Zap's Wrap June 11th

hi friends,

This newsletter is the very late…when you’re a one woman show, there are days when you don’t really want to put yourself out there.

This week has felt tough, but I turn back to my winning metrics as my guiding post. So far:

• Raised 8.65M for Nashville startups

• Hired 33 people in Nashville for startups

• Supporting 31 startups at the Lighthouse

• 18 angel investments

• Funded my 2nd SPV

Startup stuff that’s cool

• I’m looking for a couple of exciting roles:

  • Glasshouse is hiring for a Head of Customer Success

  • I am looking for an entry level Account Exec for a b2b saas startup. Ideally someone who has done outbound sales and wants to manage the entire pipeline.

• Aditya launched his startup dbTwin (post here). They are building a novel tabular synthetic data generator that performs at SOTA or better and is 20x more efficient. If you know what that means, you should reach out to Aditya (:

• I caught up with Michael at Fusion Technology, a workflow automation tool for mortgage lenders. He’s bootstrapped to half a million+ in revenue. He needs help with sales as they are a team of only software engineers (:

• I caught up with Garrett who’s building a new startup in web3 and looking to meet other web3 builders/investors in town.

• My weekend was spent hanging out with some great founders that inspire me!

  • BBQed in the rain with Ben who’s building Basalt. He moved him and his wife from Seattle to Nashville only a few months ago because he felt like it was the best thing for his company. I think moving your life is a serious sacrifice to make that’s luckily paying off.

  • I had celebration cocktails at Chopper Tiki Bar with Grace building Elysian. I feel so lucky to be an investor and get to follow along with what Grace is building. I have been able to see up close many ‘firsts’ for me, which has been a great learning experience.

  • I went on a lot of walks with Brianna. By day, she is Chief of Staff at a crypto startup, by night she is building an innovative tampon brand that I’m pumped about!!

  • Me and Mr Zap went to hangout with Joe and his family (aka his 4 kids). He’s building Send-It to solve a problem he experienced as a hospital COO. His level of conviction about the problem he’s solving is seriously special.

Upcoming Events

• Thursday, June 12th: Engineers Only: Meet Nashville Startups

  • This event is only for founders and engineers!!

• Tuesday, June 17th: Demo Party: Listening Post

  • Come drink beer and eat pizza while demoing Chief AI officer in a box from Dan & Seth

• Tuesday, July 8th: How to run your fundraise like a sales process

  • A lot of founders have never raised before and don’t know how to do it. In this event, I’m asking Jimmy, 1st time founder, how he raised his most recent round and how other founders can follow his process.

Lighthouse

• We had a big construction day over the weekend! We now have a massive deck that doubles as a stage/fence! Can’t wait to use it for upcoming events.

• We hosted a lunch with several founders and Vincent from Cypress Growth.

• We hosted an Equity 101 workshop with our friends at Frost Brown Todd.

Personal updates

Check back next week lol.

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

Or, come visit me at in-person office hours weekly on Thursdays.

to the moon,

zap