Nashville’s making noise: Could Music City be the next Tech hub?

TLDR: I recently joined Cultivation Capital as a Principal back in November. Since then, I’ve relocated to Nashville, TN to help grow Cultivation’s presence and investing activities in the Southeast.

For those who do not know me (yet), I grew up on the East Coast. I spent the last 5 years living in NYC. While most of my family is now in the Tri-State, both sides of my family have deep Southern roots, so I have always been intrigued by the prospect of spending more time in the South especially after attending Vanderbilt for undergrad.

Therefore, when the prospect presented itself to help build out Cultivation’s portfolio in the Southeast, I knew Nashville would be the perfect fit for me.

In the past few weeks, a lot of people have asked me, “why Nashville?” What seemingly took several conversations and numerous words to explain can be summed up quite simply: to build.

Photo by Austin Wills on Unsplash

What has always appealed to me about Nashville is that it is a city of builders and a city in constant transformation. It is an epicenter for music, health care, and technology, and has several higher educational institutions all in its backyard.

As VCs continue to speculate on the next major tech hubs, I personally subscribe to Fred Wilson’s approach on “the rise of everywhere.” I agree the transition to remote work will be a great democratizer for the next generation of tech startups, and I am excited to back exceptional founders scaling up startups in undercapitalized markets.

Nashville has long been under the radar to many, but the following characteristics all provide strong indicators of the vibrant tech ecosystem that’s to come:

Regardless of the numbers, one thing remains consistently clear: Nashville is a warm, vibrant city filled with humble & talented entrepreneurs. If you are a Tech founder based in Nashville, TN, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I cannot wait to meet you!

--

--

Partner @ Latimer Ventures. Investing in Enterprise SaaS startups led by Black & LatinX founders.

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store
Alana Mann

Partner @ Latimer Ventures. Investing in Enterprise SaaS startups led by Black & LatinX founders.