Zap's Wrap June 1st

hi friends,

Entrepreneurship comes in waves. Some weeks feel like an uphill battle, like a fight that takes everything out of you. And then there are weeks where it all just happens in the best way possible. Everything feels easy. Last week was one of those really good weeks where I felt like I just got to enjoy it and have fun. It was awesome.

Some really amazing things happened:

1) I launched my 8th SPV into a Nashville startup and filled it. That was really cool. And it wasn't about getting more people to invest money into me, it was the founder believing in me and me earning the right to be on their cap table. The deal was just that good, it was easy. It's hard to get into the best deals, so it felt like a "mama I've made it" moment to be in it. It feels great to bring deals to my LP community that are that valuable.

2) The Lighthouse hosted Elena Verna for a fireside chat and omg did she blow me away. Do yourself a favor and watch the video. Elena runs growth at Lovable, one of the fastest growing tech companies of all time, and she is considered one of the leading experts in product-led growth. I was so honored she said yes to coming to share with our founders. I wrote about my main takeaways here.

3) Crashed a women in healthcare event at the rodeo thanks to Madeline / team Optura and got to catch up with Mollie from Unity AI!

Making it easier for startups to find talent

Startups don't need to hire greens. They need yellows.

Greens are actively looking for a job. Yellows already have one, they're exceptional, but they could be sold on the right opportunity.

The problem is that every job posting in the world is built for greens. You post a role, you get inbound from people who need a job. But most startups need to hire people who want to take a risk, not people who have to.

So I spent the weekend building something for the yellows and for the Nashville startups trying to find them.

It lives inside The Lighthouse. If you're not actively looking but you'd be open to the right startup opportunity, you fill out a short profile: your background, what kind of role you'd consider, what it would take to make a move. That's it. No job applications, no resume black holes.

On the other side, founders in our community can browse those profiles and reach out directly when something fits. Everyone has already indicated they WANT to work at a startup, which is the most important criteria to work at one (:

The idea is simple: make it easier than ever for yellows and Nashville startups to find each other.

Coming soon! Stay tuned!

Events

• Zappy Hour with Wefunder, Wednesday June 10th @ 5:30pm

  • Zappy Hour is open to anyone who cares about startups in Nashville- founders, operators, investors, and the curious. Come grab a drink.

• Nashville Customer Success Community Kickoff Event, Thursday June 11th @ 5:30pm

  • Listen, Nashville has meetups for product and coding, now it needs one for customer success folks! I’m helping ​Ben George (Motive) and Steve Mason (Signal Consulting) get this community started. Join us if you work in CS!

• Nashville Tech Ops Community First Gathering, Tuesday June 16th @ 5:30pm

  • We were inspired by the CS community kickoff so me, Nicki, and Mollie made one for folks who work in operations at tech companies!

Personal

Hung out at Pins Mechanical with some Lighthouse founders and their families! Didn’t catch everyone for the photo but we had a great crew throughout the day!

to the moon,

zap⚡