There’s a specific problem that comes up when you’re pitching something physical — a venue, a retail space, a club, a building — before it’s actually been built.
You’re asking people to invest in something they can’t experience. You have a floor plan, maybe some architectural sketches, a deck with numbers. And you need them to feel enough to say yes.
Most people are worse at imagining things than they think. The gap between “I can kind of picture it” and “yes, I’m in” is real, and it’s where deals fall apart.
Last December, I was working with Padel Society on this exact problem.
The Pitch With No Building
Riley Spiller and his team were in the middle of raising for their Austin padel club. They were also trying to land a brand sponsorship deal with Adidas.
The club was still under design. There was a floor plan. There were architectural renders. But there were no walls, no courts, no locker rooms — nothing you could photograph. The pitch required investors and sponsors to use their imagination, and imagination is unreliable when you’re asking someone to write a check.
We needed to show the club before it existed.
What We Built
Using Google’s AI visual-generation tools (Imagen and Flow, both on Gemini), we took the architectural renders and turned them into photorealistic interior images of the finished club.
Court views. Locker rooms. Common areas. The lighting. The finishes. The vibe of the space when it’s full of people.
Then we went a step further. We mocked up what specific brand partnerships would look like in the space. Adidas signage on the walls. The logo at court level. Branding integrated into the design, not just slapped on.
“Here’s what Adidas at this club could look like.”
That’s a different conversation than “imagine if Adidas partnered with us.” One asks the other person to do cognitive work. The other just shows them.
The workflow: architectural render → AI-illustrated floor plan → photorealistic interior images → editorial-style photo grids → specific angle edits for sponsor mockups. Each step closer to something you’d see in a real venue’s marketing materials.
The Imagination Gap
There’s a concept I’ve started calling the imagination gap: the distance between what you’re describing and what the other person can actually picture.
Shorter the gap, higher the conversion rate. Longer the gap, the more the deal depends on the quality of your storytelling rather than the quality of the opportunity.
The problem with physical spaces is that the imagination gap is inherently wide. People vary enormously in their ability to mentally render a “430-seat padel club with rooftop bar and members lounge.” Some people can see it. Most can’t, not really.
AI image generation doesn’t replace good storytelling. But it closes the imagination gap by giving people something to look at instead of something to imagine.
The Lesson We Learned Earlier
We actually ran into a version of this problem a few years before, with Padel Society’s first Austin club.
When we were building it, we started marketing six months before the doors opened. Not paid ads, not a launch campaign — just filming the construction process like a documentary. Showing people the build in progress. Bringing them inside the journey before there was anything to join.
By the time we opened, there were 150 people on the waitlist. No posts. Word of mouth only. Because people had been watching it come together and were already invested.
The lesson: people commit to things they can follow. They buy into journeys, not just outcomes.
AI visualization extends that principle. When you generate a photorealistic image of the finished space, you’re not just showing them an outcome — you’re making the outcome real enough to feel like it’s already happened.
Where This Applies
The obvious use cases are physical spaces: real estate, hospitality, sports venues, retail. But the principle extends further.
Event concepts. Before you’ve booked the venue, generated imagery of what the event will feel like can accelerate sponsor and speaker conversations.
Interior design pitches. Show clients what the renovated space will look like before a single piece of furniture moves.
Product prototypes. If you have a sketch or CAD file, photorealistic product images can go into pitch decks, pre-order pages, and investor materials before manufacturing starts.
New offices or builds. A company relocating or building out a new space can show employees what’s coming — and use it to generate excitement before move-in day.
The underlying pattern is the same in each case: you have something real but not yet visible. AI gives it a visual form. The imagination gap closes.
The Practical Workflow
Start with a reference. A floor plan, an architectural sketch, a rough 3D model, or even a rough layout description. The more accurate the source material, the more accurate the output.
Choose your tool. Google’s Imagen (on Gemini) works well for architectural and interior stills. Midjourney produces high-quality results with the right prompting. The camera language matters — describe the shot in terms of lens, angle, lighting, and atmosphere, not just “a room with courts.”
Generate multiple angles. One image is a concept. Four or five images from different perspectives is a visual portfolio. That’s what goes in a deck.
Create sponsor or brand mockups. This is the high-leverage step for business development. Take a generated image and overlay the potential partner’s branding. Show them what it looks like. That specific image often does more work in a pitch meeting than all the copy combined.
Use it early. Pre-sales, sponsorship pitches, investor decks, crowdfunding pages — the earlier you can show people what the finished thing looks like, the earlier the imagination gap closes.
The goal is always the same: stop asking people to imagine. Show them instead.
P.S. Visual AI production — including how to use Google’s Imagen and Flow tools and camera language prompting for photorealistic results — is one of the tools we explore in the Two Hour Workday program.
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