We are a team of three working on a simulation software startup in the 3D printing space. Two of the three co-founders (including me) are recent University grads. For the past few months we have been working full-time, living on our savings from the grad-school funding and the prize money from a local startup competition that we won. However, now we are running out of our funds and would probably dry-out before we have a product ready to launch/show-off.
We are open to the idea of external funding of any sort. We have talked to a bunch of investors and are currently in talks with a company that is interested in acqui-hiring us(nothing's finalized and we are still debating if it would be a good thing or not to take the deal, in case we get one). We have received good response and validation from most of the investors we talked to (which is motivating), but, not surprisingly, they all at least want to see a working product before they can think about funding us.
It will take us ~3 more months before we have a product that we can show-off. To keep us going until we have some funding/paying customers, we are planning to take up part-time freelancing projects to sustain our product development. We understand that this could be very consuming and there is a risk of losing focus, but we don't see another way that would keep our startup from dying out. I would really appreciate if you can share your advice, opinions and suggestions on this.
Note: We are also working on launching a kickstarter campaign.