“I’ve been optimistic about Amazon since the early days,” says Bezos. “I was most pessimistic literally at the very beginning. It took sixty meetings to raise a million dollars, which I needed to get the company started. Twenty two people providing around $50,000 each, on average, to get me that million dollars. That was the riskiest time for Amazon, that’s when the whole thing may never have happened. Raising that money was very, very difficult.”

Basically, what was true back then (1995) is just as true today.

The early money you raise is the hardest to raise, and it has the most risk, because no one knows whether to believe there's something real there or just a dream.