Jonathan is an entrepreneur, designer, engineer, and startup mentor with over 15 years of experience in the tech industry. He founded Storenvy.com in 2009, raised $7M from top VC investors, and built a community of over 100k merchants before selling the company in 2016. Jonathan has worked with several venture-backed companies, including MUD\WTR, Myagi, Canal, MESA, and Grüvi, where he led product development, data analytics, and customer retention efforts.
Jonathan mentors and consults with startups around the world on platforms/marketplaces, product management, data insights, branding, UX, and strategy. He specializes in helping early-stage founders understand their businesses, defining key markers for product-market fit, organizing and leveraging data, and creating strategic growth plans.
In my experience, $50,000 only makes sense coming from friends & family. You'll burn through the cash quickly and likely won't reach a meaningful business inflection while spending that $50k. If you're just trying to get a prototype built, most angels and even accelerators will tell you to come back when you have something real and a few users/customers.
In short, they should figure out how to build it themselves or get some friends & family to pitch in to pay for the prototype to be built.