The Highlights: Updates from Nashville-based startups and services
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.
This week, I got to speak with folks at Vanderbilt’s Owen School of Management and MBA students about Nashville’s startup community. We had a discussion about creating a stronger relationship been higher education and the local community. Thank you Mario Avila for the invite.
I got to meet Justin Guerette of Cohesive.ai, and learned the founders are also the founders of community.com, which is really cool. Cohesive is an AI operating system that helps businesses move faster.
StartupNash has 88 asks from the group, 300 matches, and 328 replies since we started in March. Top subjects people have matched on so far in April were: regional seed funding, business formation, and business ops questions about Gusto, Google Merchant Center, and Notion templates.
How do we get this information?
Our group has been matching thanks to the help of a tool my cofounder and I made called Britepeer. Britepeer does the admin work for the group and helps members meet each other. Britepeer can match founders to funders, experts, and customers. Want to check out Britepeer? I made a post about how it works.
Launches
🚀 FindMeActivities.com launched
From the Founder Mundhavni Cheema: What's FindMeActivities.com? You know how busy parents sometimes struggle to find after-school activities or summer camps? Or maybe finding those off-beat local gems, or just easily comparing options? Well, FindMeActivities.com is here to try and ease that ordeal for families right here in the Greater Nashville area, while also helping our local community businesses thrive! (We're starting here and hope to expand the hive!).
👏 Mundhavni got support from group members Michael Shoup (12 South Marketing), Chris Hefley (LLMasaService), and Peter Swan (Gust)
🚀 Raise Financial just launched the pilot for Raise Investment.
From teammate Katie Parker: The idea is simple: you pay a budget-friendly monthly subscription, and we invest a big chunk of our money into the S&P 500 for you. You keep 100% of the returns, and we’ve built in downside protection to keep you covered if the market dips… or whatever it’s doing now. It's designed to make long-term wealth building way more accessible. We’ve got space for 100 people in the pilot and a few spots are still open. If you're curious or wanna hear more, just hit me up! http://www.raisefinancial.com/?utm_content=pilot
Startup updates
⏰ Our Office Hours are every Friday at 10am. Check the #HQ channel in StartupNash for details
📆 Come to Cup of Confidence: A partnered event! Register here: https://lu.ma/krn5la34?tk=CnBXp6. Phase Capital is partnering with StartupNash for the next Cup of Confidence networking event.
🌟 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 :)
PS - some personal news!
I announced a few weeks ago that I’m working on contract for the Nashville Entrepreneur Center as the new Connections Director. This work involves connecting early-stage startups to capital resources, programming, mentorship and community. We are soon launching a new series especially for founders. I cannot share any details yet, but if you plan on raising capital, please save the date for May 28th. More soon!