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- Zap's Wrap April 28th
Zap's Wrap April 28th
lightning recap

hi friends,
Last week was a BIG week.
I hosted my 2nd annual anti-conference, Lightning
Here’s what happened:
We hosted 62 investors, 39 came from outside of Nashville! We had 62 founders.
On Wednesday, we had 324 1×1 investor meetings happen at the Lighthouse.
We had 52 investors at dinner at the historic Jimmy Kelly’s Steakhouse.
We had almost 100 people come to the VC Reverse Pitch to hear from:
Michael Cohn @ Overline
Lasawni Reynolds @ InvestTN
Kristina Chapple @ 11 Tribes
Ari Frank @ New Stack
Sarah Romanko @ Geek Ventures
Emceed by the one and only Jonny Price @ Wefunder!
On Thursday, I took everyone to the Fontanel Mansion. I was THRILLED to use this venue- we were the first event to be hosted there in 5+ years!
We had breakout sessions around some interesting topics. Check them out:


Then, we had optional activities. We had:

We wrapped it up with a hog roast by Peg Leg Porker, a party bus back to town, and a trip to Broadway to ride a mechanical bull!
I am very grateful to the sponsors who made Lightning possible- Customers Bank, Topo Advisors, Nelson Mullins, Brown Advisory, Gun.io, and Sydecar!
Some of my lessons learned:
I think this event should all happen on 1 day, not 1.5 days.
I should hire a day-of coordinator so I can be an attendee!
I think this is the right size of people, so I have to find a way to up the quality, but not up the size!
I spent the weekend being a potato.
This week I’m back at it and getting the ball rolling for my 2nd SPV! If you want to get emails to follow deals I do, let me know.
Back to regularly scheduled programming next week….
Ask me questions about Nashville startups through my AI-self here.
Or, come visit me at in-person office hours.
to the moon,
zap⚡