Zap's Wrap February 3rd

hi friends,

Big week last week! Some wins:

1. $2.25M in capital was closed for Nashville founders through intros I made!! Great start to the year. That makes total capital raised 6.29M.

2. We executed the first Nashville Startups Launch Team for Ducky’s Launch. You can see James O’Brien’s post here. Thanks to 100+ folks, Ducky got over 14,000 eyeballs. You can read about what they are building and join the waitlist here.

Honestly though, I am not satisfied with these results. I would like to break 100,000 eyeballs and I have some ideas on how to accomplish it in future launches. If you want to join this effort to help Nashville startups launch, fill out this form!

3. Michael and Sean from Overline visited Nashville from ATL! I work part-time with Overline helping them find great preseed and seed stage founders in the Southeast to invest in. This time around I helped put together an LP dinner (:

4. Last week wasn’t all positive, I had a first-time experience going through a difficult work situation. That being said, the win is that I learned some major lessons. I want to shout out my friend Mike for being a person I call when navigating the hard stuff and giving the best advice. As a multiple time founder and investor, he is well-versed on navigating through the hard times.

Startup stuff that’s cool

• My friend Alexander launched the product for his company Resolut. He’s spent his entire career in music copyright administration and saw an opportunity to build tech for a process currently done on excel sheets. He’s built a solution for unverified asset ownership, withheld earnings, and visibility for a music catalog's digital administration.

• I met Sean, who previously built and sold the company DivvyDose to Optum. He’s now working on something new in the world of insurance.

• I met the Belmont senior, Oliver, who I immediately became a big fan of. Last summer he interned at a recording studio and realized that they didn’t use any software tools to run the business and saw an opportunity. He’s now helping studio owners streamline their business at Beaux Booking and is working with 5 local studios, but needs to talk to more!

• I caught up with Tess, founder of At Home Ads! They launched their app in Nashville. If you want to get paid $30-80/month just for putting a sign of a small business in your lawn, download their app on the appstore here.

• I caught up with my friend Marla, who I used to work with at NSS. She recently got laid off. If anyone is in need of a talent or recruiting manager/director- she is a fantastic manager with decades of experience!!! Hit her up!!!

• I caught up with Justin at Potluck, a party planning site. He is looking for a technical partner to help Potluck get to the next level. Check out the JD here.

Events

• I’ll be at the EC’s ‘First Look’ event on Wednesday, Feb 19th to meet the new cohort members of Project Fintech and Project Healthcare.

• If you’re coming to town for Vive, hit me up!

Personal stuff

Work is life right now! I am spending most of my time getting startup house set up, BUT outside of work I recently jumped back into triathlon training.

I am planning to do a brand new adventure race in Chattanooga called Xpeditions in May that’s swimming, kayaking, trail running, and rucking (it was this LinkedIn post that made me sign up). In June I will probably do the Olympic tri at the Music City Triathlon.

It never hurts to have more folks to train with, so if you ever want to swim, bike, or run, let me know (:

to the moon,

zap