There's a hidden glimmer of wisdom in here, which is to let your (cash) customers contribute to funding your (equity) business growth.

My theory is a niche consulting firm can perform services to make enough money to build out a product, and better yet, they're being paid to learn about user requirements along the way.

I'm on a similar journey right now, and it's always difficult balancing the dopamine and temptation of a short-term cash injection at the expense of development time spent on the core product we're scaling.