A Nashville investor told founders where their first check actually comes from.
Phil Shmerling skipped the pitch-deck advice at an EC Lunch & Learn and explained where Nashville founders' first checks actually come from.
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111 Companies Just Walked Through the Nashville Entrepreneur Center’s Front Door
Three programs, 111 companies, 120 founders — TakeOff, InFlight, and Project Healthcare kick off September 1.
The 2026 NEXT Awards Finalists
Meet the 2026 NEXT Awards finalists: 24 Middle Tennessee companies, and what this class says about who is building in Nashville.
She Built the Go-To Agency for Influencer Strategy — And She’s in Nashville
How Tiffany Hardin built Gild Creative Group — from a Marcus Collins moment at Translation to Zoom's Hard Stop Burger Shop, the Nashville Creator Summit, and the Zoombassador Program she's standing up with Zoom.
Nashville doesn’t have a resource problem for minority founders. It has a connection problem.
Five Morehead-Cain Scholars ran 33 interviews on minority founders in Nashville. The finding: it's not a resource problem — it's a connection problem.
One year, $80,000, zero equity taken
One year ago today, we announced the EC Impact Grants: non-dilutive cash for founders graduating our accelerators — TakeOff, InFlight, and Project Healthcare. The pitch was simple. Win a competition...
Two Founders, a Governor, and a Janky Prototype at the McWhorter Circle Legacy Celebration
Mark Norton was stuck. He and his best friend had both quit good jobs — one at Apple, one practicing law — to build a diabetes management platform in Nashville....
The Entrepreneurs’ Hall of Fame Class of 2026: Three Founding Teams Who Built the Bank, the Buildings, and the Restaurants
It was October 1999. AmSouth had just acquired First American National, the $20B Nashville-headquartered bank where Rob McCabe was Vice Chairman and Terry Turner ran the General Bank. McCabe and...
A Room Full of Founders. A Finance Pro. No Invoice at the End.
Last week, a room full of Nashville entrepreneurs got an hour of professional-grade financial strategy for free. That’s not a promotional line. That’s just what happened. Chris Brown — EC...