Zap's Wrap May 27th

angel investment #18, upcoming workshops, nashville startups

Author

Haley Zapolski
May 27, 2025

hi friends,

Exciting news, I just made my 18th angel investment into a Nashville startup!

I just invested in Joey at Longview, an ai-powered home restoration company. Here’s why I’m so excited:

  • Joey spent the last five years investing in construction tech. He believes the real opportunity now isn’t more software for contractors- it’s building the best restoration company with software at its core. Services as software, not software as a service.

  • Longview has 2 key advantages:

    • 1) They can find contractors who care. Joey’s team builds deep trust with restoration owners years before acquiring their businesses. Their first two acquisitions came from relationships over three years in the making.

    • 2) Automation. They use AI agents to handle the trickiest part of the industry: negotiating back-and-forth paperwork with insurance companies to get paid. They already cut down something that took 4 hours to 10 minutes.

  • Joey personally guaranteed the debt on his first two acquisitions. He’s all in.

  • His earliest backers? The founders of Equipment Share- a $4B+ business that modernized a legacy industry with tech. They see Longview following a similar path.

  • They’re 5 months in with 2.1M in revenue and they’re just getting started!

Doing deals is my favorite thing ever!!! Already ready for #19 LOL.

Startup stuff that’s cool

  • I met Jay, who’s building a totally new category- services + tech for the childfree. He spent the last 5 years building a wealth advising practice for childfree people and along the way built a personal brand with a couple books and a podcast. There’s a huge problem in his world- childfree people need to appoint someone to make decisions for them (Medical POA, Financial POA, Executor, Trustee) that he’s now trying to solve. I love the founder-market fit here and am definitely watching this one.

  • James just booked his 2nd pilot with 40+ stores! 1 month in and they’re crushing it in the retail tech space.

  • In the last 2 weeks, 3 Lighthouse founders got 4 term sheets! I can’t wait for these to close so we can announce them.

  • I met Nick who’s building a battery rental sharing platform. This space is HUGE in Asia, but still relatively new to the states. Nick previously worked at the 2 biggest players in the space, but thinks their biz model is all wrong and has started his own tackling it a new way.

  • We hosted a Folx Table dinner for 18 Lighthouse founders. They are working with existing communities to help them strengthen connections by hosting curated dinners. All you need to do is send your community members to them and they do the rest- book the dinners, assign tables, organize a game, etc. Will do this again and I recommend it to other folks who run communities!

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Personal updates

I spent the weekend in Boston and Provincetown! I visited the Companyon Ventures offices, took the ferry to Provincetown, biked all around, and ate seafood nonstop.

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