Foundry 615

Nashville's "For Founders / By Founders" Community

• Connect with other founders and startup members
• Learn what other startups are doing and how they solve problems
• Level Up your startup with feedback from other founders
• Gain Early Access to up-and-coming local businesses

Who

If you're in a startup, thinking about a startup, recovering from a startup, or in/around the startup community, I'd personally love to see you come be a part. This is your home, we're your family.

Why

Hey, Richard here. Most people already have a sense of my big-why (helping others have success), if you hang out with me for about 30 minutes I hope you pickup that vibe from me.

What most people don't know are all the little details about why I'd want to support our startup community with monthly meetups.

The bottom line, startups are in my blood.

Here are the details:

• I launched a couple of my own services in 2010-2014 and had some great success and some lessons learned (that's ego-lingo for "failures," lol)
• Right around the same time, Eric Ries published "The Lean Startup" and I began my Lean Six Sigma training in corporate America. Lean Startup is a subset of Lean Six Sigma, and I went on to get my Lean Six Sigma Black Belt through Villanova.
• Starting around 2016 I wanted to take my LSS training and see if I could mix a simplified version of that and Lean Startup to main street businesses and our local startup ecosystem. So I spent a couple years working as a Business Mentor with the SBA and a Startup Advisor with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center.
• Life caught up with me and I needed to take a break to focus on my own startup (Interaga), so I checked out for a couple years.
• Then covid hit. The worst decade of our lives. This reset everyone's agenda. 'Nuff said.
• I finished up the Interaga platform and now want to get back to my original passion of helping others while I'm doing the "easier" part of marketing and building mine (watch over my shoulder, it'll be more interesting than a crime drama).

One last why on my side - I'm very Eastern in my life philosophy. Lean originated from Kiichiro Toyoda, Founder of Toyota, and is foundationally an eastern approach to business.

Naturally I found Lean principles came very natural to me, it's become my default way of understanding life, and naturally business.

For Founders / By Founders

This is all about you.

What do you need out of this community?

Feel free to use my contact form, or email, or text, or connect in the next meetup, and let me know what would make this community your go-to for whatever you're doing in your startup.