When is a VC round easy to accomplish? My guess is that when one do not need one (same applies to bank loan - in general).
I've been in a seed finance round for a while now. The case seems to be OK from all the aspects. However either the funds required or the applicable business area are creating the complications. Today it's difficult to find a competent seed round institutional VC. The ones who are still around are focused more on the early stage and do not really bother to invest anything less than €4m. That's understandable if the VC fund is €100m or more. The partner time just cannot be fragmented to dozens of small companies.
However from our perspective this does not make things any more easier. The seed financing companies that are still alive are either focused on something very traditional like software or mobile which is more than over-crowded and -invested or they are just pure opportunistic players who do not take leads and invest only for syndicate cases. From the list I have scaled out those guys who do traditional industries outside of high tech since one cannot expect to fit to their world without losing all the aspirations of an international growth company.
I bet I'm not the only one with the gap. A seed of 0,4-1m€ should not be that uncommon. However this amount of money is a bit out of range from pure private angels in Europe (maybe except Switzerland or so). Still, it's unattractive for early stage guys. Friends and families are hard to find with that thick pile of cash especially in countries where private pension contributions are carried out by state in form of taxation leaving no cushion for private individual's investements.