Zap's Wrap May 5th

hi friends,

The best part of my week is talking to my portfolio founders (there are 16 of them now 😮) and meeting new founders!

It was great to get back into the swing of things by meeting so many new folks last week (too many to even fit in the newsletter).

To keep myself busy (lol), I kicked off my next SPV this morning. It’s a startup I’ve already invested into before, so I’m super excited to have the opportunity to participate in the next round.

Startup stuff that’s cool

• I met Carter, founder of Totem Labs. They’ve built a whole new concept- a friend-finding compass that is popular at music festivals. I had seen their brand organically on my socials and tied it back to TN, which I thought was exciting! While they are in Chattanooga, they are visiting Nashville in a few weeks and looking to connect with folks in the music festival space.

• I met Alex, founder of Limber. Alex previously built products at Amazon and Built and is now building a solution for integrations in the transportation industry. He already has one 3PL as a customer and is looking to connect with more!

• I caught up with Charlie, founder at VITL Rx, a platform for e-prescribing. So far Charlie has bootstrapped, but when I dug into the numbers I was super impressed with the unit economics he has in his business!

• I caught up with Phil, a well known face in the startup ecosystem here in town. He has big news to share- he’s building something new! I’m looking forward to seeing how his endeavor takes flight.

• I met Jeremy, who recently graduated college and moved to Nashville to build Tabsy with his cofounder. They are building a way for you to use AI to search all of your documents/files/slacks. They are still looking for the best use case of their product, but think of it like ChatGPT but for all of your personal stuff so you don’t have to spend time uploading files to ChatGPT.

• I’m looking to hire for 2 roles. One is a contract killer paid ads person for a b2b startup. Another is a killer product manager for a human performance startup with a hardware + software components.

• For my healthcare folks, this one is for you! I learned from Alex what he’s trying to build at Freedom Health AI- AI for smaller hospitals to beat insurance denials. He has access to unique data to build the product and is hoping to get in touch with hospitals that need their help.

The Lighthouse

I ❤️ this photo of the Lighthouse! The big house and the courtyard is pretty much done, so now I get to start working on renovating the little house (the work never ends….).

We are hosting an upcoming small event:

• Friday, June 6th @ 9am- Equity 101: Founder Equity from Issuance to Exit

  • We’re covering all the sexy stuff in this 101 workshop just for founders-​equity grants, ​transfers, ​deferral of founder salaries, ​tax consequences at exit, ​equity issuances to foreign service providers, and do's and don'ts of 83b elections

  • Our lawyer friends from Frost Brown Todd are hosting 1×1 office hours after the workshop. If you want to speak to them about a specific founder topic, email me.

Personal updates

Last week was spent catching up post-conference. I did a day trip with my friend Tina to Southall Spa. If I had all the money in the world, I would definitely go to the spa every week!!!! lol

I got some quality time over the weekend with some girlfriends and tried a tea ceremony through Tea Huntress for my friend Natalie’s birthday.

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

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

to the moon,

zap