Zap's Wrap February 24th

hi friends,

Last week was action packed!
✅ I am wrapping up my first SPV.

✅ I picked a venue for my anti-conference for VCs and founders, Lightning.

✅ I helped hire a Head of Engineering for a startup! 4th hire this year and 31st hire ever.

✅ I hosted friends from out of town for Vive and even made it down to Broadway (:

✅ I accepted the first dozen startup house members!

Startup stuff that’s cool

• I caught up with Larry, cofounder of Thnks a digital gratitude platform that helps sales/customer success teams build relationships with their team/clients. They have over 50 folks down in Franklin.

• I met Tim who is building AngelQ, a safer browser for kids. Tim is an anomaly, he built his last startup, Digital Reasoning, in Nashville and raised over $100M for it (and it wasn’t a healthcare company!).

• I had dinner with Grace who’s building Elysian, AI for claims. We hashed out how challenging it is to find an investor who fits your deal!!! Some seed investors invest at 8-10M vals, others are 25-30M vals, but their websites look almost the same!!

• I met some Knoxville founders doing cool stuff. Dustin is a 2nd time edtech founder building Unified Track, an ai platform that syncs with school information systems. John has built and sold 3 companies and led many more. Nowadays, he’s building Authentrics AI, software for analyzing, monitoring, and measuring AI/ML Neural Networks.

• I hosted Wolf Starr and Derrick Maultsby at startup house and took them out to Broadway (specifically The Wild Beaver) with Nick Wijnberg and other folks who were in town for Vive!

• I caught up with Charlie, a serial entrepreneur now building VitlRx, a platform for e-prescribing and pharmacy management.

Startup house

• I hosted a fireside chat with Nick, founder of PaintJet. He has an incredible story! He ran a painting business where the biggest challenge was finding and keeping good talent. He really felt the pain when one weekend, him, his pregnant wife, and his parents ended up having to paint to finish a job in time. He felt like there was a way to solve this problem- painting robots! Nowadays, PaintJet is the go-to resource for manufacturing plants, oil tanks, and large ships.

• I hosted a fireside chat with Tim a 30 year venture investor where we talked through his winning metrics for startups. Pay close attention to wm3- CACD aka will customers pay you more than it costs to reach them.

Personal updates

I hosted a wig bar crawl over the weekend! It’s one of my favorite things to do and wigs are the most fun, easy theme. I carry with me a dozen extra wigs and I let people who want to join us wear them ❤️ 

I didn’t touch my work or go to the office Sunday, which is the very 1st time since we moved in here….

We had our strategic planning for the Mending Hearts board- a nonprofit that provides healing to women reclaiming their lives from addiction. 2024 was a huge year for MH- we got a $2M grant from Mackenzie Scott and acquired a huge, new facility in East Nashville that’s opening in a couple of months! If you want to help or contribute in any way, please reach out to me.

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

to the moon,

zap