Zap's Wrap April 28th

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:

• A coffee tasting by Aaron at Sydecar

• A sake tasting by Rick at Pure Land

• A whiskey tasting by Chris at Hogshead

• Zipline!

• Art by Marcus

• Tea Ceremony

• Sound bath by Shakti 

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⚡