I've been in a similar situation but we realised we couldn't rely on marketing and that we need sales just before running out of money, incapable of raising ano

I've been in a similar situation but we realised we couldn't rely on marketing and that we need sales just before running out of money, incapable of raising another round. I would have definitely took the 500k. Needing sales doesn't mean the business is to throw away, it just means you need way more money than you were thinking. Probably 500k wasn't enough to execute the scale the founder imagined, but it could have been a good intermediate step to raise more money later on.