A Casual Conversation with Zap

[Nick Chouard]

This afternoon I had the pleasure of having an informal conversation with Haley Zapolski, who goes by "Zap". Zap is one of our newer members in Penny U, and I was interested in speaking with her because she works as a Community Lead at the Entrepreneurship Center in Nashville. She has a passion for connecting entrepreneurs with the resources that will make them successful. As someone with a budding interest in entrepreneurship and start ups, I was interested in hearing what she was working on and how to become more connected with the entrepreneurship community in Nashville.

Zap hopes to be part of making Nashville an extremely startup friendly city. We talked about some of the ways that a city can create a strong startup culture:

• Combining college research with technologically savvy people and smart business minds in order to pursue innovation.
• Putting the tools in front of people to be successful.
• Surrounding entrepreneurs with other people of the same mindset.

As a newer member of Penny U, Zap was also interested in how she could contribute to the community. As someone who is connected to so many people outside of our community, I encouraged her to invite them into the fold in order to grow our directory of experts. This is something I encourage everyone to do in Penny U. You may see a question that you don't know the answer for, but if you know someone who could answer the question, it is just as valuable to bring that person into the conversation. The more people we have contributing to conversations, the more value we bring to each of our members.

Thanks for taking the time to chat with me, Zap!