Zap's Wrap May 12th

hi friends,

I have a ton of upcoming events for all different types of folks in the startup ecosystem!

• Tuesday, June 3rd: Getting Started as an Angel Investor

• Friday, June 6th: Equity 101: Founder Equity from Issuance to Exit

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

• Saturday, September 6th: Lightspeed Hackathon

  • I’ve been wanting to host a hackathon for forever! I’m still early in planning stages, but would love to hear thoughts/feedback/ideas/interest from people. Take a look at what our ‘schtick’ is. Thanks to Evan with Cline for pushing me to do this!

There is also several job opportunities with Nashville startups:

• Paid Media Specialist at Heard Music. Build the Moneyball of music.

• Social Media Coordinator at Metaflex. Build the grip-strengthening glove for pain relief and mobility.

• Several roles with Legion Studios. Lead unreal engineer, artist, 3D artist, animator. Build a dark fantasy video game.

Startup stuff that’s cool

• James just started WVN 1 month ago with a team of 3. They are building an AI-native cloud platform that helps modern retailers understand and improve in-store experience, sentiment, and sales- no hardware or surveys required. They just booked their first pilot last week!!

• I had lunch with Brad, founder of Lahzo, one of my portfolio companies. They are building AI sales agents and have found a lot of success helping with large, complicated sales of RVs, boats, and more. They’re killing it and on track to be one of my winners! woohoo

• I caught up with Joey, who is building a different type of ‘startup.’ After over a decade venture investing and the last few years spent in construction tech, Joey is now taking all of those tech concepts and applying them to a home services business in the restoration space. Instead of software as a service, the rise of AI is creating services as software.

• I caught up with Tyler, who is now building 2 products as a result of a recent pivot. Drayrates is crushing it and I’m so excited for him! We had a nice chat about not waiting for a warm intro and shooting your shot. He hit up a big time CEO and he replied in 5 minutes. Goes to show that good direct outreach can sometimes work!

The Lighthouse

We had a fireside chat with Josh Payne on Friday for some Lighthouse founders. Josh is a one of a kind type of person- he built and sold StackCommerce in 2020. He is now the CEO of Onward and GP of OpenSky Ventures. We talked about seed strapping, maintaining control of the direction of your business, finding the right time to sell, and more.

Personal updates

This weekend is my birthday!!! I’m turning 29 on May 17th!!!

To celebrate, I’m doing all of my favorite things and you’re welcome to join.

• 25 mile bike ride at Tour De Nash

• Cold plunge at Framework

• Dinner at Present Tense

• Ice cream cake at Dairy Queen

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

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

to the moon,

zap