Zap's Wrap March 31st

startups, startups, startups

Author

Haley Zapolski
March 31, 2025

hi friends,

This week is my 6-year anniversary living in Nashville ❤️ 

I moved here and started working at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center on April 1st, 2019.

This photo was taken on my very first day of work by Clark Buckner!

Here’s a photo from a couple weeks ago at the LaunchTN happy hour with Ashlin, who has also been working in the startup ecosystem for 6 years!

People always ask me- why Nashville? I grew up in smaller towns in Indiana and Iowa and always felt like if I wanted to do big things with my career, I needed to go somewhere else for greater economic opportunity.

After I graduated from the University of Michigan, I tried Manhattan and hated it. I lasted less than 6 months and moved back home to my parents’ basement.

I kept looking for the ‘perfect’ job until I found it- a program coordinator position at the EC. I practically forced them to hire me (:

I moved to Nashville not knowing a soul. I found my first roommate, Moonshine, on Craigslist.

I came here on accident, but knew that I wanted to make the effort to make wherever I went be ‘home.’ I wanted to have a purpose in my city and make an impact.

I am so grateful to have a home in Nashville and get to keep building toward my mission of helping Nashville startups win. I see my mission as a lifelong journey and this is only the beginning!!!

I have 2 really exciting announcements coming this week on LinkedIn that just so happen to fall on this anniversary. Can’t wait to share with you all….

In regular programming, last week was a busy one. I had over 40 meetings and I am melting from all that interaction 😬

I feel like I’m almost at a breaking point with the work that needs to get down over this next month. SO, I am doing two things. I am saying ‘no’ to anything new until May! And, I’m organizing a help day at startup house in two weeks on Sunday, April 13th. If you are handy, me and Mr Zap need help with hanging, painting, picking out cute things, moving stuff, installing light fixtures, etc. If you can pitch in a few hours, let me know here!

Startup stuff that’s cool

  • I got lunch and caught up with Jeffrey, CEO and cofounder at SavvyFi, an education benefits saas platform. Jeffrey is a post Series A startup building quietly in Franklin who I’ve been able to help hire 2.5 people. I’ve certainly learned through him and many other founders that finding the right talent is one of the hardest parts of the job.

  • I had my friend Austin and his girlfriend over for dinner. He has built an incredibly unique career as a personal finance influencer and also gets to invest in a lot of cool startups in fintech and the creator economy.

  • I caught up with Patrick at District Cover. Backed by a16z, the DC team is solving one of the most persistent problems in America since the 1960s- small business insurance in some neighborhoods is incredibly expensive and sometimes impossible to get, which only makes operating a business there harder. They use better data to get folks like this insured.

  • I met Joe, the new CEO of Ombre. As a 28-year-old girl on the Internet, I know that gut-health is all the rage right now. Joe and his team want people to know that the hype is real and fixing your gut can fix an entire slew of other problems as well.

  • I caught up with Matt founder of OrangeQC, vertical saas for cleaning inspections. Matt is 10 years ahead of the trend, he built a profitable startup in a niche space and has been growing it brick by brick ever since!

  • I met Joyce, cofounder at Spidr, a tool for fintech startups to access card processors. They recently closed a round of capital!

Startup house

Personal updates

I only had 2 modes this weekend- potato mode or work mode. I did get to walk around the new Neuhoff development in Germantown. I liked how they incorporated many older aspects into the new space and the overall feel. There’s pickleball courts and a lot of places to walk around. They’re still filling it with more restaurants and shops, but it’s worth checking out.

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

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

to the moon,

zap