A Live Conversation about Nashville Tech & Venture w/ Logan Mulvey & Shane Mac

What's up, people? So this conversation was with a guy named Logan Mulvey here in Nashville. He brought together a group of people that ran the gamut across technology, real estate, investing, etc. And I really enjoyed asking questions, thinking through how to make Nashville a better place and how to really connect us to other cities in a more unique way that makes Nashville a special and unique hub in the startup global ecosystem, while also recognizing that I haven't been here forever. I'm not a lifetime Nashville resident. I'm new here. I don't know everything. But what I do know is that I want to feel more connected and bring more people together doing great things so that in Nashville I feel like we have a truly connected startup ecosystem. And that's really my goal. So we can keep highlighting and keep doing what we've already been doing in Nashville to make this an even better place for entrepreneurs, technology, and innovation to happen and new investment opportunities that everyone can participate in and be a part of that are connecting dots across all the different cities in the world, all happening right here in Nashville. I really hope you enjoy this conversation with myself and Logan, and I really want to thank everyone else who came that night and was a part of the conversation and for all the great questions.

When I moved to town, I was looking to meet people like all of you, and I have been So humbled and surprised at the level of sophistication and the kindness and amazing things that people have done. So for me, this is amazing that we're just in this room together talking about the things that we're talking about. And your voice really matters. So thank you. This was a group of about 10 of us the first time we did it. Hunter was there. There was a few other folks that have supported it since the beginning, but it has become a lot more than just a few people getting together. Again, my goal was always just to put a group together that could build long-lasting relationships in the entrepreneurship community. And I think that getting close and having meaningful conversation is a way to build that bedrock foundation for the next 10 and 20 years, because we'll only get better that way. You all have met Shane. He's incredibly inspiring and energetic. And when I was introduced once, I missed it. Maybe it was because I had COVID. I usually am pretty good on email. Most people can attest to that. But anyway, second time—

as you were thanking everyone, I was like, who else here has not been responded to by Logan?

Come on.

And then tonight he's like, I respond to everyone, and I pulled up the email from Zap and yeah, it's still sitting there empty. Thanks, thanks, Zap.

I'm gonna go back and look for that. I don't know if it ever— I ever received it. So anyway, when I met Shane, I was like, man, this is the type of person that is going to continue to grow and nourish the community and selfishly me. And so I am so honored to have him and be able to do a fireside chat and get his perspective on what he's doing and how he thinks about things. So thank you.

I'm happy to be here. And I'm the first to say, like, I'm not from here. I'm from Peoria, Illinois, which is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Illinois. I'm so excited about living in Nashville now.

Why Nashville? Why now?

For me, it was a place to get away. And I lived in San Francisco and everyone told me you need to be in SF and raise money. And everyone would be like, go there and get an address. I did it, and I think it actually mattered in 2010, and it did allow us to raise money, and they were looking at our term sheet and, "Oh, you're in SoMa at 7th Street," and it was this thing. I moved here 'cause I really have always been inspired by the culture, inspired by the music, inspired by the people. It's an amazing place to live, and so I've always just enjoyed and felt home here. And for me, it's the first time in my life where it allows me to think in 20-year time, and that's what really gets me excited is to think about investing in things for a longer term than let's be here, let's build something, let's get out. It's not about Nashville to me though. It's about the fact that we can now pursue entrepreneurship anywhere we live. People who start businesses in places they want to live are more likely to succeed than those who do not. And I learned that from Brad Feld, who wrote a book called Startup Communities. And I was also so fortunate to learn and be around because he funded our first startup over 10, 15 years ago, almost, called gist.com. And that's what I love is I can be in Nashville. I love living here and have access and opportunity globally.

We've got a room of a bunch of people here that are influential in everything that they do and are interested in. Like, what can Nashville do that maybe other cities can't? Or how do we compete? Like, what can we do in Nashville that maybe other cities aren't doing or can't do?

It's a good question. And What's interesting is I always think about two questions. And the first is, how do we attract great founders to build things here? And the second is, how do we make sure we have great capital that the founders wanna take? And you don't need capital or not, but I always go back to those questions. And I don't like to be like, let's be better than Miami. Let's be better than New York. We're different than SF. And what I find in Nashville that's actually magic, I call it the switchboard city. I see Nashville as this hub that is actually the connector of all the other hubs. And when I meet people, like even this room, when I first met Mikkel, he's from SF, NYC, then I meet Eric Satz, we had the same investors, Coinbase is an investor in him, also in us, then TA's here, then I meet Derek Brown, Scott Belsky's an investor, he lives in San Francisco, was from New York, and all of a sudden, like, all these dots start connecting and it's all flowing through here. And so I'm like, there's a bunch of great founders here, and I think the most, The important thing is if we're thinking about us like a switchboard city, we're not trying to compete with anywhere else. It's how connected are we to everywhere else. And I think what's changed in the world that is exciting as hell is that capital and VC used to care where they were, and now they wanna be everywhere. And so it went from venture wanted to be somewhere to venture wants to be everywhere. And that is like the coolest opportunity ever, 'cause it's already happening here. There's already great founders here. There's already great investors here, hunters here. Hunter actually invests in a lot of the coast firms. And I think that's just such a cool opportunity, um, for everyone to come together and make Nashville this city that is already happening. And I think it's already happening here because Brad Feld outlined in his book what I think Nashville is already doing, and he calls it the 4 pillars to building a startup community. And it's entrepreneurs must lead a startup community, have a long-term view, at least 20 years. And he changed that actually recently to be 20 years from today. It's always a long-term 20-year view, not in 20 years it'll change. The third point is a startup community must be inclusive of anyone who wants to participate in it. And then startup communities are complex systems that emerge from interactions of the participants. And it's a really a bottoms-up movement, not a top-down movement. I feel like Nashville's already been doing that. But recently he updated one of his main things about startup communities. That I think is fundamentally gonna change and is the opportunity for a place like Nashville. And it's this: the interconnectedness with other startup communities. That's how I see Nashville. It's this switchboard city. And when I heard that from Brad, who's been thinking about communities, he called it the Boulder thesis over 20 years ago, and he started doing this in the '90s and really created all of the dots that brought Twitter's headquarters and venture capital and all the talent and developer talent to Boulder. He really nailed it and he really has a perspective on how to do it. So when I saw in 2020 when he released his next version of the book Startup Communities that he added in interconnectedness to other startup communities, like went off in my head, it clicked. I was like, oh, that's Nashville. We're the flight away from every, every other city. And really we're the connector of Dallas and all the other great cities. So if that's true, I started thinking about, well, what are we actually missing here in Nashville? Are we missing anything, or what do we need to do better? And what I kept hearing from everyone were these two statements: the capital here isn't like the capital on the coast, and there's a ton of great founders here, but we're all really disconnected. There's not a place to go. And I felt that the first 5 years I was like, I was flying here and I didn't have anywhere to go. There was no neighborhood. There was no like place. And SF is— many things you can say bad about it, the magic of it is that SoMa area and those dots connecting in every coffee shop. And every time you went into it, you're running into all these people. And that density really did matter. And I think a lot of the magic is created by the density in which you can do that. And then everyone would say the capital isn't what it is on the coast. And I think that one just doesn't matter anymore. 'Cause you can raise money from people here, that's fine. The coast capital also doesn't care where you live anymore, and they're investing here all the time. I invested in a company last week that was— Eric's chief revenue officer, she just raised $25 million in a seed round from Chris Dixon, from Andreessen, starting with someone from SF. And I'm like, you're in Nashville? I was like, we had dinner and I'm hearing that every day. And I'm like, okay. I do think that fundamentally changed the dynamics of what it means to be connected everywhere and have the access to capital. And now what I'm looking for is where's the physical place that the dots are connecting and the density is small that actually brings this place together so that we can answer the first question is, how do we all feel connected? And that's where, that's where my head's at nowadays.

Yeah, I agree 100%. Like, when I got here, I felt the same way. Where is everybody that's doing—

you're doing a huge part. This is a huge part of that, but the events piece is different than the place.

Hopefully, Taylor, you can set up a physical place for us to go and spend time and, and learn and grow. Convince this man to— everybody go talk to Taylor after. We need a place to go. Because I think that SOMA area, for all the ills of San Francisco, the amount of ideas that have changed the planet came out of a square mile. And they had a place to go, and they had a place to hang out, and they had a place to spend time. Because look at all these great founders, and we're here at a country club.

Yeah, I walked in at TAs. Wow, this feels like a startup. I was like, yeah, it's just real nice, 1901, just polished. It's post-product market fit, post-tiger round.

So I— this may be a controversial thought, but what, what do you think about the VC scene here in Nashville, or the investor scene here in in Nashville?

I would say I don't know enough about it to really comment on it. I think there's different mindsets to different strategies. If you come from the coast, VCs actually, they're doing seed rounds, but they also don't require as much ownership because they want you to go big. It's a founder-powered dynamic. I've met people here who are like, I raised $2 million, I sold 50% of my company, I had to buy out the founders once they got to a Series C because the investors weren't aligned with the long term of the business and they wanted out, etc. That's fine. I don't have a— one's good or bad. I think they're different strategies. I go back to the question of how will great founders build here and how will great founders raise money here? And I don't know a lot of great founders who would sell 50% of their company for a venture seed investment.

Let's talk about your controversial tweet, the one that was shared hundreds of thousands of times, saying that if a VC moved here in earnest, they would be instantly the best in town. Anybody see that tweet?

Oh, sorry about that. Like, I'm not trying to say what we're doing here is wrong. I actually think Nashville's already happening. The coolest thing about Nashville, I feel like, is that it's already happening. Like, this room proves it, and everyone I meet, I'm like, holy shit, you're here every day. And I just feel like the physical place of density, I can't feel yet, but it's gonna happen. And for the tweet, I was just like, meeting more people here who were raising from people not here that were never exposed to what I think a great seed round or venture investor looks like. And I do think the bar between great venture and everyone else is actually a very big difference. Like, a great venture capitalist on your cap table who is your mentor, who is your board member, who really can help you versus mid-tier. I found to be a very different gap, huge gap, and I just want more of them to come here. And, and that I don't think it has to be physical anymore, but I would love it if partners were here bouncing around in that space and to be here physically and to be— so that tweet randomly, all of a sudden I have 300 DMs. This is out of control. And it was great. People from here had been here forever. I think people that worked at firms here were actually like receptive to it. I wasn't trying to be a dick. I was just more— I see an opportunity here for someone to be like, hey, like, I'll write a seed round and I'll give— and you can keep more of the company and I'll give you more money. And I think then the Nashville VCs will have to compete with that. And I think they already are having to compete. When I meet someone like Tara raising a $25 million seed round, I'm like, shit, like, that's a real— like, only the big firms are doing those kind of rounds, like the Andreassons, etc. And so now they are competing against that. Tara does live in Nashville. She's met me at Soho House and we've had coffee and she's here raising rounds. So it's here. So now you got to compete with that. And I think that's interesting. That's, uh, that's changing the dynamic. And that whole capital conversation is now flipped because every Zoom call— I don't know, we do 3 investments a month, I couldn't tell you where any of them live. And I think that's a super, like, empowering, powerful thing that is going to change how companies get funded here and hopefully open up a mindset of a different way to invest that investors will have to— because it's hard to compete against them, right? It's really hard if the world's flat to compete against an Andreessen Seed round.

So you've got the best and the brightest in the room now. From your perspective, what should we be thinking about? What should we be doing?

I don't like to say I have some wise wisdom or even why I'm sitting up here. But what I do think is I want to put a stake in the ground, and I've been talking to the AJ Capital team. Wedgwood Houston to me has the startup vibes. It's industrial, it's like less than 5 minutes from downtown, it's centralized, and it truly feels like a startup itself. And I think that's important. SoMa in SF is like such an interesting place. But it was magic. And for me, I heard this talk in 2006 from Philip Rosedale, who was the founder of Second Life. I don't know if you remember Linden's and Second Life and that online world. Before metaverse was a metaverse. This is 17 years ago, 18 years ago. And Philip gave this talk and he was like, here's why startup hub of San Francisco works. And he showed 100,000 people and what it looked like over a map. So in San Francisco, it's about SoMa. In New York, it's like a neighborhood. And then he did— it was another city, but it was like Peoria, Illinois, or some city that you'd be like, no way. And he said, what is the density per founder on their LinkedIn profile? That says founder or entrepreneur out of 100,000 people. And in Soma, the whole map out of 100,000 people was full. It was like 10,000 dots. In New York, it was like 20. And in Peoria, it was like 20. And everyone would think that New York would be way more founder per 100,000 people, but it actually wasn't. And the density of that population of founders around each other in a square mile radius was so dense that it's not the stuff you put on a checklist. It's that every person you run into in a coffee shop that you see every single day going through the same problems that you're going through is going to be the person that gives you a job when your startup fails. Like, when your shit fails, that person's gonna probably be the person to scoop you up. And that abstract safety net— 'cause people that aren't entrepreneurs and founders or aren't investing in this stuff are like, "What are you doing? Is it really a job? You're not working it." BridgeStone, which, which problem. Um, and having the other people going through the same problems and going through starting something from scratch and recruiting people and before you have capital and all the struggles that we've all gone through is the hard part. And that density, I think he made the case there, like, that is the magic. And that safety net is one of the most powerful things that no one's ever figured out. And so for me, I'm like, what's the startup neighborhood? How do we put a stake in the ground? If there's anything I'm campaigning for, it's not that I want anything from anybody. I'd love to invest in anyone here. It's that we all pick a neighborhood. And I'm saying Wedgewood, Houston, mostly because I believe in AJ Capital. When I saw what they're building there, and they're like, this is phase 2 of phase 3, and phase 3 is even bigger. And then all these things are opening, and then they have this beautiful warehouse office space, and we're talking about doing a tech floor together so that we can actually have people that are all working together in and out. When people fly in, they have a place to go. My dream is when people land here, they're like, where is tech and crypto and venture happening in Nashville? And everyone says, go to Wedgewood Houston, and it's go to the Warehouse even. That's my goal, 'cause I really do believe in a quarter mile radius of density is the magic. And you don't have to have more people than in this room. It's already happening here, it already is here. And bringing that together so that the question of, I think there's a lot of great founders here, but they're all disconnected, we like change that narrative. 'Cause I think the other narrative of capital is already solved and therefore it's already happening in Nashville. We have everything we need. We just need to figure out where to go so that we're all bouncing into each other. 'Cause I wanna see Josh every day and I wanna talk about pickleball over here with Alex. And the Eric always says to me like, the relationships aren't built in the boardroom, they're built in the barn. And I truly believe that.

Let's end on that one.

Disheartening.