Nashville showed up. 1,100 strong.
Twice a year, Nashville founder ecosystem fills GEODIS Park — supporters, investors, and connectors in the room for the city’s next class of founders. Here’s what happened in Spring 2026, and what’s next.
A city’s founder economy, in one afternoon.
Nashville Entrepreneur Day is where the EC’s accelerator cohorts graduate out loud — twice a year, free, public, capped at 1,100. It is the moment the city sees what its founders have been building.
A founder market stretches the full GEODIS concourse — food, beverage, consumer goods, healthcare innovators, B2B operators. Sample products. Meet the people building real businesses.
Inside the Premier Club, ten founders take the stage to pitch for the EC Impact Grants — $25,000, $10,000, and $5,000 in non-dilutive capital. Awarded on the spot. No equity. No strings.
The front rows fill with connectors — experienced operators who scan a QR code after each pitch and submit exactly how they can help. The EC delivers those forms to founders within days.
$40,000 in non-dilutive capital. Awarded on stage.
Funded by the EC Endowment — a $5M+ fund raised from entrepreneurs who exited their companies and put the proceeds back into the next generation. Entrepreneurs funding entrepreneurs.
Fidari
Othman Ouenes
Care coordination platform for community oncology clinics. Standardizes patient navigation, supportive care, and billing — already serving 12,000+ patients.
NEUROFIT
Andrew & Loren Hogue
7-day stress relief techniques targeting hospital staff burnout — clinically validated across 16,000+ real-world users.
Plant Savvy
Savannah Toal
Plant design and maintenance making corporate spaces warmer. Bottlenecked only by team capacity — exactly the kind of company the grant unblocks.
AVRWell · Emily Daviss & Kristen Rivera-Valentin
1,100 in the room voted. Six months of EC coworking on the house.
What 1,100 people saw at Nashville Entrepreneur Day.
From the concourse takeover and the $25K big-check moment to the post-pitch huddles and a happy hour that ran past six — the kind of afternoon where introductions actually follow.
Look ahead ten years. After you build something successful, look back — and remember to give back.
Robert A. Frist, Jr. · Former Board Chair, Nashville Entrepreneur Center · EC Endowment co-chair
The EC Endowment is a $5M+ fund raised from entrepreneurs who exited their companies and put the proceeds back into the next generation. Winter 2025 was its first deployment — $40,000 across three founders. Spring 2026 was the second. That’s the loop: founders funded by founders, year after year.
What founders, judges, and connectors say.
It really is a community event for the community, by the community. That’s what we love to see here in Nashville.
Sam Davidson · CEO, Nashville Entrepreneur Center
This has been a transformational experience for us coming to the healthcare capital of the country. There’s no place like this.
Kareem Elfoulie · Senior Shield Technologies · Winter 2025 · $25K Impact Grant winner
We’re going to use this to accelerate development and build better business relationships that accelerate our path to market.
Mark Norton · Adele Health · Winter 2025 winner → Spring 2026 judge
Tennessee’s founders are launching real businesses, solving real problems, creating real jobs.
Nathan Buttrey · Senior Advisor to the Commissioner · TN Dept. of Economic and Community Development
I wish I’d had the kind of guidance these founders are getting when I was building my first company. Being a connector is how I give that back.
Dan Stevenson · Consumer packaged goods connector
Thank you for choosing Nashville. If there’s anything we can ever do to help out — especially with red tape — please let us know.
Jamari Brown · Metro Nashville Economic and Community Development
The relationships keep working.
Six months after winning the EC’s first-ever Impact Grant — and graduating from Project Healthcare — Kareem Elfoulie is back in Nashville. Meeting with HCA, Ascension, Vanderbilt, and LifePoint. Not because he had to. Because the network kept opening doors.
That’s the real product: not the program, not the one-day event. The community founders can tap into long after graduation.
Every edition has sold out. Here’s the through-line.
1,100 strong at GEODIS Park.
Sold out. 80+ founder booths. $40K in Impact Grants to Fidari, NEUROFIT, and Plant Savvy. Three cohorts graduated — TakeOff, InFlight, Project Healthcare.
The Endowment’s first deployment.
350+ at the Premier Club. 70 applied · 10 finalists · 3 funded. $25K to Senior Shield (Kareem Elfoulie), $10K to Adele Health (Mark Norton), $5K to Avenue.co (Heather & Matthew Utzig).
The first one. The format clicks.
The inaugural GEODIS Park edition. Mayor Freddie O’Connell welcomed founders to the concourse. Sized the room for what was coming.
Want your brand in this room?
1,100 founders, investors, and operators · GEODIS scale · co-branded with the EC. Concourse takeovers, Impact Grant presenting partner, founder-passport scavenger hunt with raffle, market category sponsors, happy hour. JPMorgan Chase is the current presenting sponsor.
Three accelerator programs. One application.
TakeOff, InFlight, and Project Healthcare. Plus Founders Circles for women, veterans, founders of color, and LGBTQ+ founders — announced at Spring 2026.
Early-stage founders getting to first traction.
For the earliest-stage founders in the EC pipeline. Twelve weeks of structure, mentorship, and customer discovery.
Post-revenue founders scaling up.
Growth-stage companies with customers and traction, building the systems to scale to the next order of magnitude.
Health innovators in the healthcare capital.
Medical devices, digital health, and care-delivery founders building in the country’s healthcare hub.
Apply for the Fall 2026 accelerator cohorts.
Applications close Monday, July 6
Nashville Entrepreneur Day · Winter 2026
Get four things worth your week — in the EC 411 newsletter. Four events, one lesson, one win.
The next class of Nashville founders starts here.
Apply for the Fall 2026 cohorts — TakeOff, InFlight, and Project Healthcare. Twelve weeks of structured work, and a direct line to the Premier Club stage at the next Nashville Entrepreneur Day.
Applications close Monday, July 6.