Disclaimer: I didn't actually raise money this way. Non working demo. With it you can get plenty of validation even get people to put the money down. With real

Disclaimer: I didn't actually raise money this way. Non working demo. With it you can get plenty of validation even get people to put the money down. With really solid validation and demo I think you should have a fairly easy time fundraising the first round. For example, I recently worked on a SaaS. Built few features that looked like it works, but it really didn't. It was enough to demo to potential customers and it helped us figure out what MVP really needs to be and that people will pay for it. Having a main job simply doesn't give you enough time to execute both marketing and development really well, so in my opinion you really need a second person. Non working demo was enough to convince one of my peers to help me.