031.2: Yes, money is liquid Pain relief as well as a metric for Pain.
Products deliver Pain relief and output money.
👋 Hi, I’m Mike and I’m obsessed with startups with no customers. This newsletter 031.2 📬 is a deep dive into Nascent’s definitions of money, as discussed in Episode 031 of the Nascent podcast 🎧 (Spotify, Apple, YouTube).
What is money and why do humans decide to spend it? Money is fundamental to a successful startup, yet I’ve mentored many founders without a meaningful point of view.
For instance, last year I ran a series of workshops where I asked the workshop participants, “As a consumer, what does money mean to you? What does a dollar in your pocket mean to you?” Here are some of their answers:
“I don’t know. I can’t quite put my finger on it.” This type of response was pretty common.
“I’m purchasing something that I feel will bring value to my life.” This is true, but not actionable.
“[Money is] a tool — instead of hungry, I get full; instead of cold, I feel warm.” This describes an emotional transformation, a critical unlock that startups require.
Overall, most workshop participants didn’t have specific, thoughtful opinions about money, despite hoping that their startups would make lots of it. Even when I studied business at Berkeley, we never really got into the essence of money. I think it’s crucial for founders to have a strong, thoughtful point of view.
As a benchmark, Wikipedia defines money as “payment for goods and services,” which is true but useless to entrepreneurs. It’s like saying that “planes fly because they stay in the air.” We need to understand why this happens. Just like pilots need to understand lift, founders need to understand the equivalent force in business, which I believe is based in money and Pain.
To that end, Nascent actually has two definitions for money:
Money is a metric for Pain, and
Money is liquid Pain relief
Not all problems are equal. In fact, most problems are worth pennies but there are rare, special problems that are worth millions or billions of dollars. Nascent is all about prioritization. I want you to be clear about what a good problem looks like. You want to solve expensive problems.
What I mean by “liquid” is that money is easily exchanged as opposed to a gold bar or real estate.
Essentially, I want you to think about Pain as a potential that a product can release, similar to the build-up of water behind a dam. The more, the better. Our goal is to transform that potential energy into something useful. The dam allows water to flow, creating kinetic energy. This is similar to how a product relieves Pain. More importantly, the dam also generates electricity. Similarly, a product delivering Pain relief outputs cash money.
The big idea is that people have Pain and they want their Pain to be relieved. Most of the time, they can do it themselves. Occasionally, something special happens, and people can’t relieve their own Pain. That’s when there’s this huge build-up of Pain that’s just dying to get released. So the other option for Pain relief comes from buying a product. In other words, People in Pain™ pay money for the Pain relief they expect a product to deliver.
People in Pain pay money for Pain relief
If you want to think deeply about money, I highly recommend the writings of Lars Doucet. Most importantly, understanding the relationship between products, money and Pain will give you a better chance at identifying People in Pain with the potential to be the first customers for your startup.
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 quantifying product discovery. As of 2026, I’m publishing Nascent, a few ideas at a time, in regular newsletter posts and podcast episodes. This is Post 031.2 📬, a deep dive into the concept that money is a metric for pain discussed in Ep031 🎧 (15 mins). Read the rest of the deep dives: 031.1: products imply hidden pain and 031.3: other people’s pain is your opportunity.