Zap's Wrap August 25th

hi friends,

This week is a busy week! I am doing deals #20 and #21, which I’m super excited to share with you guys soon. I am also working on my 4th SPV into a Nashville startup! Oh, and I helped a portfolio company sign their first customer last week 🎉🎉🎉

According to Carta, Nashville broke into the top 20 cities for preseed funding. You can read the report here.

Here’s my list of Nashville founders who raised early stage funding (so far) in 2025:

• AGYL, Jon Ricketts

• Soxton, Logan Brown

• TaxNow, Bobby Kelley

• StatStak, Elijah Herrick

• Envoi, Payson Johnston

• Glasshouse, Jimmy Speyer

• Longview, Joey Kim

• Elysian, Grace Hanson

• Optura, Michel Hollis

• Laborup, Simba Jonga

• 9root, Sean Casey

• Sendit, Joe White

• Synquery, Bren Marschner

• Basalt, Ben Hackett

• Listening Post, Dan Steele

• Stealth, Luis Martinez-Moure

Here’s who I am watching already for the Fall:

• stealth, Luke Thomas

• Sitevue, Jon Lewis

• Heard, Chris Paterno

• Cohesive, Matt Peltier

• WVN, James Chester

• VITL, Charlie Jordan

• Eva, Channing Moreland

• SubQDocs, Jason Judd

• Offload, Brooke Mercy

• drayrates, Tyler Sellers

I hope this list gets longer 😎😎😎

I am currently looking for some talent for local startups. Specifically for Customer Success, full stack engineers, & account executives.

Upcoming events

3686 is coming!!! This is TN’s biggest startup event. Did you get your ticket yet?! Some stuff I’m hosting during it:

• Monday, September 8th @ 8:30pm- BURNT with 11 Tribes

  • Founder late night hang with Kristina, GP at 11 Tribes in Chicago.

• Wednesday, September 10th @ 9:30am- Founders, Funders, & Financiers Breakfast 

  • Breakfast with JPMorgan at the Lighthouse!

Lightspeed Hackathon is happening September 5th-7th

Build something awesome in a weekend, win meaningful prizes:

• $5k+ in cash prizes

• Mentorship from Tim Connors, GP of PivotNorth

• Mentorship from Mike Rosengarten, GP of 1121.vc 

• Mentorship from the Head of Engineering at Optura AI, who is actively hiring engineers

• Internships from Laborup, who is actively hiring

• $1k from Listening Post + mentorship from cofounder Dan + Seth

• Mentorship from Aditya Nanda, founder of DBTwin

• Mentorship from John Berryman, founder of Arcturus Labs

Lightspeed is a 48-hour sprint where builders turn real startup and investor challenges into working MVPs- no fluff, just launch. Challenges come from active startups and VCs, so what you build could actually go to market.

Sign up here! Or DM me if you want to find a way to get involved.

The Lighthouse

This week I will finish our new website!!! With a whole new domain too.

We got some founders together to play Padel last week thanks to Michael Joseph!

Personal

Over the weekend I literally WALKED ON FIRE.

Leah & Natalie invited myself and Tracey to experience an entire day of conquering our fears. It was amazing, exhausting, and expansive!

Ask me questions about Nashville startups through my AI-self here.

Or, come visit me at in-person office hours weekly on Thursdays.

to the moon,

zap