During one of GTMDialogues' Deep Dive AMAs, Sumit Sahu, co-founder of Affluense, sat down to share exactly what the pre-seed fundraise journey looks like from the inside. Affluense is a wealth intelligence platform that helps wealth management firms find and connect with high-net-worth clients. Sumit had just closed his pre-seed round and brought the kind of clarity to the conversation that only comes from having lived through it recently.

Like most early-stage founders, he took the inbound calls and showed up to every conversation that came his way. And for two to three months, those conversations went nowhere.

"Initially, I would have spent two to three months having these conversations because there were a lot of inbound requests. We thought it's respectful to get on a call with everyone. But soon we realised that it's probably not right, not fair to us."

Those conversations had a pattern Sumit eventually caught on to. Analysts were building internal reports for their partners, and Sumit was the founder they were learning from, not investing in. The time he was spending on those calls belonged to building his product.

He shut those conversations down, went heads-down on Affluense, and came back to fundraising only when he had a working product, paying customers, and early revenue. The same market responded very differently the second time around.

He closed his pre-seed round with a lead investor and a set of angels who brought both capital and the right introductions. This blog walks through every decision he made along the way, how he picked investors, how he positioned a niche market, and how he walked into rooms prepared for questions most founders fumble.

Identify the Right Investors Before You Approach Anyone

Most founders build their pitch deck and then figure out who to send it to. Sumit flipped that order entirely. Before reaching out to a single investor the second time around, he built a focused list of exactly who he wanted to talk to and why each name belonged on that list.

The difference that made was immediate. Every conversation he walked into had a baseline of alignment already, because the investor on the other side had already shown interest in the space Sumit was building for.

"You need to pick up your ICP of investors, just like you pick up your ideal customers. You cannot just sell to everyone. Same way, you cannot go and pitch to everyone."

• Your Stage and Your Investor's Stage Need to Match

Every investor operates within a defined thesis, a preferred stage, and a cheque size that makes sense for their fund. Pitching outside those boundaries puts you in a conversation that was never set up to convert, and the feedback you get from it won't reflect your business accurately.

Sumit was direct about this from his own experience. A fund that writes cheques at Series A is simply the wrong room for a pre-seed founder, regardless of how sharp the pitch is. Targeting the right stage of investors is the filter that makes everything else more productive.

"If I am talking to the right investors, and you have the right product and the right thesis, things start moving in the right direction."

• Filter Angels and Micro-VCs the Way You Filter Customers

The filtering process Sumit used was research-first. He mapped out which investors were actively writing cheques in fintech, wealthtech, and adjacent spaces, and identified angels who had already backed companies with a similar thesis to Affluense.

His logic was that if wealth management in India is becoming a high-growth space, the investors already backing companies in that category are the ones most likely to back a company building tools for it. That overlap between their portfolio thesis and your market is where the right conversation begins.

"You need to zero down on a really strong ICP of investors, angels and micro-VCs. That's where you start your target list. You need to have this focus and do a concentrated approach on those."

Once you have that focused list, the quality of every conversation changes. You walk in knowing they already believe in the space, which moves the discussion faster from "why this market" to "why you."

Investors at Pre-Seed Stage Expect a Product and Paying Customers, Not Just an Idea

Sumit discovered through his early conversations that the bar for pre-seed has moved significantly. Founders who approach investors with only an idea and a deck are walking into a room with the wrong expectations.

"The definition of pre-seed has changed. It's no more idea-level funding. Investors are by default expecting you to have a product, expecting you to have some customer validations, some even testimonials in some cases. They want a lot more validation on your company fundamentally."

When a customer makes the decision to put budget behind your product, it answers the most important question an investor has at this stage - “Is this problem real enough for someone to pay to solve it?” That signal carries far more weight than projected numbers on a slide.

For Sumit, that moment came when Affluense's first customer moved from a free POC to a paid engagement. That single data point changed the nature of every investor conversation that followed.

How Sumit Made the Company's Fundamentals Solid Before Raising?

Rather than running on fumes while chasing capital, Sumit ran Affluense in a tight, bootstrap manner. Early customer revenues kept the company moving, and by the time he re-entered investor conversations, the business had proof points across product, customers, and revenue.

"We tried to run our company in a very tight bootstrap manner and made sure we were able to run through the revenues we were getting from customers. We made the company fundamentals solid from the start. Then, when we were at the right stage with some proof to talk about, that's when we opened up our conversations."

That foundation is what gave his second round of conversations a completely different quality from the first.

The Best Time to Raise Is When Your Business Can Run Without the Capital

Most founders raise because they have to. Sumit raised because he chose to, and that distinction gave him leverage most founders don’t have. When you're not dependent on the round closing, you can afford to be selective about who comes in and at what terms.

When the clock is ticking on your runway, every term sheet starts looking more attractive than it should. You stop evaluating whether the investor is the right fit and start evaluating whether you can afford to say no. That position forces decisions that founders often regret at the next stage.

Sumit was deliberate about avoiding that situation. By keeping Affluense revenue-positive in its early stages, he could walk away from offers that came in at the wrong valuation or from investors who didn't bring the right doors with them.

"If you need the money and you are already in a timeline where the clock is ticking, you are in a desperate situation. You cannot evaluate the right offers."

> Healthy Metrics Give You the Ability to Choose Your Investors

Raising from a position of stability also changes how investors read you. A founder who is growing, has paying customers, and isn't urgently chasing capital signals that the business is working. That perception directly affects the valuation conversation and the quality of investors who take you seriously.

For Sumit, this meant he could stay focused on bringing in investors who added strategic value beyond just capital. The round ended up being oversubscribed relative to what he had originally planned to raise, precisely because he wasn't in a position where he had to accept the first offer on the table.

> How to Arrive at a Fundraising Number That Works for Both You and Your Investors

Sumit's approach was to start with what the business actually needed. He mapped out hiring, product development, data infrastructure, and a runway of around 18 months, then worked backwards to a number.

> Starting With a Lower Number Is a Strategic Decision

Sumit originally planned to raise around 1 to 1.5 crore. He went to market with that number knowing it reflected the minimum the business needed to hit its next set of milestones. What happened next is a pattern worth understanding.

Once the right investors started coming in, interest exceeded what he had targeted. He ended up closing at around 3 crore, not because he chased a larger round, but because the market responded and he had the position to let it. Setting a lower number created momentum rather than limiting it.

"We started with a number which we thought was the minimum that we should do and which would make sense. And then eventually let's see how the market responded. We got probably 500% interest from what we had thought."

Starting with a lower number also creates a positive signal in the market. When a round fills quickly, other investors take notice. When a round drags, even committed investors start to second-guess their decision.

Beyond runway, the other variable that should anchor your fundraising number is how much equity you're willing to give up at this stage. Sumit was clear that the number he raised had to make sense for his investors too. If the cheque size results in a slice of equity that isn't meaningful for the investor, they won't prioritise the relationship.

How to Raise From Investors When You Are Building for a Niche Market

Affluense started with a focused market - wealth management firms in India. By most measures, that is a limited addressable market. But Sumit had thought through exactly how that starting point connected to a much larger opportunity, and that clarity is what changed the conversation.

Investors Back Markets, So Show Them Where Yours Is Going

The question investors are really asking when they push back on a niche market is not whether the market is small today, but whether it will be large enough to generate the returns they need. Your job is to show them the path from where you are starting to where the opportunity actually goes.

Sumit's answer to this was straightforward. Wealth management in India is a space with significant tailwinds — new firms are entering the market continuously and the volume of high-net-worth individuals is growing. If you are building tools for an industry that is itself expanding rapidly, the niche is a starting position, not a constraint.

"Although we started with wealth management, we understand not just the Indian market. If we are able to build the right product, we have the full Asian market, South Asian market, the UAE region, and the full global market open for us."

Start Narrow, But Know Exactly How You Will Expand

The founders who struggle with the niche market conversation are the ones who haven't thought past their first customer segment. Investors can tell the difference between a founder who is niche by necessity and one who is niche by design with a clear expansion path mapped out.

Sumit's advice on this was direct. Pick a niche you genuinely understand, build something that delivers real value inside it, and then demonstrate how the same product and insight can be replicated across adjacent markets and verticals.

• Start with a segment where you have a genuine advantage, like domain knowledge, existing relationships, or a unique data position.
• Build a product that solves the problem deeply enough that customers in that segment have no reason to look elsewhere.
• Map out the adjacent markets where the same product logic applies, and bring that roadmap into the investor conversation.

If you can show that your niche is the first chapter of a larger story, the market size conversation shifts entirely in your favour.

Walking Into Investor Rooms Over-Prepared on Your Market Gives You an Edge Most Founders Miss

Most founders prepare for fundraising by rehearsing their pitch. Sumit prepared by making sure he could answer any question an investor could possibly ask about his market, business model, and growth plan. That level of preparation ended up being one of the biggest differentiators in his raise.

The trigger for this came from an unexpected place. Early in his fundraising process, Sumit received a term sheet from an investor at a much lower valuation than he was targeting. That investor sent him a list of 80 to 90 written questions covering everything from market size to GTM strategy to unit economics.

"They asked us literally 80 to 90 questions in written format. It literally made us prepare for anything and everything. You could wake me up in the night and ask me about my market size, GTM, what motion I would do at this level, and I was able to answer."

Business Clarity Impresses Investors More Than Revenue at This Stage

When Sumit walked into subsequent investor conversations after going through that process, he was carrying a level of business clarity that most early-stage founders don't have. Investors who were expecting standard early-stage uncertainty got a founder who had a precise answer for every question they asked.

That clarity did something specific. It shifted the conversation from evaluation to alignment. Investors stopped testing him and started discussing the opportunity, which is exactly the dynamic you want in a fundraising conversation.

Preparation Compounds Across Every Conversation You Have

Every investor conversation you have makes the next one sharper, but only if you treat each one as a source of signal. Sumit used every question he couldn't answer cleanly as a prompt to go deeper on that part of his business before the next conversation.

The founders who move through fundraising fastest are the ones who are learning in real time and updating their understanding of their own business as they go. By the time you are sitting with your most important investor prospect, you should have already worked through every hard question in a lower-stakes room.

How Getting Your Lead Investor Across the Line Changes the Entire Round

Once you have a lead investor who has committed and agreed on valuation, the dynamics of your fundraising round shift completely. Every other conversation you are running in parallel stops being a negotiation and becomes a straightforward decision for the investor on the other side.

This is one of the most practical and underleveraged pieces of fundraising mechanics that early-stage founders miss. Sumit's experience with closing his round illustrates exactly how this plays out.

The Lead Investor Sets the Terms That Everyone Else Follows

For Sumit, Zero PERL came in as the lead investor after a conversation that started with a cold message and built into a genuine founder-investor fit. Once Zero PERL agreed on valuation and committed to leading the round, the structure of every other conversation changed immediately.

The angels and other investors who had been in parallel conversations no longer needed to independently assess the valuation or negotiate terms. The lead had already done that work, and the round was now a defined opportunity with a fixed structure.

"Once the lead has agreed on the valuation, once you have done that negotiation, now everyone else who is coming is not going to negotiate again. You just tell them, this is fixed, this is how you are raising, and now it's up to them if they want to come in."

Running Parallel Conversations Pays Off Once the Lead Is Confirmed

The angels who eventually came into Sumit's round were conversations he had been running alongside the lead investor discussion. Those conversations didn't close on their own timeline. They closed because the lead had set the terms and created a defined opportunity to join.

This is why running parallel conversations with angels and smaller investors while you are working towards your lead makes sense. You are not expecting them to commit before the structure is clear. You are keeping them warm so that once the lead is in place, you can move them to a decision quickly and close the round without losing momentum.

How to Use Investor Rejections to Refine Your Pitch, Product, and Direction

Getting a no from an investor stings, particularly when you have invested time building the relationship and preparing for the conversation. But a no from the right investor, one who genuinely understands your space, carries information that most founders leave on the table by walking away too quickly.

Sumit was deliberate about not letting those conversations end at the rejection. He treated every no from a relevant investor as an opportunity to get feedback that his peers, co-founder, or team couldn't give him.

"Never leave an investor if you think he is a very relevant investor. Don't let them go without understanding why they are not investing. That's a very good signal you can get from the market, which you are probably not reading as a founder."

> How to Ask for Feedback After a Rejection Without Burning the Relationship

Most founders either disappear after a no or push back on the decision. Neither approach gets you anything useful. Sumit's way of handling it was simple and it worked consistently:

• Acknowledge the decision without pushing back on it.
• Tell the investor you respect their call and that there is no pressure to revisit.
• Ask specifically for their perspective on what they saw, whether it was the market, the stage, or the product.
• Listen to the answer without defending your position in the moment.

That approach kept doors open for future conversations and gave Sumit real signal on what was and wasn't landing in his pitch and product story.

> What to Do With the Feedback Once You Have It

Not every piece of feedback you get from a passing investor will be actionable, but the patterns across multiple conversations will be. If three relevant investors raise the same concern about your market size or your GTM motion, that is a signal worth taking seriously. Here is how to process it:

• Separate feedback that points to a business issue from feedback that reflects a thesis mismatch.
• If the concern is about your business, treat it as a product or positioning problem to solve before your next conversation.
• If the concern is a thesis mismatch, use it to tighten your investor ICP further so you stop having conversations that were never going to convert.

A no from the right investor, handled well, makes your next conversation sharper. That is the compounding effect of treating rejections as data rather than dead ends.

> Fundraising Is a Process You Get Better at by Treating Every Step as a Learning Loop

Sumit closed his pre-seed round not because he had a perfect pitch or a flawless product from day one. He closed it because he was willing to stop, recalibrate, and come back to the market better prepared each time. That pattern repeated itself across every stage of his fundraising journey, from identifying the right investors to handling rejections to closing the round with a lead in place.

The founders who struggle most with fundraising are the ones who treat it as a single event with a fixed outcome. It is a process with multiple feedback loops built into it, and every conversation, yes or no, tells you something about your business, your market story, or your investor fit.

"If you are getting the no also, then it's good because that is going to refine your pitch, your product, your direction. If you are getting yes, great. It's just about zeroing down on the right people to talk to and moving from there."

Here is what Sumit's journey distills down to for any early-stage founder heading into their first raise:

• Build your investor ICP before you build your pitch deck. Know exactly who you are targeting and why they belong on your list.
• Get your product and early customer proof points in place before opening conversations. The bar at pre-seed has moved and preparation is what gets you past it.
• Raise when your business can run without the capital. That position gives you the leverage to be selective about who you bring in.
• Set a lower fundraising target, let the market respond, and close with the investors who bring the most value beyond their cheque.
• Get your lead investor across the line first. Everything else in the round follows from that.
• Use every rejection from a relevant investor as a feedback opportunity. The signal you get from those conversations is one of the most honest reads you will get on your business at this stage.

Sumit will be the first to say that there are things he would do differently the next time around. But the fundamentals he followed, building something real before raising, targeting the right investors, and staying prepared for every conversation, are the ones that hold regardless of market conditions or stage.

If you are in the middle of your own fundraising journey or getting ready to start one, GTMX Ventures works directly with early-stage founders to get their fundraising story right, build the right investor relationships, and close their round. Get in touch and bring your questions. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. When is the right time for an early-stage founder to start approaching investors?

The right time to start approaching investors is when your business has something concrete to show - a working product, at least one paying customer, and early revenue. Investor expectations at pre-seed have moved well past the idea stage. If you open conversations before you have these proof points in place, you risk burning time on calls that won't convert and getting feedback that isn't calibrated to where your business actually is.

Q2. How do you find the right investors to target at the pre-seed stage?

Start with research. Look at which angels and micro-VCs are actively writing cheques in your category and map out which ones have already backed companies with a similar thesis to yours. Platforms like Tracxn and Wefunder list investor portfolios and categories. The goal is to build a focused list of investors who already believe in the space you are building for, so your conversations start with alignment rather than convincing.

Q3. How much equity should a founder give up at the pre-seed stage?

There is no universal answer, but the guiding principle is to raise what your business genuinely needs for the next 18 months of runway while keeping dilution at a level that leaves your cap table clean for future rounds. Set a fundraising target based on your actual costs, hiring plan, and product roadmap. If market interest exceeds that target, you can choose to bring in more capital without dramatically increasing dilution.

Q4. How should a founder handle a rejection from an investor?

Don't walk away from a rejection without asking for feedback, particularly if the investor is relevant to your space. Acknowledge their decision, make clear there is no pressure to revisit it, and ask for their honest perspective on what they saw. The feedback you get will either point to something in your business worth fixing or confirm a thesis mismatch. Both outcomes help you sharpen your next conversation.

Q5. Does a niche market make it harder to raise from investors?

A niche market only becomes a problem in investor conversations when the founder hasn't thought past their first customer segment. If you can show investors a clear path from your starting niche to a significantly larger market opportunity, the niche becomes a sign of focus rather than a ceiling. Come into every investor conversation with a mapped out expansion story that shows how your product and insight scales beyond the initial segment.

Q6. Should a founder wait for all investors to commit before closing the round?

Get your lead investor across the line first. Once your lead has committed and agreed on valuation, the terms are set for the entire round. Every other investor coming in after that point joins on the same valuation without renegotiating. Running parallel conversations with angels while you work towards your lead makes sense, but the round structurally closes once the lead is in place and others follow on the fixed terms.

Q7. Is revenue more important than pilots and POCs when raising a pre-seed round?

Both matter, but in different ways. Revenue tells investors that customers are willing to pay for your product, which validates the business model. A POC or pilot tells them that a customer has committed time and resources to evaluate it seriously. The strongest position to raise from is when you have both — a customer who started as a pilot and converted to a paid engagement, because that arc demonstrates the full sales motion working end to end.

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