The Highlights: Stepping off the carousel
If you want to know what's going on in Nashville's startup scene, check here for a bi-weekly report about founders, and what they are working on.
This newsletter is powered by a collection of 850+ founders, funders and experts. We are part of a community called StartupNash, founders and funders who share peer knowledge about starting and growing businesses.
Note:
📆 You're invited to our founder AMA this Friday. This week's talk is "Don't build an App, hosted by Dave Lane and Chris Wraley. They will walk us through ways to find market validation before building a product. Like all AMAs we host here, this will be a discussion type talk, and would love to have you there to share your experiences and lessons learned with other founders.
Hello Founders,
A friend once lamented to me that the Nashville startup community was akin to riding a carousel. You feel like things are going up or down, but ultimately, the community is stuck moving in a circle.
Lately though, I’ve been feeling different. Better. I asked ChatGPT to help me with some data. Here’s what it said:
Annual venture investment in local companies grew from under $200M in 2012 to consistently $700M+ in recent years (peaking above $1B) nashvilleinnovationproject.comteknovation.biz. The number of active venture firms and angel networks based in Nashville has grown, providing founders with more options for pre-seed, seed, and Series A funding. Notable new funds since 2012 include Jumpstart’s health-focused micro-fund, NCN’s Angel Fund II, Relevance Ventures’ series of funds, Frist Cressey Ventures, Council Capital III & IV, Heritage Group’s later funds, and others – collectively bringing hundreds of millions in “new” capital into the ecosystem. The local deal pipeline has also matured: more startups are forming (often spinning out of Vanderbilt or the healthcare sector), and more are successfully scaling to exits or major Series B/C rounds. Nashville even produced its first unicorn IPO with SmileDirectClub in 2019, something almost unthinkable in 2012. These successes recycle talent and capital back into the community.
Now for our community:
Since we launched Britepeer, our group in StartupNash has made 97 asks and 308 connections over common startup topics like go-to-market strategy, early finance questions, and launch.
Have you become a paid member of StartupNash yet? You should. As a paid member, your business can leverage our founder network to find your earliest supporters.
A few great things happened last week:
I’m working as the Connections Director at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. Together with the EC, I’m helping the team plan some capital events. Block your calendar for May 28th from 12:30-2:30 for our first one with someone you know who helps Nashville founders raise early capital. Full announcement coming soon 👀
Cup of Coincidence with Phase Capital and Kavya Sharman was a huge success. I was able to bring someone new over from the EC’s awesome Elevate Your Pitch Event and introduce her to the Biotech community. Just two gals who love connecting people
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Special thanks to Pilot, Foley Hoag, and TriNet for sponsoring.
Pilot provides outsourced accounting and finance services to U.S. startups & SMBs offering bookkeeping, tax, and fractional CFO support. Pilot is an excellent source with founder friendly pricing for those looking to navigate all things startup taxes and financials.
Foley Hoag is an international law firm, offering Tennessee's life science innovators exceptional legal guidance and business strategy for intellectual property protection, FDA regulatory compliance, venture capital and emerging company financing, and strategic licensing and collaboration agreements to maximize your competitive advantage in the marketplace.
TriNet is a leading PEO that helps high-growth companies scale faster by handling payroll, HR, benefits, and compliance through a full-service platform with built-in cost efficiency and risk mitigation.
I got a chance to meet up with Cynthia Cohen, one of my personal mentors and catch up. She gave me some great perspective about the work to do in Nashville. I’d like to take on some of that work if possible. I think there may still be a gap in connection and I think I can help fill that gap with Britepeer and with StartupNash.
New channels: We just launched talent, scope and peer-groups.
Talent: This is a channel for paying members to recruit or recommend talented Nashville based founders. Job seekers can join this channel for free, you just need to DM me and i'll invite you.
Scope is a channel for paying members. The idea is: anyone from inside or outside the community can make a scope with StartupNash, and I'll match it with every paying SUN member who is an expert in those services.
Peer groups: This channel is free for now. You can join peer accountability groups here. I am building this for high-growth founders who want basic peer support in a small group setting and I want to meet in spaces for entrepreneurs around Nashville. This channel may be locked in the future
Britepeer is in all these channels so you may be matched with folks as you participate.
🌟 Have an ask or an offer? Join StartupNash. We are a group of founders and funders in Nashville. Our community focuses on using peer mentorship and the power of our collective network to help each other grow our businesses.
🌞 See you on the brite side :)