It is a manufacturing startup, that is looking to disrupt the current market, ripe for small and mid sized companies looking to adopt new manufacturing technology. The product is a combination of software delivered with a flexible as service, or on private network model, and hardware to perform the manufacturing related tasks at a lower cost and greater efficiency. Adopters are very likely to scale as demand increasingly favors the technology.

The team has a great track record and has been involved with a number of successful products in the past. All the core technology components are available. There isn't any new science involved, just great engineering and design, both core competencies of the team.

They are stalled at funding a prototype. My question is how to approach the problem and what does / could the investment model look like?