Indeed, investors always aim to be part of a business from its infancy, and market testing should have already taken place. They prefer businesses that have a higher likelihood of success.
But do you think that interacting and establishing relationships with wealthy individuals is easy? We all know that our society has a class division, businessmen only make friends and socialize with businessmen, employees will hang out with employees...How many cases are there of rich people hanging out with poor people, sharing ideas of getting rich with each other? If you want to have a relationship with rich people, you must at least have money or some talent to attract their attention. Otherwise you are nothing in their eyes.
Honestly, with a capital of $20k and wanting to start a medium to large scale business is very difficult, it will go nowhere. So let's start step by step with the smallest and most suitable ideas for us.