I don't think it's about who you know or your amount of reach. I don't believe that for one second.

OpenSats seems to mostly fund developers and not so much development of specific projects. There may be a couple outliers here, but the majority of them seem to be funding existing work, not funding companies or future plans.

i.e. I built this cool thing and I'd love to continue to do this. I need money to continue.

I haven't seen your plans, but based on what they seem to fund and speaking with some board members in an information gathering way, it sounds like reduction of scope seems par for the course.

Maybe reduce to bare minimum and both you and Fishcake both apply individually for your work?