Zap's Wrap May 4th

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Author

Haley Zapolski
May 04, 2026

hi friends,

This has been an exciting season!!! A few things that happened:

  • Hosted my 3rd annual Lightning, an anti-conference for VCs to come to Nashville

  • Closing on my 7th SPV into a Nashville startup

  • Just crossed $1M in AUM

  • Hosted my first annual Lighthouse Investor Summit, where my LPs came to the Lighthouse to meet all of the portfolio companies

  • Recorded the latest FOUNDERS ONLY podcast with Eric Schell, founder of OneTap (you can listen and watch here)

  • Just got my new retromod 1971 GMC truck and I am completely obsessed with it

A lot happened. Let me catch you up.

Lightning 3

Every April, I bring a group of VCs to Nashville for a day I call Lightning.

This was the third one. And every year I think, okay, this is the version that won't come together. And every year I'm wrong.

I am very appreciative to the sponsors who make it happen:

And for the people who showed up!

And to Lorenzo for being my partner in the chaos!

What I’m working on now

I have a handful of priorities right now:

  • Building a talent-first platform. Right now I do a ton of hiring, but I most often find the talent first → then place them at a startup. This needs to scale and I am heads-down on figuring out how to do it.

  • Building the startup ecosystem resource I see missing. Somewhere you can go to find all resources, all events, and find the help you need. Thank GOD for vibe coding to bring this to life finally…(:

  • Content, content, content. I have a whole content studio. Now I need to start actually creating videos and get over my fear of doing it…

  • Developing my LP community. I just crossed 7 deals and 1M in AUM. I need more processes and more community touch points and I think I found a tool to help me.

  • Deepening my network in NYC. I’m going next week to the Preseed Investor Summit and then back again for NYC Tech Week. I am hosting a breakfast during tech week!

Personal

Mr Zap just got our 8 sleep from Rho!!!! We are 1 week in and we loooove our 8 sleep. Thank you Andrea from Rho Bank for being such a great partner to Nashville founders.

Finally have a running truck. Expect a lot more photos of this bad boy. Any name ideas???

to the moon,

zap⚡