Zap's Wrap September 23rd

hi friends,

For me, a good week is when I get to spend a lot of time meeting founders. They give me the most energy. Last week was a good week (:

Good news, I helped make 3 new hires! 20 hires for Nashville startups so far this year.

• Niall Harlan joins Synquery as Chief of Staff.

• Julie Barnick joins Send-It Healthcare as Founding Engineer.

• Edgevanta hires a staff full stack engineer in Brazil through Alvorada.

I have a bunch of startups who just kicked off raising their preseed + seed rounds. If anyone wants to catch up on deal flow, let me know.

Startup stuff that’s cool:

• Caught up with Matt about his devtools startup Triplit an open-source database that syncs data between server and browser in real time. He’s looking to connect with folks who want a repeatable recipe for building and deploying native-feeling web and React Native apps quickly. I put him in touch with some local dev shops, but am looking for more folks who make a lot of apps.

• We’ve got another VC in town as Matthew joined the Equal Opportunity Ventures team. I got to chat with him while he was interviewing for the gig and it was great to catch up and hear about the first month (: He is looking to invest in edtech and workforce development startups in the earliest stages.

• I met Sean, founder of CustomerIQ, who moved to Nashville last month. They are an AI tool for sales/CS teams to collect meeting notes/emails/tickets, add to your CRM, pull out what is most important, and create tasks. They have a few early customers. He is looking to connect with preseed investors.

• I met Anne and Kate, sisters and cofounders of Sage Parents, a social app for kids that uses AI to monitor content, nudge them in a positive direction, and keeps parents informed. Kate previously built and sold a tech startup to KKR and Anne ran sales for a saas startup. They’re super impressive and raising a preseed round.

• I met Peter, founder of Tether. They see a huge problem in lots of people go to church, but might have the knowledge level of a middle schooler. They help churches engage, educate, and deepen the practice of their members.

• I caught up with Dave, founder of VetVerifi, a data company connecting vets and pet service providers with vaccination data. They now have 3,000 vet clinics using their software, which is 10% of the market. He’s soon raising a seed round.

• I caught up with Sammy, founder of Morrow and one of the founders I’ve invested in! They are building a new product for a market opportunity they found with ESOP companies. ESOP companies are employee owned companies (ESOP stands for employee stock ownership plan). Right now, companies struggle mightily with getting their employees to understand the value of being an owner. Morrow is building out a tech platform to meet the demand.

Events coming up:

• I’m hosting an event exclusively for engineers to learn about startups on October 1st. We will have 5 technical leaders share and many other founders in the room looking to meet engineers! Sign up here.

• I’m headed to Venture Atlanta!!!! If you’re going to be there, let me know. It’s my first year attending. Excited to be there with the Overline team.

Personal stuff:

• Hosted a Scavenger Hunt over the weekend with Mr Zap!!! We had a great showing and you can see what our items were here. Some personal favorites were: do a cannonball at the Soho Pool, drink a shotski at Embers, ride a mechanical bull, perform ‘MmmBop’ at karaoke. The winning team took home $500!!!

• This Thursday morning is the Mending Hearts Annual Breakfast at 7am at the Hutton Hotel. If you want to come, I have a couple seats at my table. Just let me know. No expectation to donate, just to learn and fill my table (:

to the moon,

zap