Ilya Lichtenstein on the Fear of Money:

Their fear is jus­ti­fied, because the sec­ond you start charg­ing for a prod­uct, all of the bub­bly bull­shit falls away. The mar­ket is cold, ratio­nal, and effec­tive. It doesn’t care about your lean startup meth­ods, your rock­star team, or your fawn­ing tech press. All of your assump­tions, vision, busi­ness plans and pitches are irrelevant.

You’ve either built some­thing worth pay­ing money for, or you haven’t.