Zap's Wrap February 25th

hi friends,

I am in SF this week with several founders. This is a trial run for Lighthouse founder field trips to meet investors where they are!

Last week we shared Episode 3 of FOUNDERS ONLY with Brooke Tuttle who is building Offload, the operating system for the oversized freight industry. Brooke is an incredible founder!!!

Offload is hiring a senior full-stack engineer with GIS/mapping experience (Mapbox, routing, navigation) and mobile chops to own features end-to-end and ship fast. Nashville-based preferred, exceptional remote candidates welcome.

Reflections

Every month, week, and day, I get to learn more. And over time, things shift.

For a long time, I said I wanted to build the Nashville startup ecosystem. Now I say I want to build billion dollar tech companies in Nashville. Small wording change, big difference in meaning. I'm always evolving.

Which brings me to the Lighthouse…

I'm just over a year in and still figuring out what we want to be when we grow up. Year one was for experimenting, finding our own product-market fit. And this weekend, something clicked.

I always want to be on the side of the founder. The job of a traditional VC is to return capital to LPs. When things go well, that's aligned with founders, but when things get hard, it often isn't. That's not the role I want to play. It makes me anxious, and I lose sleep over it. I want to do the ‘right’ thing and sometimes that isn’t clear to me.

So I'm rethinking everything. I have some new ideas in the works, a model where we still invest in companies, but don’t look like a traditional investor. More soon…

Startup jobs

• Joey Kim with Longview is hiring for a Customer Experience Liaison. This role would work out of the Lighthouse!

• Jimmy Speyer w/ Glasshouse is hiring for an Associate Account Executive. This role would be in their Cool Springs office 3x/week and have the chance to learn from the pro seller Jimmy himself.

• Brooke Tuttle with Offload (above!!!) is hiring for Senior Software Engineer. 

• Tristan Wilson with Edgevanta is hiring for a Founding Customer Success Manager.

• Randy Rausch with 4IR is hiring for a Senior Site Reliability Engineer.

• I have MULTIPLE startup ops opportunities. Chief of Staff + VP of Ops. Both full-time in person.

Startup stuff that I think is cool

• I caught up with Lindsey and Eller from LaunchTN over lunch! A lot of people don’t realize that TN has a state fund called InvestTN that has invested in dozens of startups in our state!!! It’s a great resource.

• I attended the Vanderbilt Startup Career Fair where there were 24 startups hiring students. I am a big fan of Baxter and what he’s building for student entrepreneurs!

• We hosted a monthly Lighthouse founder dinner with the Wefunder team.

Events

• AI Leaders, Tuesday, March 3rd

  • ​We're bringing together people who are doing the thing- making decisions, shipping products, managing teams building with AI in production. ​Share over food and drinks about what's working for you right now.

• Sip & Smoke, Wednesday, March 4th

  • I am sharing about early stage investing at a cigar event with Travis!! I haven’t ever smoked a cigar lol, but hopefully will be an interesting conversation (:

• FOUNDERS ONLY, Thursday, March 12th

  • Founders only hang @ the Lighthouse

Personal

I took Randy to his first EDM show!!!

Then hit yoga at Shakti Sunday morning with my other founder friends, Tristan and James.

to the moon,

zap⚡