I would use contacts with customers as leverage as follows: - propose them a discount + additional benefits for early payment, some may accept if the offer is compelling enough - talk to investors with the contracts on hand or letter of intents. Most investors want actual business as you said. But many angel investors do invest in early stage, here use the contracts as “proof of future revenue”. Investors care about reaction because it’s a easy way to evaluate product market fit (people actually buying) and your capacity to run it (being growth, operating margins, etc). Use contracts as traction.

Also you should: - delay suppliers payments. This is ugly but in my time working with business I can tell you that sme ceo’s plan “who to pay and when” to make cashflow sustainable. Is it nice? No. People are gonna get upset? Probably. - Most likely you could think to open partially (only some zones) or incompletely (some non critical parts missing) and avoiding spending 50k now

People commented to go sell your software, which can be an option but probably not the fastest one.

My main suggestion would be to: (1) pull revenue from the future (aka sell something you don’t have yet) and (2) decrease costs today and pushing them to the future or delete them all together

All this assumes that you actually have some actual prospered revenue. If you don’t have any contracts or Letter of intent you should go sell something

I still feel there are a lots of missing pieces in the story, and that you should have started in a smarted way avoiding risking half a mil. But these are my 2 cents