Zap's Wrap September 16th- personal updates

hi friends,

Lately, I was feeling down because I felt like I haven’t had a ‘win’ in a few weeks. When I feel like that, I try my best to look at my metrics, figure out what action I can take to move the needle again, and remind myself that there has been progress. Sorta cheesy, but it works.

Here are the winning metrics I track:

• Capital: $3.94M toward nashville founders

• Talent: 17 hires for nashville startups

• Customers: 5 customers for b2b startups

• 9 angel investments from myself

As for a deeper breakdown:

23 checks came from angels or angel syndicates, while 6 checks came from VCs.

While I have a deeper network with VCs, most of the checks came through angel investors. I think this shows how truly difficult it is to raise venture, you could talk to 50 VCs and hear no every time. BUT, you only need 1 to say yes. Almost all of these rounds were led by a VC, but I was only able to help get a lead VC 1 time. All of the other times it was follow on funding.

I was actually shocked to see the number of hires that I helped make happen.

6/17 I got paid for, so that was nice too!

The customer front is where I feel weakest and want to improve. I also think I need to track what size ARR contract they sign to better capture this number.

If anyone has ideas or ways they have helped local startups get early customers, let me know.

Finally, i’ve been able to invest in many nashville startups. You can always check out my portfolio at my website here.

I’m looking for help and connections with a project:

I believe Nashville needs a dedicated space for early stage, high growth startups. Reason is simple, people trying to build billion dollar businesses should be and want to be around other people trying to build billion dollar businesses. I don’t think this space should be connected to a nonprofit, government, venture fund, etc, I think it should just be for founders.

I began my search at the beginning of the summer and found an amazing 10k sq ft inside another business’s office in the Gulch who wanted to support the startup ecosystem and this project!

Well, I have been waiting for a sublease to be allowed by their massive, global landlord for a long time now and realized that I made the all-too-common founder mistake- I was hoping to land this 1 deal instead of running several different options in parallel. I see this often in fundraising.

I’ve learned my lesson (big time) and am now on the hunt for other options.

What I’m looking for: Someone who has at least 5k, even better if 10k sq ft in central Nashville. Ideally, they are holding that commercial real estate to go up in value, but are less interested in being a landlord. To make the numbers pencil for startups, I need some type of deal. We can cover the space expenses and give them some revenue, but it wouldn't be possible to match market rates at the moment. Best case scenario, they are interested in my work with startups and see this space as providing value to the community.  We would be able to come in on short notice, I would manage the space, we would do everything ourselves/take it as is, and we could agree to a month to month lease so they could get a new tenant any time. 

If anyone has any leads or ideas, please let me know!!!

Startup stuff that’s cool:

• I am on the hunt for a killer biz ops person for a startup that just closed their preseed. Need someone who’s willing to do the grunt work and then quickly figure out how to automate it all, deal with customers, wear many hats, etc. If this is you, hmu and I can send more info!!!

• 3686 was the best year yet! Highlights include: Best venue for the conference thus far. I only watched 2 panels, one of them I got to see my portfolio founder Grace be amazing as always and the other I learned about how TN has 36 billionaires and that we’re leading the way in innovations/laws for family offices to attract more income to the state. Met new folks and saw some familiar faces at the Women Investors Dinner hosted by Monique and Eller. Convinced some investors to venture out to Broadway and ride the mechanical bull at The Wild Beaver (my fav Broadway bar, personally).

• Caught up with Jeremy Bolls, who is hard at work with Katie Merth building Olomon. They are looking to launch their MVP in only a few months. Anyone in the wealthtech space should learn about what they are working on!

• Hosted over 75 product leaders at Josh’s house. Similar to the software engineering events we do, we are trying to bring peers together. In my case, I am always looking for great PMs to work at startups or start their own (:

Events coming up:

• I’m on a panel for women in technology about transitioning from employee to entrepreneur on sept 24th with some other awesome ladies, dr t, anna-vija, and elizabeth. Here is the link to attend.

• 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.

Personal stuff:

Holy smokes, uou read to the bottom of the longest email I’ve ever written.

This Saturday, me and Mr Zap are hosting a Scavenger Hunt of the city. Should be super fun. Come with a team or we can put you on one. 1 car per team. $25 buy in, the winning team takes home all of the money. Sign up here.

to the moon,

zap