'TENNESSEE-located' startups in the pre-Seed to Series A portion of the venture spectrum must apply by Aug. 15 for consideration of their requests to compete in the pitch competition schedule during this year's LaunchTN 3686 Festival, in Nashville's Cannery Hall.

Following LaunchTN's prequalification of top-sorted applicants in its pipeline, those selected to pitch will present before 3686 attendees, on Sept. 9.

The 3686 application for would-be pitchers is located here and, again, it is due by Aug. 15.

This year's judges have not been publicly disclosed.

Following the startups' pitches during 3686, the judges will award one competitor $10K cash, plus in-kind benefits from The Operations Guide LLC valued at up to $5K.

The audience will also pick its favorite startup. Last year's 3686 reportedly drew at least 900 attendees over three days, with registrants from 33 states represented.

The founder with the most audience support is to receive up to $5K in in-kind resources, which is also provided by The Operations Guide, a Tri-Cities creation of Luke Thompson, who registered it in Delaware and Tennessee in 2024.

The Operations Guide's website says the firm is allied with both Kingsport-based Cumberland Marketing and with venture-backed Relevance AI (OnSearch Pty Ltd of Australia).

LaunchTN says it envisions the founder who wins the judges' endorsment separately applying for funding from a LaunchTN-administered investment program known as InvestTN.

InvestTN was created in response to the federal SSBCI "2.0" funding program and which operates under Launch Tennessee, which is a nonprofit arm of of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.

Even though the judges' favorite in the 3686 pitch is not automatically assured of InvestTN funding, LaunchTN noted in its press release that the 2023 and 2024 judges' winners did, in fact, go on to receive funding from InvestTN.

The 2024 3686 winner was Kim Quigley's Knoxville-based Onrise, an athlete-specific tele-mental health solution, while the 2023 top prize went to David Servodidio's Nashville-based VetVerify focused on animal health.

VNC research indicates that in 2024 all the 3686 pitch finalists were from Knoxville, Nashville or Raleigh.

That 2024 field included, in addition to the abovementioned Onrise, Christal Hector's Tunehatch, Dan Lee's Perseus Materials, JoAdel Adeloa's Fathom; and, Simon Karmarkar's Ma$ Refund app.

This year's 3686 pitch event is presented by Amazon, which continues building in Nashville Yards to host its Nashville hub team of a projected 3K-5K workers.

Jay Teamer PhD

LaunchTN said July 15 that the 3686 Pitch is being directly supported by Chicago-based Jay Teamer PhD, who is a LaunchTn Venture Capital Fellow.

NOTE

Lest "Tennessee-located" prove an insufficient criterion for would-be pitch applicants, we note that LaunchTN included in one of its recent online postings a link to analogous portions of the Tennessee Code that include definitions of "qualified headquarters facilities," etc. That's right here. VNC

.last edited 28 July 2025 0635