Zap's Wrap February 17th

hi friends,

This week I’ll be hanging out (and even hosting) some Vive events so hit me up if you’re in town!

I’m wrapping up my first SPV, which I can’t wait to share with you next week when everything is all tied up (: Good news, I’m at the finish line! For the future, I am creating a separate beehiv exclusively focused on investment opportunities in Nashville startups. Let me know if you want to be added!

We attempted the 2nd Nashville Startups Launch Team Mission, this time on Tiki. You can see the post here. I’m starting to think that unfortunately it’s not having the intended effects. It seems to be limiting reach to just other people in Nashville as opposed to broadening it like I had hoped. Will do some iterating here…

In the meantime, Tiki is looking for 2 things:

1. Companies who are looking for unique data that need help in the search

2. Companies that have data they want to take to market and sell

I’m also still hiring for a couple roles for Nashville startups:

• Founding engineer/head of engineering. Startup has revenue and is venture backed. This is an ideal role for someone who wants to be a CTO someday soon. React/Javascript. Looking for systems architect who can also speak business. 125-175k salary + equity.

• Full cycle sales rep who can generate their own deals. Ideally has shown success generating deals with a relatively unknown brand before. Will pay for the right person. Probably someone with a few years of experience, but not a ton.

Startup stuff that’s cool

• I met Ben, founder of Zippy, a post series B startup that offers manufactured home loans. He has a really cool story about how he bought a manufactured home park and identified this as a huge problem. While manufactured homes are a small part of the market today, they believe that unlocking the financing is going to grow the option and make home buying more affordable!!! Ben just moved here.

• I caught up with Rick Margoritov, cofounder of Present Tense. They are not a tech startup, but one of my fav restaurants in Weho!!!! They are raising capital on Wefunder and you can see the details here. It’s a really fun opportunity to ‘own’ a piece of a Nashville restaurant (: If you want to meet Rick and learn more, let me know.

• I met Baxter, who joined as the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship @ Vandy last year. He’s hosting the first-annual Convoy Conference in a few weeks and I am super impressed at the lineup of Vandy alums he has pulled in. Baxter was previously a founder himself and is doing cool stuff at Vandy.

• I met Alex, who previously was cofounder of Freightwise which sold partially to PE. He’s now working on a few new projects, one of them being ShipTrac.

• I caught up with Ankush, who is building the AI billing system for healthcare with Ludux. Ankush is a very impressive recent Vandy grad on a mission to transform the economy with AI and I am definitely tracking where he goes…

Events

• Startup Internship Fair on 2/26 @ 5:30pm. If you are hiring for a summer intern, let me know. This is the spot to find them. Students from any university are welcome to attend!

Startup house

We have art on the walls 😍 Thanks to my artist friend/creative director Marcus Fetch. We have this lighthouse and 13 other custom pieces.

I hosted office hours with Mike Rosengarten, 3x founder and investor, and he’s going to host these once a month!

The house is mostly set up now, so I can finally shift energy toward branding, marketing, website, launch, sponsors, etc. Work is never done!!!!

Personal updates

My life recently has been swallowed up by work, but I couldn’t do it without working next to my Valentine!!

We tried Chateau West and this spot is a hidden gem. Will be going back exclusively for the fondue, but there is easy parking, great service, food was delicious.

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

to the moon,

zap