Nashville's startup scene is roaring like a Saturday night on Lower Broadway.
Eye-popping funding rounds, multimillion dollar exits and a wave of businesses launching outside of the city's traditional health care ecosystem have elevated Nashville's profile in the startup world, while inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs to innovate.
To cover this unprecedented era of entrepreneurship in Music City, the Nashville Business Journal is launching a new outlet called Nashville Inno, your go-to source for reporting on early-stage startups and innovative companies and entrepreneurs in Middle Tennessee.
To celebrate Inno's launch, we found six creative Nashville entrepreneurs under the age of 25 that are hustling to build their startups into the city's next success stories.
Some of these young entrepreneurs are juggling running their business while still attending college, while others are searching for funding to take their startups to the next level. All have faced never-before-seen challenges to construct a new business amid a global pandemic.
But as one founder told us, these entrepreneurs "don’t really take ‘no’ for an answer."
Most people move to Nashville to get inside the city’s recording rooms.
Trinity Wiles came to Music City to revolutionize dressing rooms.
“I’m someone that, when I have an opportunity, I’m going to follow the opportunity. And this is the opportunity,” said Wiles, a Western Carolina University graduate. “People say retail is dying. Retail is not dying, it’s just in this state of flux. People want to go into a store for an experience. … The fitting room experience should be a fun experience, but instead it’s s***** lighting, dark and dirty. We want to drive traffic back to stores.”
To create a better experience, Wiles and her co-founder, Kevin Peithman, created Where and Share, a company that develops interactive mirrors for retail stores.
The startup held a pilot at Valerie Boutique in the Capitol View development last year, with an eye toward launching its mirrors in retailers nationwide in the second quarter of 2022.
Wiles and Peithman came up with the idea through one of Peithman’s other companies, Allied Modular, which manufactures fitting rooms.
Wiles said fitting rooms are the highest sales converter for clothing stores, but there is no way for the store to capture data from those rooms, such as which clothes are being tried on.
Where and Share aims to reimagine the fitting room as a “marketing engine” for the store, Wiles said, while creating a fun experience for the shopper.
Wiles declined to disclose all of the mirror's features, but shoppers will be able to download an app as part of the experience, giving a store demographic information and data on the clothes the shopper tries on.
“Retailers think it’s amazing and they’re like, ‘Why has this not been done before?’” Wiles said. “We’ve got really good feedback from shoppers, too. It was really fun to see people interacting with the tech in real life. It’s interesting how people use it, because it kind of simulates a photo booth.”
What Wiles said she couldn’t simulate before founding Where and Share was the learning curve that comes with starting a business. She said it was difficult to source manufacturers from China amid the pandemic, not to mention trying to hire the right technical team to develop the startup’s technology during a tight labor market.
Wiles said other young entrepreneurs looking to start a business should “just do it,” but be ready to practice patience.
“This takes a lot of time. And it will never go as fast as you want it to go,” Wiles said. “I don’t think people realize how long it takes to build something. I had no idea.”
In the coming months, Where and Share plans to develop partnerships with point-of-sale companies that already have relationships with mid-level retailers — those with 100 to 150 stores — that the startup is targeting, Wiles said. She also expects to put on some pop-up events with larger stores to create buzz.
Those goals would be a challenge for any entrepreneur, let alone one under 25 years old, but when Wiles looks in her own mirror she’s confident Where and Share will be a success.
“[My age] is a double-edged sword,” Wiles said. “You have to establish your credibility. At first glance, people will make a judgment of you if you’re young. But once you speak with them and they realize you know what you’re talking about, then you establish your credibility. I think the most important thing is, no matter what age you are, is to have confidence. Have confidence in yourself and people will see that and it will reflect. I think being young is an advantage.”
Age: 24
Company name: Where and Share Inc.
Year founded: 2019
Employees: 8, plus co-founder Kevin Peithman
Total money invested: $500,000 - $1M
Total money raised: No outside funding raised
Revenue (lifetime or 2020): Pre-revenue
Any programs or business incubators you have participated in to help launch or grow your business: “No, but I work out of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, and I lean into their network and advisers a lot.”
