‍Land & Expand is a series of articles for founders building from India to the world. Read part one on Rocketlane’s idea to PMF product journey here. In this article, Atomicwork’s founder, Vijay Rayapati, opens up about the mechanics behind a Tier 1 VC fundraise, engineered not through geography, but through intent. His journey, shaped by hundreds of conversations and dozens of pitches, offers valuable lessons for founders in India looking to break into the Bay Area ecosystem. 

In 2024, Vijay Rayapati spent over 100 days in the U.S. He made 12 trips in a year. Not because he lived there. Because he knew that building credibility and mindshare with prospects, customers, partners and potential investors, meant being present in Atomicwork’s most important market.

“You can’t raise like an insider if you operate like an outsider,” he says.

Sometimes, he flew in just for a dinner meeting. These trips weren’t only about fundraising. The capital came later, a byproduct of the trust he’d already earned.
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By the time Atomicwork raised its $25 million Series A, led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Z47, Battery, Storm, Neon,  Blume, and Peak XV, he wasn’t an outsider anymore.

Meeting Vinod Khosla, an interaction built on months of groundwork, and an incredible product

We spoke to Vijay about how he pulled it off, and what Indian founders can learn from his credibility-first approach to fundraising.

Tier 1 Bay Area Capital: Why It Matters and Why It’s Hard

Raising from Khosla Ventures wasn’t just about capital. It was strategic.  “I wanted to get into the inner circle of AI,” Vijay says. Khosla, an early backer of OpenAI in 2019, well before it became a household name, offered not just conviction but leverage. The kind Atomicwork would need as they built for the next wave of enterprise software.

A slide from Atomicwork’s pitch deck: not flash, depth of thought.
Atomicwork, founded in late 2022, is an agentic IT service management platform built from India for U.S.-based enterprise customers. Having previously founded Minjar, a cloud solutions company acquired by Nutanix, Vijay understood how critical it is to get into the right ecosystem of customers, partners, vendors and talent. With the rise of AI and frontier labs based in the Bay Area, it was all the more crucial to gain early access to emerging technology.

If a Tier 1 Valley VC backs you, it might help in a few ways: potentially opening doors to enterprise networks, offering go-to-market support, bringing talent onboard, and bringing perspective from multiple scaling journeys. For global-facing founders, that can be valuable, but it’s not a silver bullet. The fundamentals still have to be strong.

But getting on their radar isn’t easy. From our conversations and co-investor relationships, we’ve understood that Bay Area VCs do not take a breadth-first approach. They often start with a thesis: on markets, models, or technologies, and then go looking for the right fit. If you're not already in their line of sight, you might not even get a second glance. 

Add to that a constant flood of high-quality local startups, and there’s little incentive to look halfway across the world. Some firms even tried to build India-focused strategies, and pulled back after limited success. All of this makes credibility a prerequisite, not an afterthought.

Kanu Gulati from Khosla reached out to Vijay on LinkedIn and helped seed relationship with KV. Kany become a trusted partner even before Vijay decided to raise Series A and she helped crystalize the long term thesis. Vijay say’s, founders have to work with their champions at VC firms with trust. Same thing happened with Sudhee from Battery Ventures.

The Credibility Deficit

According to Vijay, credibility is the single most important reason a Tier 1 U.S. VC will take a meeting, especially if you're building from India. Timing, traction, and thesis-fit, all matter. But in the early stages, credibility moves faster than metrics.

And that credibility doesn’t come from a polished deck. It comes from consistent, compounding signals from customers, early-stage investors, and a wider network of friends of your startup. 

The foundation? Relationships. Repetition. Being in the right rooms, again and again.

Always Be Connecting (ABC)

“I’m a relationships guy. I met people before we even thought about raising. Just to get to know them.” 

Vijay met with investors at coffee shops, the sidelines of customer events, and investor dinners. 

He’s also wary of taking every meeting, lest it eat into his time. “Every VC firm has a fleet of associates now. If you take every meeting, you’ll burn a quarter of your time. Be selective,” he said. But even if it’s a “not now,” he replies. Sometimes with: “Let’s talk in 2026.”

To make these meetings happen, Vijay has a rule: he spends the first two weeks of every month in the U.S. He would aim to meet with at least two investors on every visit. 

For founders from India, it’s easy to fall into the trap of building mindshare closer home. But Vijay cautions against that.

Beyond the in person meetings, he focused on staying in touch. He sends monthly updates, hosts city-level dinners, and cold-DMs CIOs (more on that later).

A moment from Atomicwork’s 2023 dinner with early supporters: CXOs, friends, and believers.

Early on, his deck had zero mutual connections with the people he was trying to sell to, CIOs. Bit by bit, that changed. Today, he’s connected with over 1,000 enterprise IT leaders.

Then he took it one step further.

The CIO round: Credibility with Teeth

To top up Atomicwork’s $11 million seed round, Vijay raised an additional $3 million from 40+ CIOs. Not Chief Investment Officers, but Chief Information Officers from Fortune 1000 companies.

It wasn’t about the money. It was about signalling. “They’re not easy buyers,” he says. “They’ve seen too many startups pivot.”

That got attention.

And it wasn’t just prospects who noticed. It was investors, too.

This slide showed what mattered most: real results, from real customers.

As we’ve seen through our own networks, U.S. venture firms, especially in the Bay Area, are thesis-first. They decide the kinds of companies they want to back, then go looking. That search doesn’t start with founder decks. It starts with the ecosystem.

They talk to buyers (top CIOs etc). They attend trade shows. They listen to what their network is excited about. They ask their network of operators and partners: Who’s building something interesting in this space? And when enough signals converge: credible customers, strong early investors, visibility at the right events—that’s when the meetings happen.

That’s how Khosla Ventures found Atomicwork. Vijay and his team showed up in all the right places: They had a ton of customer love. Early backers like Z47 and Storm Ventures had made introductions. They were on the floor at industry  events. “It made a difference, they told me later.” says Vijay. 

Weaponise Your Champions

One of Vijay’s lesser-known superpowers isn’t technical or strategic. It’s relational. He doesn’t just raise capital. He activates it. Staying top of mind isn’t luck. It’s design. 

To that end, Vijay treats communication like product development: intentional. He runs multiple dedicated communication  groups: One for Atomicwork’s board members, one for a loose network of allies and early backers, and another, carefully curated, for the CIOs who’ve bet on him.

Each group gets regular updates: product wins, enterprise logos, team milestones, press clips, sometimes even photos from customer dinners or U.S. trips. If there’s a request, an intro, a co-sell opportunity, or help on positioning, he slips it in.

Credibility is also knowing exactly who you're building for. Vijay was precise in the audience he wanted to serve.

In parallel, he sends a monthly email update that’s become somewhat of a currency in his investor circles. It’s structured, brief, and easily forwardable. And often, it is forwarded. A lot of goodness comes not from who receives it but who it gets forwarded to. 

So when the time came for us at Z47 to champion Atomicwork, it was easy. Their latest wins were always top of mind for us.

But champions aren’t always the most senior partner on the deal. Often, it’s the person who first believed. Kanu Gulati from Khosla Ventures reached out to Vijay, well before he was officially raising. Over time, she became a trusted sounding board, helping shape Atomicwork’s long-term thesis and internal clarity. That relationship played a critical role in getting the firm on board.

“The biggest mistake founders make is obsessing over the most famous name on the website,” Vijay says. “Work with the person who’s already leaning in. Invest in that trust.”

It wasn’t a one-off. Vijay built a similar relationship with Sudhee from Battery Ventures, through repeated interactions, openness, and shared conviction.

Vijay uses updates not just to inform, but to mobilise. His champions don’t just watch from the sidelines. They advocate, connect, and re-amplify his mission across their networks.

His other champions, the CIOs, also weren’t just passive investors. Vijay strategically recruited them from different U.S. cities to act as local anchors. They didn’t just write cheques; they hosted dinners, rallied peers, and helped steer conversations in their markets. It was go-to-market support disguised as capital.

While he already had strong backing in the Bay Area, Vijay made a conscious effort to build geographic depth—adding CIOs from Seattle, Dallas, the East Coast, and even Europe to engage with traditional enterprise hubs.

“Enterprise is a city-level game,” he says. “You build brand and trust market by market.”

Pitching for Honesty

Vijay raised Atomicwork’s $11 million seed round after pitching to more than 10 investors. Z47, Blume Ventures, Storm Ventures, Neon Fund, and a roster of prominent angels from Silicon Valley and India came on board.

But that’s not the story.

The story is that he kept pitching even after the round was closed. “I’d tell them: the round’s committed. But I’d love your honest opinion.”

The goal wasn’t more capital. It was sharper clarity. He wanted to pressure-test the narrative, refine the story, and test the market assumptions. He followed the same playbook during his Series A.

“I made another 20–25 calls after we had a lead. Every pitch sharpens the story. You learn what lands. What doesn’t.”

This iteration became core to his fundraising process. And when it came time to pitch Khosla Ventures—arguably the most important meeting of all—he knew he had to get it right. So he prepared like a founder with one shot.

“I watched Vinod Khosla’s talk on how to pitch at least four or five times,” he says. Khosla’s advice was simple but surgical: A great pitch isn’t about sounding smart. It’s about telling a story with clarity, urgency, and conviction. Focus on the problem, why it matters now, and why you are the team to solve it.

Vijay created two versions of the deck, one for insiders already familiar with Atomicwork, and another for new investors that delivered the full arc of the story. He also had a slide on ‘Why not to invest?’, his own reflection on the risks to the business and everything that can go wrong. The right fund will appreciate it, he says. 

He sought feedback from everyone: partners, associates, even those who passed.

The result? Each round got stronger. Each story got tighter. And with every iteration, the pool of interested investors grew. But when the time came to choose, Vijay didn’t just look at the term sheets. He asked a different question: Who can help us make the next orbit shift?

Before we get into how to pick a VC, a caveat worth underscoring: none of this works without a product that delivers. Vijay’s credibility wasn’t built on polish alone, it was built on a high-quality business, deep customer love, and real traction with enterprise buyers.

When customers vouch for you, when partners trust you, and when talent wants to join you—that reputation travels. And when it travels through the right circles, it eventually reaches investors. The fundraise wasn’t the starting point. It was the outcome.

The Smart Founder’s Guide to Picking the Right VC

When it comes to picking investors, Vijay applies the same first-principles thinking he uses to build a product: who is this for, and what is the job it needs to do?

Don’t leave investors guessing: This slide laid out exactly where new capital would go.

To him, a VC’s job isn’t just to write a cheque. It is to help you execute what he calls the “orbit shift.” And the nature of the investor you need changes as the company shifts from one orbit to the other. 

“When you’re at Seed, you need to orbit shift to Series A. When you’re at A, you need to orbit shift to B,” he says. “Does the investor have the capacity and capability to help you make that leap?”

He approached each potential investor with one big question: Do they come with the right circle of competence? For him, depth in AI was a big one. He also wanted investors with depth in enterprise technology. 

Beyond these, he advises founders to look for stage alignment, capacity and capability, chemistry, willingness to challenge, support and unlock value beyond capital. 

1. Make Sure They’re Right For Your Stage

“Raising from a large-scale growth fund at seed is a bad idea,” he says. “Their mental model is post-product-market fit. They’ll give you advice that doesn’t apply to the early chaos you’re in.” Don't get an analytical growth-style venture investor who will evaluate your business on a spreadsheet, he cautions. 

2.  Check for Availability, Not Big Logos

It is also a trade off between capacity and capability. “Everyone has capacity and capability. An example could be an early-stage fund that has a lot of capacity but not as much capability. A growth-stage fund might have the capability to help, but your position is not very meaningful to them, so that capacity is not directed to you.”

3. Is there Chemistry?

Vijay pays close attention to how investors show up during the process. “For collaboration to happen, you need comfort. That comes from trust. And trust comes from repeated interactions, not a single meeting.” For instance, Vijay has met Neeraj of Battery Ventures four times over two years. He advises founders to build that comfort not just with the partner, but with the broader firm. “If you don’t have trust across the partnership, you can’t tap into their full capacity or capability.”

Vijay with Neeraj at Battery Ventures’ office in Boston.

4. Pick VCs Who Push You, Not Just Praise You

“At Series A, we wanted someone who would raise our ambition,” he says. He picked investors to that end. People who have done the work have an appreciation for your business and see the risks involved. Lean into those conversations because you will learn the most. 

While researching investors, he also came across instances of investors going beyond their remit to help founders. He even does backchannel references on his investors.

“Founders should ask: what is the VC NPS?” he says. “Go talk to other founders they’ve backed. I used sites like founderschoice.vc.” In our case for instance, Vijay had heard of the time we at Z47 had helped a founder get out of a tricky situation. That, and our track record spoke to him. 

5. Valuation ≠ Value

Vijay doesn’t confuse high price with high value or the other way around. “Pick a VC who understands your business who has done the work, not people just blindly offering capital,” he says.

“We had firms offer us a $200 million post-money valuation,” he says.

When a VC offers a lower price, Vijay asks why. “It tells me how they’re thinking. Are they worried about the market size? The team? The traction? That’s valuable data for me.”

The Right Capital Unlocks More Than Just Money

In the end, the advice is simple: Treat fundraising like a seven-figure enterprise sale. It’s not a one-week process. It’s a multi-quarter relationship. You’re not just picking a firm, you’re picking a partner for your next orbit.

Vijay back in Bangalore with the Z47 team post-Series A.

Today, Vijay's credibility-first approach is paying off. Since the raise, Z47 and other investors have helped Atomicwork unlock high-leverage opportunities: bagging public companies as customers, organizing conversations with Microsoft’s VP+ leadership, and getting the team in front of OpenAI’s product, tech, and partnerships heads.

But perhaps the biggest value hasn’t been introductions, it’s been the ambition reset. “The partners challenge us in every dimension,” Vijay says. “Product. Team. Go-to-market. Vision.”

That’s what the right capital unlocks. Not just funding, but force multiplication. And for founders building global enterprise from India, that might be the most valuable outcome of all.

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We’ve  put together a cheatsheet for founders in India looking to break into Bay Area VC circles through intent, not geography.

<Cheatsheet appears here>

Here’s Vijay’s tips on how to do it right.

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Follow Pranay Desai for more tactical insights on building global SaaS from India.

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Penned with ❤️ by SaaSBoomi and Z47

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