Talent Partner

We're on a mission to build billion dollar companies in Nashville.

We help startups hire their first team members, find their first customers, and surround themselves with founders doing the same hard thing they are. We write $5K scout checks every month. When a founder is ready to raise, we help them find an institutional lead and follow with $100–250K.

Here's the thing: our portcos are growing. Fast. And the biggest thing they need right now is people.

That's where you come in.

You'll hire dozens of people into local startups, staffing the teams building the next generation of billion dollar companies in this city. Every hire changes the trajectory of a company and someone's career at the same time.

I can find the startups who need to hire and I can find great engineers, salespeople, product people, etc. I am decent at connecting them. What I need help with is ultimately someone to help me connect them faster and at scale. 

That's the thing I want to build. I'm looking for the person who builds it with me.

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Here's the problem

Nashville startups are doing well. Lighthouse startups are doing well. The better they do, the more revenue they have, the more customers they have, and the easier it is to raise money. And when a company is doing really well, the bottleneck becomes finding the right people.

I currently hire 2-3 people a month for my companies. But they need more of me than I have to give right now. There are 2 problems I need help solving: 

1. I don’t have enough time to run a search process for every company hiring. I also have to run the Lighthouse, help companies raise money, host events, etc. The need is there, but I am at my capacity. I need someone to put real time and effort into helping these founders find the right people. 
2. We currently don’t have any processes around hiring built. Everything I’ve done so far to make hires has been pretty much ad-hoc. Somehow it still works and we’ve hired a bunch of people, but I can’t even imagine how much more efficient we’d be with actual processes and procedures behind it. I want to work with someone more operations-driven than I am, own this, and force me to follow the process (: 

I have made a Lighthouse Talent Platform (talent.lt.house) to try and create more processes. It is my big, scary project this season. Right now, I have over 180 people who want to work at Nashville startups. It could be the BEST resource in the city for when a startup needs to hire the right person. But it needs to become a better product, provide more value, and more people needs to know what it does and why it matters. 

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What this role really is

I don't think the right person sees this as a clock in, clock out, salaried job. This is an entrepreneurial partnership. I want a partner, not an employee.

Most of my personal income has come from recruiting. In this next season of the Lighthouse, I need to double down on hiring because our portfolio companies NEED it. More hiring to do, more processes to build, and it needs to be taken more seriously. 

Ideally we're a powerful two person team. The right person is a hunter who can go find candidates and an organizer who loves creating processes. An entrepreneur working next to me, excited about startups and investing, sure, but most excited about connecting people to work together and getting more people in this town working at startups.

The upside is unlimited. If we make something valuable for startups in Nashville, there's no cap on what this role earns.

Here's what I'll do: Find the startups that need help hiring. Run marketing and BD so new customers keep coming in. Build the talent brand so we attract the best people. Host events and get in front of new founders. And be your partner with every founder we work with, helping you understand what they actually need and helping vet the people.

What I need you to do:

Run hiring end to end for our startups. From the first "hey, we need to hire someone" conversation all the way to a signed offer. Understand what the founder needs. Explain how we work. Help them build their hiring materials. Source top talent. Share candidates and take the feedback. Get both sides to an offer that's right. Then stay in it until we find the exact right person. You're the hiring partner most early-stage founders never get.

Build the playbooks. Processes and materials that make both sides smarter. Content that teaches candidates what startup opportunities actually look like. Hiring templates for founders. Local salary data. If it makes hiring in Nashville easier, you build it.

Grow the Nashville talent ecosystem with me. Build the Lighthouse Talent brand. Host our engineering, ops, and customer success meetups — then invent the events we haven't thought of yet. North star: grow the roster of people who want to work at startups and are actually qualified to.

Help build the talent platform. Our product lives at talent.lt.house. You'll vibe code features, become the ultimate power user, and find new ways for it to deliver value. You don't need to be an engineer. You need to be someone who opens the tools and figures it out.

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Why this is a career move worth betting on

The mission. You get to help build billion dollar companies in your own city. Feel the impact on your community, build something bigger than yourself, and get people their dream jobs. All at once.

The environment. You'll work out of The Lighthouse, surrounded by the most ambitious people in Nashville all day, every day. Startup energy is infectious. You'll catch it.

The network. You'll build your own brand in town and a real network of talent, CEOs, and ecosystem leaders. This role puts you in the middle of everything.

The exposure. You'll see how venture actually works — how deals get done, how companies raise, how cap tables come together. Most people never get this view.

Unlimited upside. Half of everything we bring in is yours. I believe this role makes at least six figures in year one and ideally doubles that in year two.

This is the right fit if

• You love building new things
• You don't need directions — you figure out the best path on your own
• You love startup energy
• You're scrappy and just figure it out
• You hate corporate culture and fluff — you'd rather be direct
• You love meeting new people and making connections
• Vibe coding a product sounds fun
• You're process driven and stay organized without being asked

This is NOT the right fit if

• You want a playbook handed to you
• You need structure, hierarchy, and clearly defined lanes
• You think of recruiting as filling reqs instead of changing lives

If this sounds like this is you, send an email to me at zap@lt.house sharing why you want it.