How Experienced Startup Founders Get “Unstuck” On the Way To Launch

Amazing ideas don’t become winning products on their own

Joe Procopio
5 min readSep 3, 2021

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Photo by Slidebean on Unsplash

Despite how it might look from the outside, launching a new product isn’t about scraping together a bit of money, throwing a hastily-built MVP at a market, and hoping it sticks.

I get a lot of questions from frustrated entrepreneurs and innovators, most of whom are usually “stuck” somewhere between brilliant idea and game-changing launch.

In the 20-plus years I’ve been growing startups and launching products, I’ve learned that the big question most entrepreneurs spend long days trying to answer isn’t “How do I make this product successful?” but rather:

“What do I do next?”

When we get “stuck” on that question, we usually try to solve it by going back to the basics:

  • How does my idea become a product?
  • How does my product find its market?
  • How does my company acquire more customers for this product?

And then, when walls are hit, some variation of those questions are what wind up in my inbox.

So let’s back away from those walls and go back to basics.

Review your plan.

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Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Building TeachingStartup.com. Write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com