Zap's Wrap July 20th

hi friends,

What I’m up to right now:

• Planning events around 3686 this year. It's the biggest startup event in TN. If Nashville has been sitting on your list, this is the week to come.

• For the first time ever, I'm tripling down on a portco. This is a company where I wrote a $5K scout check at preseed, ran an SPV into their seed, and now I'm raising another SPV because they are absolutely crushing it. Total no-brainer deal.

• SO many of my companies are going out to raise this Fall. July has been quiet on the deal front (as it usually is), and I'm pumped to start sharing again soon.

• I overbooked my summer. I've been traveling so much that I'm constantly playing catch-up instead of creating net new value, and it's frustrating. I usually work Saturdays and that hasn't happened in a month, so yeah, I feel behind. Nobody's fault but mine. Two more weddings til I can LOCK IN.

Lighthouse last week ❤️ 

• Hosted a workshop on PLG last week taught by Grantly. The way he thinks about scaling a product is suuuper interesting, his goal is to give away $1,000 of value to every customer in their first 8 hours, and he actually measures it. The results speak for themselves: 1,000 healthcare practices added in his first 6 months. Pumped he shared his playbook with us, and even more pumped about what he's building.

• Visited the new SiteVue offices in Franklin! They're at 37 employees now. Crazy, crazy growth. So pumped for founder Andrew.

• Caught up with the newly minted dream team over breakfast- Tim just joined Paul at Tessellate as Head of Product Engineering. Two amazing operators coming together. Both of them previously built and sold a tech company, but I’m sure they will be more powerful together.

• Hosted team Eric and team OneTap at the house last week, and they're moving in fulltime to the house next month! The Lighthouse will be totally full (: Chaos, but the fun kind. They launched in May and have 75 restaurants onboarded and using their platform to schedule and manage maintenance.

• Caught up with Matt, who is building services as software for dentists in ~stealth~ mode right now. He added two more team members this summer.

• My new friend Athena just moved to town! She is the founder of ExactRx. She moved to Nashville to be closer to some of her customers.

• Hosted our Lighthouse accountants, Tommy and Brody @ Riverfront Advisors, for a "Chick-fil-A with CPAs" lunch. Exactly what it sounds like.

Upcoming Events

• Founder Legal Workshop: Replacing Your Lawyer with Ai, Friday, July 31st @ 9am

  • Lots of founders are saving on legal costs and having Ai do the work instead. In this workshop, learn where you can leverage Ai to help you, where you should call a lawyer, and better decipher all of the gray in the middle.

• ZAPPY HOUR, Wednesday, August 5th @ 5:30pm

  • Drinks and hangs… location tbd

• Nashville Tech Ops Community, Wednesday, September 9th @ 5:30pm

  • A meetup exclusively for folks who work in operations at tech companies. Any type of ops fits in though!

• Nashville Customer Success Community, Thursday, September 10th @ 5:30pm

  • A meetup exclusively for folks who work in customer success.

Personal

My book club did a girls trip to Newport, Rhode Island. It was definitely a New England summer sort of trip. We went out on a boat, ate a lot of seafood, walked around, and shopped. I really love Newport and would totally go back there for a vacation again.

to the moon,

zap⚡