Nashville Tech Startup Guide
A deep dive into Music City’s Startup Scene
Nashville is a growing metropolitan area, home to 1.9 million people, six major universities, an increasing number of Fortune 500 companies, and over 40,000 businesses.* Named “The South’s Red Hot Town” by Time Magazine in 2014, it has enjoyed exponential growth throughout the 2010s.
Today, Music City is a burgeoning hub for startups. The Nashville Entrepreneur Center serves as a downtown hub of activity and events for the city’s startup community. In addition, a growing number of local stakeholders continue to curate resources and facilitate networking events across the city. The neighborhoods of East Nashville, Germantown, & Wedgewood-Houston have come to establish themselves as entrepreneurial micro hubs.
For a city that continues to accumulate dozens of new citizens each day, we sought to aggregate key resources for the ever-growing Nashville’s start-up community.
So welcome — stakeholders new and old — to a one-stop guide to #BuildInSE in Nashville, TN.
Nashville Funding & Resources
Venture Capital Firms
- AIM Group
- Altitude Ventures
- Claritas Capital
- Cultivation Capital
- FCA Venture Partners
- FINTOP Capital
- Frist Cressey
- GrowthX
- Jumpstart Foundry
- Jumpstart Nova
- Martin Ventures
- Mountain Group Partners
- Mucker Capital
- Nashville Capital Network
- Rocket Propulsion Labs
- Pharos Capital
- Third Prime
Angel Groups
Incubators & Accelerators
- Jumpstart Foundry
- MuckerLab
- Nashville Business Incubation Incubator Program
- Nashville EC’s Pre-Flight & In-Flight programs
- Nashville EC’s Project Healthcare
- Nashville EC’s Project Music
For Students & University Affiliates
For students, alumni, faculty, or other affiliates of local universities, there are a variety of entrepreneurial resources coordinated across Belmont, Fisk, MTSU, Trevecca, TSU, & Vanderbilt campuses.
Nashville Working & (Net)Working
There are a growing number of options for organized co-working spaces, however, it’s still very much a lets-grab-a-coffee kind of town.
Coworking Space
- Center 615 | East Nashville
- Deavor | Downtown
- Industrious |Cummins Station, Downtown, & The Gulch
- Launch Pad | East Nashville
- Nashville EC | Downtown
- Nashville Business Incubation Center | Germantown
- Novel Coworking Space | Downtown
- Refinery Nashville | Wedgewood-Houston
- WeWork | East Nashville
Coffee Shops
- 3 Brothers | West End / Vanderbilt
- Barista Parlor | East Nashville & Germantown
- Falcon Coffee Bar | Wedgewood-Houston
- Fido | Hillsboro
- Frothy Monkey | Downtown & 12 South
- Humphrey’s Street | Wedgewood-Houston
- Red Bicycle | Germantown
- Ugly Mugs | East Nashville
Nashville Events
Launch Tennessee’s 36|86 Festival is the city’s largest annual gathering of entrepreneurs, investors, students, and stakeholders. Each summer, over a thousand individuals gather downtown for the multi-day event.
- 36 | 86 Festival | August 25–27, 2020
- Nashville Analytics Summit | September 2020
- Nashville EC Twende Summit | June 19, 2020
- Nashville Entrepreneur Week | May 11–13, 2020
- Nashville Tech Council Awards | Winter 2021
- NEXT Awards | October 26, 2020
- Vanderbilt Entrepreneurship Conference | TBD
Want to stay in the know regarding Nashville’s ever-growing startup scene? Make sure to subscribe and follow local news outlets covering all things innovation in Music City:
Startup-Centric Media & Podcasts
- Launch Tennessee’s The Pitch Weekly Newsletter
- Launch Tennessee’s Disrupt the Continuum Podcast
- Nashville Business Journal Technology News
- Nashville EC Newsletter
- Social Enterprise Alliance
- StartupNash Slack community for founders and investors
- Venture Nashville Connections
Startup Jobs
- Launch Tennessee’s Job Board
— Did we miss anything? Feel free to submit your suggestions for local resources to include in future iterations of this living resource guide!
*Nashville Area Department of Commerce (website)
