. But we cannot see the headache. The Pain is invisible. This perspective on Pain extends beyond just medicine to every product within the built world, including the products you hope to make with your startup.
Here’s the journey of a Person in Pain becoming a customer. It starts with a person who is hurting. Then they buy a product for Pain relief so they’ll feel fine.
Looking at this journey in reverse reveals who will not become a customer for your startup. People who are already fine will not buy your product — they’re already at the end of the journey. People who are joyous are even worse — they’d ask you to pay them. Only People who are hurting might become customers.
As a founder of a startup with no customers, your most important task is searching for people who are hurting. The more hurting People you find, the bigger your opportunity.
Over the coming posts, I’ll expand on the big ideas in this episode: why products imply hidden Pain, Nascent’s two definitions of money, and Pain as a signal of opportunity.
Mike supports founders of pivoting startups who want to avoid wasting another year on a bad idea. Book a call with me at NascentIdea.com.
For the past 10 years, I’ve been building Nascent as the strategy for startups with no customers. As of 2026, I’m publishing Nascent, a few ideas at a time, in regular newsletter posts and podcast episodes. This newsletter summarizes podcast Ep031. For a deeper dive, check out the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.