Things certainly feel frothier these days. More and more companies are raising money, and valuations seem to be skyrocketing. But even in stronger economic times (we hope!) and bubblier eagerness to put venture and angel capital to work it’s still extremely hard to raise financing. And in many cases the amount of money you’re looking to raise isn’t particularly relevant.

Often it’s just as hard to raise $50,000 as it is $5,000,000.

And this is true for startups as much as it’s true for VCs. When VCs are ready to get a new fund off the ground they have to jump to our side of the table and raise the money. Big money. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Alan Patricof of Greycroft wrote a telling article for Business Insider titled: You Think It’s Hard To Raise Money For A Company? Try Raising It For A VC Firm.

When raising early seed money, the requirements and demands from investors will be lower. Investors can’t look at significant traction, measure revenue growth and assess a lot of metrics. But you will invest a disproportionate amount of time raising early stage capital, even if the amounts seem low. And investors are still looking for key things across the board – early stage or otherwise: a kick ass team, unfair competitive advantages, market understanding and a clear roadmap.