I recently finished a two-week process with a great early-stage founding team that was solving an long-standing, exciting consumer-facing problem within a large market. I initially briefly met the founder and his entire team. We had two follow-up 45-minute conversations. He was prompt in our discussions, sent me detailed projections and data early in the process, was on top of his models and knew where he wanted to go. The valuation was appropriate for the stage. I liked the founding CEO personally and could see myself getting along well with him.

Why do we still have a myriad of confusing names for funding rounds in the private market? Each day we read about early-stage rounds labeled “friends and family,” “angel,” “seed,” “seed extension,” “seed prime,” “gap,” and “Series AA” just to name a few. And what exactly qualifies as “Series A” these days?

It’s fun to bag on VCs (we deserve it). But some VCs ask silly questions. If you are a founding team, you’ve heard all of these at some point I’m sure. Hopefully at Promus Ventures we aren’t on this list.

As we continue to move to a Frictionless Financing environment, there has recently been a lot of talk about “gap” investing, or what I call “tweener” rounds. At Promus Ventures, so far 25% of our new platform investments fall into these gap financings. We generally invest a minimum of $350K at the seed stage and like to participate meaningfully more in future rounds, but have also started as late as Series B with a higher allocation.

I have been fortunate to invest as a VC and participate in startup boards for the last 10+ years. One of the many things that has changed (for the better!) is the continued smoothing of early-stage discrete financing events. But I believe we can do better.