Jonathan is an entrepreneur, designer, engineer, and startup mentor with a decade of experience in the Silicon Valley startup scene. He founded Storenvy.com in 2009 and raised $7m from top VC investors (after being admitted to and kicked out of Y Combinator) to make e-commerce accessible and affordable for the world's creative small businesses. After building a team of 30 & a community of over 100k merchants, he sold Storenvy in 2016. Jonathan mentors & consults with startups around the world on platforms/marketplaces, product, data insights, branding, UX & strategy.
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.