Zap's Wrap October 14th

all things nashville startups

Author

Haley Zapolski
October 14, 2024

hi friends,

Woohoo! Just made investment #10 into a Nashville startup, Grouped.

I shared in this post why I’m so pumped about what cofounders Finn and Tim are doing. If you know any artists or creators, they should def check out Grouped. Another win- they just hit 250,000 fans on the platform 🤩 

For my 11th deal I will personally invest and create a SPV to allow some other angels to write small checks with me. If you want to receive communications about investing, let me know (:

A couple other wins last week:

  • FINALLY crossed the mark- $4M has been invested into Nashville startups through my introductions! A venture fund invested into Landian.

  • Hired a mid-level full stack engineer for a local startup.

I spent a good chunk of the week at my first Venture Atlanta. My takeaways:

  • Meeting new people at large conferences is actually really challenging for me (I know nobody believes that, but it’s true lol). I was very grateful to have Sean and Michael who I work with at Overline introduce me to anyone and everyone in Atlanta!

  • I got to catch up with some of my fav people/investors like Daley Ervin with Cercano Management, David Jones with Bull City Venture Partners, Robert Pease with Cascade Seed Fund, Haley Kendrick with Gener8tor, and Vincent Hsieh with Cypress Growth Capital. I also met way too many new, awesome people!!!

  • Venture Atlanta is way more formal than 3686. Everyone wears a full suit LOL.

  • There are a LOT of investors at VA. The only conference I’ve ever been to that I think had more investors than founders! Good ratio for founders for sure.

  • There are way more generalist, early stage investors based in ATL than Nashville. I think it makes a lot of sense for Nashville startups to try and raise capital from funds there. There’s Atlanta Seed Fund, Atlanta Tech Angels, Atlanta Ventures, BIP, Circadian, Collab Capital, Engage, Knoll, Overline, Tech Square, and Valor. And that’s what I know invests early and generalist off the top of my head!!!

  • I don’t really like to compare Nashville to other cities, I like to just focus on making Nashville better, but I am think part of Nashville’s success is going to be getting other ecosystems to pay more and more attention to us. We’re off to a good start!

Startup stuff that’s cool:

  • There are a whole bunch of startups hiring for folks right now.:

    • I’ve got a stealthy AI agent startup hiring for 14 folks (whoaaa. this is def a real startup experience to join in on). I’m helping them with hiring a senior full stack engineer (focus on typescript, SQL, MongoDB, and Redis), a Junior AI Engineer (LLM lovers with 1-3 years experience), a Product Manager, and an Analytics Engineer (SQL experience). Reply to this email if you are interested.

    • A b2b hr tech/ed tech startup is hiring for a hybrid customer success person/product person. Ideally someone who can be client facing, but wants to shift into a career in product would be a cherry on top. They are also hiring for a part-time content person who can help make marketing materials (they already have a designer).

    • SpendCare is hiring for Tech Lead. JD here.

    • Giggs is hiring for a Tech Lead. JD here.

  • I caught up with Jeffrey from SavvyFi. They work with employers to offer education financial benefits, like student loan repayments, saving for future education, and tuition reimbursement. They have raised one institutional round of capital plan to raise again in 2025 given their growth metrics.

  • Teamworthy Ventures hosted a large event where they announced their new Founder Fellowship, a program for early stage entrepreneurs.

Events coming up:

  • I’m hosting a virtual event this Wednesday at 9am! Details here. I’ll be chatting with my friend Josh Payne about what actually works in GTM. Josh is a 2nd time founder at Onward and a venture investor at OpenSky Ventures.

  • Nov 6th 4pm- Program Showcase at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. This is a first time event where companies from across programs will be sharing about their business and pitching for investments and customers. Great way to meet and support the early entrepreneurs in town!

  • I’m headed to Money2020, if you are going to be there, HMU!

Personal stuff:

Over the weekend I traveled to Boulder City, Nevada to attend the funeral for my Grandpa. He passed away at 89 years old, after 62 years of marriage to my Grandma. I went with my Dad and brother.

Honestly, it was sad and I am feeling sort of sad and trying to stay on top of everything I have going on.

My final fun story so this doesn’t end so sadly- when I was at the Vegas airport, JD Tyler asked if I was Zap, introduced himself to me, and told me he was a fan of my newsletter (: The world is small and I love finding friends in unlikely places!

to the moon,

zap