SVS goes full-throttle, with the first round of startups representing the best innovations from the region’s leading universities and national lab. Choose a sector – life sciences or physical sciences – or bounce around between sessions. Don’t miss the morning keynote with the nation’s top venture capital firms, or the luncheon featuring Chancellor Daniel Diermeier of Vanderbilt; Commissioner Stuart McWhorter from the State of Tennessee; or the success story that is DRIVE at Emory University!
Jonathan Godfrey
Jonathan Godfrey serves as senior vice president and head of regional commercial banking. In this role Godfrey has strategic responsibility for the middle market and business banking segments, across our national footprint. He works directly with regional leaders to bring clients the Bank’s leading-edge solutions and extensive commercial services and is involved with the middle market expansion across the united States.
5/3 Bank (Fifth Third)
"Nashville Continental" Breakfast Service
Keynote: Getting Funded: VC’s Speak Out!
Moderator: David Blittner - Ropes & Gray
Speakers:
- Rebecca Silberman -RA Capital
- Jesse Draper - Halogen Ventures
- Alex Kopelyan - SOSV
Join this panel of leading coastal venture capital investors representing over $60B of AUM as they talk about what it takes to get the BIG money.
Showcase: ARTS Surgical Inc.

Our solution is a state of the art steerable drilling technology and a novel implant featuring advanced precision to ensure higher accuracy in complex orthopedics and neurosurgical procedures and improve patient outcomes.
Showcase: Alluminate, Inc

Alluminate is developing aluminum foil-based electrode materials for low-cost and high-performance solid-state batteries.
Showcase: Imagine Devices

Infants born extremely prematurely present significant clinical and population health challenges. Advances in clinical vital sign monitoring can drive improvements in survival and long-term outcomes in this vulnerable population. Our company develops a multifunctional feeding tube that simultaneously provides vital sign monitoring by sensors embedded in a feeding tube indwelling inside the patient's esophagus instead of using irritant skin-mounted sensors. Trinity tube is the next-generation solution for neonatal vital sign monitoring.
Showcase: EarthEn Energy

EarthEn develops thermo-mechanical, flexible, and future-proof long-duration energy storage that uses CO2 in a closed loop to potentially store 4 to over 100 hours of energy in a low-cost, highly scalable, and safe manner with a 30-year lifetime.
Showcase: Lumaegis

We help dentists and medical professionals sterilize equipment in a few minutes instead of an hour using special light instead of wasting water. An average dentist saves $100,000 and 2 million gallons of water each year.
Showcase: Coulomb Technology

We are replacing lead-acid and LFP (lithium) batteries with safer, lower-cost, earth-abundant patented zinc-ion batteries for e-mobility and energy storage markets.
Showcase: DASI Simulations

DASI Simulations is a medical technology company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and computational modeling to create personalized 3D simulations for heart valve procedures, particularly Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR).
Showcase: Pike Robotics

Pike Robotics designs and builds inspection robots that can go into explosive atmospheres and other hazardous environments to collect necessary data, vital to repair and maintenance work. Our beachhead market is inspection of oil and oil-refined product storage tanks with robots, making the entire process safer, less costly, and more accurate, which also helps to reduce a large source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Showcase: OrthoPreserve, Inc.

OrthoPreserve is developing a minimally invasive meniscus implant to relieve pain, restore mobility, and reduce the risk of knee joint arthritis for patients.
Showcase: Vitriform3D

Vitriform3D is a composite materials development company focused on harnessing glass bottle and solar panel waste to create the next generation of low embodied carbon building materials.
Showcase: Atlas Endoscopy

Atlas Endoscopy is revolutionizing gastrointestinal diagnostics with a groundbreaking robotic system that performs painless, unsedated colonoscopies using magnetic guidance and an ultra-flexible endoscope. Our innovative technology eliminates the need for sedation, decontamination, and lengthy recovery times, allowing patients to complete procedures in just 30 minutes. Designed for both upper and lower GI applications, our solution enhances accessibility, reduces healthcare costs, and increases capacity by enabling satellite center,out-of-hospital use in clinics and GP surgeries worldwide
Showcase: ProsumerGrid, Inc.

We provide decision support software and analytical services for the economic analysis of renewable energy resources on the electric grid. We are developing an innovative platform that can determine the optimal operational regimes and optimal deployment (as in type, location, size) options of energy resources anywhere on the grid (Transmission/Distribution/microgrid an customer).
Welcome to Tennessee
Speakers:
- Dr. Daniel Diermeier – Chancellor, Vanderbilt University
- Stuart McWhorter – Commissioner, Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development
Luncheon Keynote - "Innovation is Rarely Linear"
Discover the groundbreaking innovations coming out of DRIVE. DRIVE exists to help bridge the gap between scientific discovery to helping patients. Follow the unlikely path to market of the drug MOLNUPIRAVIR, the world’s first oral direct-acting antiviral drug for COVID-19. Initially licensed to DRIVE, who guided it through IND, it was then sublicensed and eventual licensed to Merck, where it became a multi-billion success. Hear how the process generated a dynamic ongoing partnership to develop follow-on drugs of impact.
Speakers:
- David Perryman, JD - COO of Drive Innovations
- Dr. Todd Sherer - Associate Vice President for Research Administration, Emory University
Showcase: Orion Therapeutics

Orion Therapeutics is a delivery platform-enabled RNA therapeutics company. We pair a proprietary lipid nanoparticle GENESYS™ delivery platform that entirely excludes ionizable cationic lipids with a vascular RNA therapy pipeline. Our safe, versatile, scalable, and targeted delivery platform can be leveraged across a broad range of disease applications to advance RNA therapies to market internally and in partnership.
Showcase: NALA Membranes

Commercializing a new generation of membranes for sustainable wastewater reuse to clean up our environment from industrial contamination and provide water where it is scarce.
Showcase: Annate Bitherapeutics, Inc

Annate Bitherapeutics is developing a therapeutic platform that utilizes ApoL1, a naturally occurring component of the innate immune system. It is guided by our proprietary bispecific antibodies to become selectively lethal to cancer cells. This innovative mechanism complements existing therapies, with strong efficacy in multiple myeloma and promising preclinical results in pancreatic cancer models, demonstrating the platform’s broad potential across multiple tumor types.
Showcase: ShowerStream

Abstract Engineering Inc. has developed Shower Stream, an IoT smart shower that saves hotels $15 per room per month and prevents costly steam & humidity building damage by solving the problem of shower behavioral waste while dramatically increasing guest satisfaction and enabling hotel brands to automate bathroom maintenance at scale.
Showcase: Azome Therapeutics, Inc.

Azome is developing first in class drugs to revolutionize the treatment of severe inflammatory diseases and injuries including bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), exacerbations in idiopathic lung fibrosis (ILF), acute lung injury, acute kidney injury, and sepsis for which there are currently no preventative and a limited set of therapeutic options.
Showcase: Minus Filtration

Minus Filtration revolutionizes water treatment with our patented nanofiltration technology, effectively removing PFAS, salts, and emerging contaminants without chemicals. Amid growing global water quality challenges, our retrofit-ready membrane systems deliver a versatile, scalable solution that outperforms traditional methods across multiple contamination types. This proven technology presents a compelling investment opportunity in the $800B water infrastructure market.
Showcase: Empath Biosciences, Inc

Empath Biosciences has developed a revolutionary drug discovery platform that overcomes barriers to scaling therapeutics from nature’s biodiversity, de-risks each step of the development process, and efficiently yields novel therapeutics. The lead, proof-of-principle chemical series is currently in IND-enabling studies and scheduled to be in the clinic in 2026.
Showcase: Lepidext

Lepidext developed and patented a new, biological, active ingredient to control one of the most damaging agricultural pests of corn, cotton, soybeans and many other important crops.
Showcase: GeneVentiv Therapeutics, Inc.

GeneVentiv's AAV8.FVa gene therapy is the first universal gene therapy for all hemophilias and the first to treat inhibitor patients.
Showcase: Adviser Labs, Inc.

Adviser is a patent-pending cloud computing platform that makes it easy for anyone to run computational, AI, & data science workloads in the cloud.
Showcase: Verdant Scientific, Inc.

Verdant Scientific is developing a first-in-class, first-in-approach small molecule for the treatment of atopic dermatitis, more commonly known as eczema, which is poised to completely change the treatment of this chronic, inflammatory skin condition, which affects over 200 million people worldwide.
Showcase: dbTwin, Inc.

80% of all business data is structured data in the form of tables and databases but regulatory constraints like HIPAA, CCPA & GDPR make it difficult and costly for enterprise data-teams working regulated data. dbTwin is a enterprise platform that unlocks secure, data-driven innovation in sectors like healthcare, finance and tech by letting data-teams create private but realistic versions of their databases critical for training AI models, prototyping analytics workflows and functional testing of software/products.
Showcase: Augment Health, Inc.

Augment Health is transforming the $12.3B urodynamics market by replacing complex in-clinic testing with the first at-home monitoring system, immediately unlocking significant revenue opportunities for clinics while solving a critical access gap for 200K patients actively seeking care.
Showcase: CHALK Coaching

CHALK is an easy-to-use classroom observation and professional development platform for early learning and kindergarten classrooms.
Cocktail Reception and Networking on the Rooftop – PROOF!
Join the innovators and investors attending the Southeast Venture Showcase at PROOF! This spectacular indoor/outdoor space on top of The W Hotel features 270-degree views of downtown Nashville, plus local beers, delectable light bites and a bespoke menu of craft cocktails. Enjoy local music and take in eye-catching art like Reverie, a morphing-light sculpture by Nashville-based Cour Design. Or admire iconic photographs from Jim Marshall, known as the "godfather of rock 'n roll photography."