I had (and have) a similar reaction. It was strongest when I was raising money back in 2000 for my first startup. My co-founders and I were pretty dismayed by

I had (and have) a similar reaction. It was strongest when I was raising money back in 2000 for my first startup. My co-founders and I were pretty dismayed by the anecdotes of "20 year-olds raising millions with just an idea!" because we were, well, 20-year-olds with a great idea, and the millions were NOT being thrown at us. (And not to sound too arrogant, but we were pretty much in the target demographic for that easy capital -- Harvard & MIT guys with a great idea and great demo.) In the end, we did end up raising money -- after a LONG slog and MANY disappointing meetings. So we proved it was doable, but certainly not easy. We came to a pretty simple conclusion back then: The anecdotes were either exaggerations, extrapolations from a tiny number of actual examples, or outright falsehoods. Remember, this was the first dot-com boom, and the story about kids with big ideas and tons of investor cash was a new one and played well in the press, so it's easy to understand why it got play. These days, the story is different - and to staunch's point above, the "easy money" stories today are either coming from inexperienced/naive investors who think that's how things are done in Silicon Valley, or experienced investors throwing money at folks who have made money for them before (and why not? If your investee made you 10X on your last investment, it's understandable why in some cases, simply as a thank-you, you'd throw one of those Xs back at the new idea.