3 Ways To Advance Your Venture When You Feel Stuck

By Jody Bell

The painful truth is that 9 out of 10 startups fail.  

In many cases, this failure stems from feeling stuck. An entrepreneur may have a burning passion and strong vision for a product, but the execution becomes so tedious that this passion and thus motivation is lost. Or, an inevitable obstacle approaches, and the entrepreneur lacks the flexibility to adjust their trajectory and becomes frozen. Maybe the entrepreneur faces funding issues, and is unsure how they can continue to grow their business without the perceived necessary funding. 

Whatever the roadblock may be, entrepreneurs often become feel frozen when they perceive themselves to be stuck, and after rapid expansion, this feeling will absolutely destroy their motivation. 

So, what can entrepreneurs do to get themselves out of this rut and start growing their business once more? Well, a great option is take your pitch deck to the next level through research and additional product visualization.

See below for  3 ways you could continue to advance your venture even if you’re stuck and lacking funding.

1. Consumer research

To build a successful company, the product must be absolutely perfect for the market it is intended for. 

I like to view this market as a puzzle, and as an entrepreneur you are trying to find a gap in this puzzle and perfectly mold a fitting piece. You could continuously make puzzle pieces and try to fit them into gaps and make corrections when they don’t fit – but this can result in feeling discouraged. Instead, it may be smarter to survey the surrounding area around the gap to understand exactly how your puzzle piece should fit. This is essentially consumer research and validation. 

This research can be surveys, polls, or even just a form made on Google Forms (which is entirely free to use if you have a Gmail account.) If you’re still iterating your product, you may want to ask broad questions pertaining to the problem that your business hopes to solve. Alternatively, if you have a business that’s well fleshed out, you may want to present it and ask for feedback or gauge how much consumers would pay for your product. Try to target these questions and analyze the responses numerically – for example – “87% of our 300 respondents said that eating organically was important to them.” These specific statistics are always great additions to your pitch deck. 

This is a continuous process and you could always be doing more research in this regard. Thus, if you’re feeling stuck, face budget constraints, or are simply unsure where to go next, putting effort into further understanding your target consumer is a great idea. 

One last tip – if you’re a student, ask your teacher to send out an email to the class with a link to your survey/poll – these usually have very high response rates!

2. Expert validation

Along with understanding the consumer, the other aspect of market research is looking at the industry.

You probably have already started this by looking into competitors (try to do a SWOT analysis if you haven’t already!) However, if you want to take this a step further, it’s great to speak with professionals and experts in the field. 

For example, say you are creating a fashion line that works with thrift stores along with local designers to upcycle used clothing. While you may have a keen eye for fashion, you need to make sure you have consulted plenty of designers in the area to see how they currently source materials and verify this is something they would be interested in. Additionally, you should speak with the thrift stores to understand their policies, discuss if the clothing would be donated or if there would be an associated cost, and verify that they too would be interested in this business. In this instance, I would recommend you speak to at least 3 designers and 3 thrift stores. While this may sound like a lot, you need to remember that this is research and you need a larger sample size to trust the results. 

If you’re feeling like you’re stuck, you could always speak to more people in the industry to increase this sample size and also make connections. Just like the statistics from your consumer research, you could include highlights from these conversations in your pitch deck.

3. Make a mockup of your platform

In the start-up world, you don’t go from idea to a product being sold. Instead, your product will emerge in stages.

Usually one of the first stages is creating a visual depiction of your product – particularly if you are creating an app/website but you aren’t ready to make a functioning product. You may have already done this by sketching out what you want your website/app to look like, which is called a wireframe of your platform. You can actually take these wireframes a step farther and create a more in depth visualization of your platform with colors, shapes, and design. This is called a mockup, and they are fairly easy to make using free software and some creativity!

For example, see the image below for an app I made that aimed to give women in financially abusive relationships a way to earn income. This entire image was made using shapes and textbooks and while it is a static image it looks like a screenshot from an app. I used this image in a pitch and ended up getting $1,000 in funding for the application despite having no actual product and just a visualization of my idea!

I made this using a website called Justinmind, but there are a bunch of alternatives such as Figma, Axure RP, and more. Each of these are fairly easy to use, and in a few minutes you could have a professional wireframe that will help investors and consumers see your product vision!

The $1,000 Mockup

A fast, professional, and easy way to visualize your product for investors/consumers

Regardless of what stage of your business plan you are in, if you are feeling stagnant it is a great idea to work on these three major points within venture development. There is always more research to be done and different mockups to try — so putting effort into these areas will seriously step up your pitch deck.

Jody Bell, 20 is Girls With Impact’s Editor in Chief and a program graduate from Greenwich High School. Girls With Impact is the nation’s only online, business and leadership program for girls 14-24, turning them into tomorrow’s leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators.