Zap's Wrap July 1st

Q2 recap ⚡⚡⚡

Author

Haley Zapolski
July 01, 2026

hi friends,

I was feeling off on Monday, so you are getting a late update (:

Honestly, sometimes I get in moods where I feel like I haven't accomplished enough recently. And then I had the idea today to put together a Q2 recap and was like, oh wow, holy shit, I actually have been doing a lot, and I'm super proud of everything we've accomplished in the last 3 months at the Lighthouse!!!

Looking back at Q2

  • We reached $1.375M in AUM, which is crazy. Last March, that number was $0.

  • We closed 3 new SPVs into Lighthouse founders. They were all folks we put a $5k scout check into pre-revenue and early, and I'm honored to get the chance to double down on them and bring others into the deal with me.

  • We made 1 new scout investment into Jason Judd, building SubQDocs. I am so pumped about what Jason is building and how he got over 100 derms to say yes to his new EHR for derms already! I will say, though, this has been the slowest quarter I've had for new scout checks. Usually I do 3 per quarter, so I'm feeling behind here, but I also feel good about what's coming up in my pipeline for the fall.

  • We hosted our first-ever Lighthouse LP gathering to bring our investors and our founders all together.

  • We hosted our 3rd annual Lightning anticonference for VCs. We brought over 80 VCs to Nashville to meet our ecosystem here.

  • Along the way, we gathered, a lot. We gathered Lighthouse founders several times, engineers, hosted our first customer success event and ops event, and hosted a fireside chat with Elena Verna.

  • I went to NYC twice. I got to see our two Lighthouse portcos who moved there, Elysian and Pathway, plus I attended my first-ever NY Tech Week with the teams at Watt and WVN, and hosted an event with Derrick.

  • We're always working on upgrading the Lighthouse. We made swag for all of our founders, built a content studio to record our podcast FOUNDERS ONLY, and painted our front steps.

  • We released new FOUNDERS ONLY episodes, so you can hear from Nashville founders like:

  • Personally, I turned 30! I bought a new-to-me 1971 GMC truck in green. We hosted many founders at our new home in 12 South.

Looking ahead at the rest of the year

  • I am feverishly vibe coding away to build more around the Lighthouse Talent Platform. We have over 150 folks who have indicated interest in working at startups, and we've been manually connecting them with founders, but a founder self-service side will be open soon.

  • We have our first batch of Lighthouse founders going out to raise their Series As, and I am super excited to see it happen!!!

  • We have 4 potential scout checks in our pipeline that we hope to convert into investments when they're ready for us. I also hope to do 4 SPVs and reach $2M in AUM.

  • We are planning big events around 3686, happening September 14–16th. It's Nashville's biggest startup conference, and we will be there in full.

Upcoming Events

Personal

Saw my Grandma and Aunt in Michigan last weekend.

I am leaving tomorrow for a trip to Europe with Mr Zap! He’s planned the whole thing for my 30th bday.

to the moon,

zap⚡