or is there another way?
As it was mentioned. There are plenty of ways such as private funding. This is the most easiest way for a project to gain funds. Even the project havent started yet. There are somw who gain interest to offer some money in order to support a start up project provided they get the fund with a lower seed price. This is the most risky of all since werent sure whether the platform would go live and could return their investment or luckily earn some profit from it.
If the project hasn't started and the people behind the project aren't famous ('cause if they were, they probably wouldn't have a funding problem), finding someone with money who wants to simply give it to you based on what you're planning to do sounds unrealistic. Why would a person invest in a project like this, which is at early stages of development? Even if there's a great idea behind the project, there's a big risk that the team won't be able to implement it, and then there's a risk that someone else does it first or gets more attention and thus does it better (with more resources)...