You read Hacker News or Techcrunch and you see everyone raising large rounds. You get FOMO for not raising. If you’re raising, you think you’re not doing well because your goal is smaller and it’s taking you ages. Your co-founder sees the same news and gets upset you for not raising faster.
The truth is you’ll get a >99% rejection rate from VCs. And then only the biggest rounds get publicity, so there is a huge selection bias.
The weird thing is… even if you know about this bias, it’s very hard not to fall prey to it.