Most founder-investor conversations follow the same script. You get thirty minutes, you walk through the deck, you answer a few questions, and you leave with a polite 'we will be in touch.' What almost never happens is an investor telling you, without any filter, exactly what goes through their mind when they are sitting across from you.

On February 26, 2026, GTMDialogues created that rare space. Brijesh Damodaran, Co-founding Partner and CIO at Auxano Capital, walked into an open AMA with a room full of founders and answered every question they actually wanted to ask. 

Brijesh is a Chartered Accountant by training who has spent time across oil and gas, telecom, mortgage guarantees, and consumer brands before building Auxano into a multi-stage investment platform spanning wealth management, PMS, angel investing, and growth-stage VC. That breadth matters, because it shapes every lens he brings to evaluating a business.

Over sixty minutes, he shared how he decides where to put money, what makes a founder fundable beyond the deck, which metrics he trusts and which ones he dismisses, and what he genuinely believes separates the founders who make it from the ones who do not. This blog captures that conversation in full, so you can carry it into your next raise.

Before You Walk Into Auxano Capital, You Need to Understand How They Think

Most founders spend the days before an investor meeting researching the fund's portfolio, trying to figure out whether their sector fits. With Auxano Capital, that research will tell you very little. Because Auxano does not just invest by sector, they invest by megatrend. 

A sector lens asks: are we investing in fintech right now? A megatrend lens asks: what is the world moving toward, and who is building for that destination? The first question filters by category. The second filters by timing and conviction. Brijesh was clear about which one drives their decisions:

"We look at what are the emerging megatrends. Can it grow and can my investors make money? That is one of the first thing which we look at."

For you as a founder, this changes the question you should be walking in with. It is not 'does Auxano invest in my space?' It is 'can I show them that my space is where the world is heading, and that I am early enough to matter?'

Their Track Record Shows They Have Called This Right Before

Auxano got into drones in 2018, when most investors were still skeptical about the regulatory environment. They moved into data analytics, both market and financial, well before it became a crowded category.

Their very first investment in 2016 was in a subscription-based grocery delivery company that was building what Blinkit and Zepto would later become at scale. That company was acquired by one of India's largest retail players.

They were early, and being early means you saw something before the consensus did. This is the only kind of bet Auxano is interested in making, and it is the only kind of story worth bringing to them.

Auxano Is Built to Follow You Across the Full Arc of Your Company

One structural advantage Auxano has that most founders never ask about is their ability to invest across stages without switching teams. Their Category 1 angel license covers early bets, and their Category 2 license handles growth-stage investments. 

Separate teams manage each, but the architecture is designed so that a company they back early can stay in the Auxano ecosystem as it scales.

"Since we have both in the angel and also in the growth stage, what can typically happen is that if we invest, it can go from an angel to the growth. So we can do multiple rounds."

An investor who can follow you across rounds is not just writing a cheque. They are making a longer bet on you, and that changes the nature of the relationship from the very first conversation.

The Filter That Sits Above Everything Else

Sector, stage, check size, all of it sits behind one question Brijesh came back to repeatedly. He referenced the Jerry Maguire line more than once, 

"Show me the money."

It was the clearest articulation of how Auxano ultimately makes a decision.

Whether you are building a SaaS platform, a hardware product, or an AI-native business, the first question Auxano asks is simple. Does this make money, and is there a credible path to making more? If you cannot answer that with honesty and precision, every other part of your pitch is fighting uphill.

Brijesh Has Heard Hundreds of Pitches. Here Is What He Is Actually Paying Attention To.

There is a version of fundraising preparation that almost every founder goes through. You stress-test the financial model, you refine the TAM slide, you make sure the deck flows cleanly from problem to solution to ask. All of that work has its place.

But Brijesh spent a larger portion of the session talking about something that none of that preparation directly addresses, which is whether the founder in front of him actually owns their story.

He introduced himself during the session not as an investor or a fund manager, but as a Chief Storyteller. It was a signal of exactly what he is looking for when a founder walks into the room.

Why Your Second Slide Is the Moment That Decides Everything

Brijesh was specific about where most pitches lose him. If he cannot understand what the business is, why it exists, and why this particular founder is the right person to build it by the second or third slide, the rest of the deck stops mattering.

"Your story has to be there on the second slide or third slide. If you can talk data with numbers, your pitch instead of being a push can become a pull."

A pull pitch is one where the investor is leaning forward before you have asked them for anything. It happens because you built a situation where the opportunity became visible before the ask arrived.

The Difference Between a Founder Who Pushes and One Who Pulls

Most founders walk into a pitch meeting and push. They justify the market size, they defend the valuation, they explain the product feature by feature. Brijesh is looking for founders who create pull instead, and the difference comes down to a few specific things:

•       Infographics over paragraphs. If your second slide shows the problem and its scale visually, you have already done more than most of the decks he sees.

•       Data that creates urgency. Numbers on a slide are just numbers. Numbers that make an investor feel why this moment matters are a different thing entirely.

•       Confidence that comes from knowing, not performing. Brijesh watches for whether a founder genuinely understands what they are doing, not whether they can convincingly appear to.

Can You Tell Your Story to Anyone Who Walks Through the Door?

This is a test you can run today. Find someone with no context about your industry and walk them through what you do in two minutes. If they are not curious by the end of it, the story is not ready yet. Not because the business is wrong, but because the narrative that makes it obvious has not been found yet.

The Cricket Analogy That Reframes Pitching Entirely

Brijesh compared a founder's ability to pitch to a cricketer's ability to play across formats. A Test match requires patience. A T20 demands immediate impact. A cricketer who only knows one format will lose the moment the game changes.

"You want a one pager, you want a three pager, you want a ten pager, you want a forty pager. Depending on the audience and the nature of the play, can you play that role?"

If you only have a forty-slide deck and the person across the table wants a one-pager, you are playing the wrong format. Knowing your audience well enough to meet them where they are is itself a signal of founder quality.

The Metrics Most Founders Build Slides Around Are the Ones Brijesh Trusts the Least

There is a certain vocabulary that has taken over early-stage fundraising. CM1, CM2, CM3, blended CAC, payback periods. Founders learn these terms, build entire slides around them, and walk into investor meetings ready to defend every number on the page.

Brijesh's response to that whole framework was direct:

"CM1, CM2, CM3 are great, but we are not great fans of that."

This does not mean he ignores unit economics. It means he believes most founders are measuring the wrong things and presenting them as proof of health, when they are actually just proof of activity.

The One Question That Tells Him More Than Any Slide

Across multiple answers during the session, one question kept surfacing as the real lens through which Brijesh evaluates a business. It is almost uncomfortably simple, which is exactly why most founders overlook it.

"For every rupee earned, how much did you spend? That is not looked into. One can say CM1 profitability or CM2, but this is vanity."

Before your next investor conversation, run this number honestly. Not the version that excludes certain cost categories. The real number. A VC who has spent years in traditional industries like cement, textiles, and oil and gas will eventually find it, and you want to be the one who puts it on the table first.

Buying Growth Is a Dependency.

"Buying growth means, who is the last man standing is what wins. And you are only making the biggies of the world richer. So if I am buying growth, I am sure to seek more capital, and that is the only way."

If your numbers look good only because you are spending to make them look good, here is what that actually means:

•       You are building a dependency on the next cheque.

•       Every round you raise to sustain bought growth makes the next round harder to justify.

•       The moment the market tightens, bought growth becomes the entire story, and it is not a good one.

The Capital Tap Will Close. The Question Is Whether You Are Ready.

"At some point of time the tap of capital coming into the business can stop. So if that stops, what will happen? You have to always be ready for that."

The founders who are ready for that day know with precision where every rupee is coming from and going. Not at a broad category level, but broken down by:

• Geography: Not every active market is a profitable one. Some drive volume but eat into margins through higher support costs or longer sales cycles. Know which markets actually return money.
• Customer segment: Your most common customer and your best customer are rarely the same person. If you cannot name the segment that converts fastest and retains longest, you are spreading spend across profiles that will never pay back what they cost.
• Channel: Most founders know where they are spending the most. Very few know where their best revenue is actually coming from. High volume at high churn is not traction. It is a leaking bucket.

If you can walk into a room and show a VC exactly what one rupee of spend returns across every part of your business, you are telling a story that almost nobody else in that room is telling. And that, more than any CM slide, is what creates real conviction.

Product-Market Fit Is the Most Overused Claim in a Founder's Pitch. Here Is How Brijesh Actually Checks for It.

Almost every founder raising a seed or growth round claims product-market fit. Some have it. Many are somewhere on the way. A few are describing early traction that looks like fit but is actually just noise.

Brijesh has sat across enough founders to know the difference. And his way of checking has very little to do with the frameworks most founders prepare for.

One thing to know upfront: Auxano invests almost entirely post-PMF. By the time they look at your business, they expect evidence to already be on the table.

The Two Signals Brijesh Trusts When Everything Else Is Noise

A founder in the session asked directly: what are the two signals that tell you PMF is emerging? Brijesh did not reference retention curves or NPS scores. He came back to the financial discipline that runs through everything he looks at:

"For every rupee, where are you earning your rupee? If you have geography, you have the age groups, that is something which we look into simply because if that is the area which you are handling, then you can grow."

The two signals he trusts:

•       Revenue clarity: You know exactly where your money is coming from, broken down by geography, customer profile, and channel. Not broadly, but precisely enough to point at what is working and why.

•       Improving cost efficiency: The cost of earning that revenue is holding steady or going down as you scale. If it is quietly creeping up, that is not PMF. That is a leaking bucket.

The Signal Most Investors Never Think to Ask About

Brijesh brought this one up unprompted, which makes it worth paying close attention to:

"Where are you spending your time as a promoter? That is an intangible part of it, but it is very important. And do you have the team who can manage what you are doing so that you can grow?"

If you are still doing work a team member should own, it tells an investor one of two things:

•       The business is still entirely dependent on your bandwidth.

•       You have not yet built the team that allows it to scale.

Neither is a dealbreaker at the right stage. But being unaware of it is.

The PMF Test You Can Run on Yourself Before Your Next Raise

Before you claim PMF in your next raise, answer these honestly:

•       Which customer segment is generating your best returns, and why?

•       Is your cost to earn a rupee of revenue going down as you grow?

•       If capital stopped tomorrow, how long does the business run?

If those answers are sharp and backed by numbers you understand deeply, you are both claiming and showing PMF. 

Winning Against a Bigger Player Starts With Understanding Why Their Customers Have Not Left Yet.

Two founders in the session asked versions of the same question. How do you convince a VC to back you when a much larger, better-resourced player already owns the market?

Brijesh's answer reframed the question entirely. More than Market dominance, Stickiness is the problem. 

1. Stop Asking How to Beat the Incumbent. Start Asking How Stuck They Are.

"Is the product which you are looking to replace easily replaceable or will it be sticky? If you got a bank account and you continue to have that bank account, why are you shifting to a new banker?"

If the product you are displacing is deeply embedded in your customer's workflow, competing on features will not move the needle. Your real job is to make switching feel safer and easier than staying put.

2. The Enabler Strategy: You Do Not Always Have to Knock the Door Down

For founders selling into enterprises where large incumbents already sit, Brijesh had one piece of advice he kept coming back to. Get an enabler.

"You need to have an enabler in your team who can open the doors. Once the door is opened, how you own the room is your skill."

An enabler is someone who already has trust inside the accounts you are trying to reach. They do not sell for you. They get you the first conversation, and then your product takes over.

To make this concrete, Brijesh pointed to a real example from the payments space. A company broke into the banking sector not by building a better product than the incumbents, but by bringing in a senior industry figure who already had relationships across the ecosystem. The product had merit. The enabler made the first conversation possible. 

3. Speed Is a Moat, But Only Until the Incumbent Wakes Up

One founder pushed back during the session. Their company was not replacing an incumbent. They were moving faster into a segment the larger player had not yet prioritised. Brijesh was honest about what that means. His advice was the same: get an enabler regardless. Speed gives you a window. What you do inside that window determines whether you survive when it closes.

Brijesh's framework for evaluating competitive positioning comes down to three things:

•       Stickiness:. Once a customer is using your product, is it a tool they use occasionally or a system they depend on daily?

•       The enabler: Do you have someone who can get you into the room with the right decision-maker, regardless of who is already sitting there?

•       Owning the room: Once you are in, can your product, your team, and your story close without hand-holding?

4. There Is Often a Blue Ocean Sitting Inside a Red Ocean

Brijesh shared an example from his own portfolio that changes how you should think about crowded markets. One of their investments started as an operating system, competing in what looked like a completely saturated space. On paper, it made no sense. But Brijesh saw something others did not:

"It is a red ocean, it is a pure red ocean. But there was a blue ocean in that to tap, and that got tapped."

The company pivoted from the OS to hardware, found a use case nobody else had addressed, and closed last year at around 40 crores in revenue with a PAT of 3%. The lesson is not that you should pivot. The lesson is that before you accept a market is too crowded, make sure you have looked at every corner of it.

Most Founders Look for Growth Channels. Brijesh Says the Best One Is Already in the Room.

By the time the session reached its final Q&A, a founder raised a problem that almost everyone in the room recognised. Strong retention, customers asking for more, core business working. But a small team, limited resources, and not enough visibility to match the opportunity in front of them.

Brijesh's answer was about something far more accessible, and far more underused by the founders who need it most.

1. The Founder Is the Brand, Whether They Have Claimed That Role or Not

"Who is the brand? Who is the face? If you are the face, nothing stops you from having an Instagram reel of 60 seconds every third day socialising your product."

This is not about becoming an influencer, instead it’s a simple reality. In the early days of a company, the founder's visibility is the company's visibility. Consider what actually happens before a meeting:

•       Investors check your LinkedIn before they open your deck.

•       Potential customers Google you before they book a demo.

•       Partners look for proof that you know what you are talking about before they return your call.

2. The 60-Second Reel Principle

"People spend an hour looking at reels. I would say spend 7 minutes making your reel."

The format is simple and repeatable:

•       A 60-second reel every third day. Show your product solving a real problem, share a customer result, or talk about something you learned this week.

•       A post that adds context. Two or three lines that expand on what the reel showed.

•       A story that keeps it visible. A simple 24-hour touchpoint that costs nothing.

Production quality is irrelevant at this stage, consistency and clarity are everything.

3. Start Building Relationships With the Accounts You Want Before You Are Ready to Sell to Them

Most founders wait until the product is polished and the pitch is ready before approaching their dream accounts. Brijesh suggested doing the exact opposite:

"Start socialising with the folks, the entities which you want to work with, but today you are not. So that one, they know about us when they are evaluating, and two, can I get some feedback or inputs from them so that I can also design it from that perspective."

He used his own PMS business as an example. He regularly reaches out to potential investors who are not yet clients, not to sell, but to share a perspective or ask for their view. The relationship exists before the transaction does. So when those people are eventually ready to make a decision, he is already in the room in their minds.

4. No One Says No to a Coffee

A coffee is a conversation. And conversations are where the best deals, partnerships, and introductions actually begin. If you have been waiting until you are ready enough to reach out to the people you most want access to, Brijesh's point is simple. You are already ready enough to ask for a coffee.

5. The Proof That This Works Even When You Least Expect It

Brijesh shared a personal example that made this real in a way no framework could. He had been posting short reels consistently. A family member who had explicitly said they would never invest with him sent him a message after watching one:

"Looking at this reel of yours, I did something that gave me satisfaction. I never knew about it. I am following you big time."

The person never liked the post. Did not want their name associated with it publicly. But they were watching. And at some point the message landed. That is what consistent, honest visibility does over time. It reaches people you did not even know were paying attention.

The Way Brijesh Thinks About Exits From Day One Should Change How You Pick Your Investors.

For most founders, exits live somewhere at the end of the roadmap. A future event to think about once the business has scaled, the team is built, and the hard work is done.

Brijesh thinks about exits from the moment he writes the first cheque, and understanding that changes how you should be positioning your business to investors from day one.

It is one of the most honest things an investor can tell you. An investor who has thought clearly about how they get out has also thought clearly about what your business needs to become before that exit is possible.

The Holding Period Is Five to Seven Years, and That Is a Feature.

"If you have a ten year vision and over the ten year period you can make 10X, which is like a 25% CAGR, not more than possible because you can deliver 30, 40X right over that period."

What this means for you as a founder:

•       A 10X return over seven years is roughly a 39% annual return. That is the bar Auxano is working toward.

•       Your business needs a credible path to get there, not a guaranteed one, but a credible one.

•       If that path does not exist in your current model, Auxano is probably not the right fit, and knowing that upfront saves everyone time.

A VC Taking Money Off the Table is Portfolio Management.

"We invested at a higher valuation, so older investing got out. We double down the investment, also taking some money out from the earlier investment, and that is how it is."

For you as a founder, this reframes what a partial exit actually means:

•       A VC taking some money off the table at a later round is managing fund obligations, not signalling a loss of belief.

•       The question to ask any investor is not just when do you exit, but how do you manage your position as we grow.

•       The answer tells you everything about how they will behave as a partner across the full arc of your company.

Transparency With Your Investors Compounds Over Time Just Like Revenue Does

Near the end of the session, Brijesh made a point that did not get the attention it deserved. He talked about two founders in his portfolio who send detailed performance numbers on the first of every month, without exception, regardless of whether the month was good or bad:

"On the first of the month, irrespective of being a holiday or 31st of December, you get the details and numbers in play. That is control and they are growing."

Brijesh's point was about discipline:

•       Founders who share the bad months alongside the good ones build investor trust that compounds quietly in the background.

•       That trust becomes your most valuable asset the moment you need something from your investors beyond capital.

•       Proactive communication is not a courtesy. It is a competitive advantage.

The Investor Relationship Does Not Begin at the Term Sheet and End at the Exit

"Every quarter I get an update from them because they believe that at some point of time you will put in. We are not putting it only because of the valuation that could affect it."

The best investor relationships are built long before the term sheet arrives and maintained long after the investment closes. If you are only communicating with your investors when you need something, you are leaving one of the most underused assets in your business sitting completely idle.

If you have read through every section of this conversation, you will notice that Brijesh kept coming back to the same few ideas in different forms. It was never about which sector is hot or which metrics look best on a slide.

It was always about whether the founder in front of him genuinely understood their business, could tell its story with clarity, and had the discipline to run it like every rupee counted.

He summed it up with two words he uses as a personal mantra, and they apply as much to founders as they do to investors:

"Adapt and adopt. That is the only two A's that has been the mantra which we follow."

India is moving fast. The GDP is compounding in ways that are creating genuine, large-scale opportunities across every sector. But the founders who will capture those opportunities are not the ones with the biggest vision statements. They are the ones who can tell a sharp story, show honest numbers, build relationships before they need them, and stay standing when the capital tap tightens.

That is what Brijesh is looking for when he sits across the table from you. And now you know exactly what to bring.

Frequently Asked Questions

What stage does Auxano Capital typically invest at, and what check sizes do they write?

Auxano operates across two stages. Their Category 1 angel license covers early-stage investments, and their Category 2 license handles growth-stage. They have written cheques from early angel rounds all the way through to growth rounds, and their structure allows them to follow on across multiple rounds if the company continues to perform.

What are the two metrics founders highlight that Brijesh considers vanity?

Brijesh specifically called out CM1 and CM2 profitability as metrics that are easy to engineer and therefore unreliable as standalone signals of business health. His view is that unless you can show what it costs to earn every rupee of revenue, contribution margin numbers do not tell the real story.

What are the two signals that suggest PMF is emerging, in Brijesh's view?

The first is revenue clarity, knowing with precision where your revenue is coming from broken down by geography, customer profile, and channel. The second is improving cost efficiency, where the cost of earning a rupee of revenue is holding steady or going down as you scale, not increasing.

How does Auxano evaluate companies competing against established incumbents?

Brijesh's framework starts with stickiness. How hard is it to remove the existing player from the customer's workflow? From there, he looks for whether the founder has an enabler, someone with existing relationships in the target accounts who can open the door. Once the door is open, the product and the team have to own the room.

How should founders with limited resources socialise their product and build visibility?

Brijesh's advice was direct. The founder is the brand, and a 60-second reel every third day costs nothing but seven minutes of your time. Consistency and message clarity matter far more than production quality. He also recommended reaching out to target accounts before you are ready to sell to them, building familiarity so that when they are evaluating, you are already in their consideration set.

What are Brijesh's key criteria when evaluating a growth-stage enterprise company?

He looks at four things. First, can it scale? Second, how sticky is the product once it is inside a customer's operation? Third, how much capital will the journey ahead require, and is that realistic? Fourth, is the founder actively socialising the business in the ecosystem so that the right people already know it exists before a formal conversation begins? 

What does Auxano think about AI-native SaaS versus platform plays right now?

Brijesh was candid about this. On the platform side, they have existing investments and a clear lens. On pure SaaS, particularly AI-native SaaS, he acknowledged that the space is moving fast enough that confident conviction is hard to come by right now. His filter remains the same regardless of the category: does it make money, does it solve a real problem, and does it have a reason to exist that is not just riding a wave?


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